Having come across videos of that new Dragon Age game and its (by the look of it) cool looking combat I’ve gotten the urge for something similar. Action RPG of some kind, being able to rock on as a wizard and blast spells all day. Some tactical element to spell slinging and comboing would be nice.
Love me some recommendations!
Play Skyrim with ordinator mod that adds more spells.
I’ll go a different route. Control.
Control has been really good so far, but the pacing of the difficulty is really wonky. Everything is a breeze, right up until something is damn near impossible. So I keep starting and stopping it.
Skyrim has some mods that go really deep on magic and combat strats.
Honestly with the amount of mods built up over the years Skyrim has become the ultimate fantasy RPG.
I’m so thankful for every modder out there
Magicka comes to mind but it was utterly unplayable single player. Maybe the sequel is better.
It feels very wizard like because you don’t have a static list of spells. You have 8 elements you.can combine into spells. (It does have unlockable spells but those are sort of secondary.) So using the fire and shield elements makes a wall of flame, for example.
Kingdoms of Amalur has very fun, very flashy combat. The rest of the game is really ehhh, but if you just want to blast magic and have cool skills then it’s a great choice.
Agree on KoA. Playing a mage is super flashy with plenty of cool looking spells that make you feel like a badass wizard. The chakrams (one of the main wizard weapons) flying around look awesome, too.
Kingdoms of Amalur is a great example of a perfectly enjoyable, mid action RPG. It’s not going to like define a generation, but every time it comes up I think back on it fondly.
I would like another like it.
Divinity 2 Ego Draconis (not to be confused with Divinity Original Sin 2) had a quite similar feel to me.
Recently released Wayfinder has been scratching that itch for me! It used to be a multiplayer live-service game, but during early access it got converted to a normal singleplayer/coop game with 0 microtransactions and it’s a lot of fun. My only issues are with performance, which isn’t great, and build variety, which doesn’t exist. There are 8 characters with limited customization (except visual, you can do a lot with all the dyes and trinkets) and you just gotta rotate between them to keep the playstyle fresh.
But the combat is fun, the graphics are great (they aren’t beautiful, but they have that timeless cartoonish high fantasy aesthetic, like early WoW), and there is a lot of stuff to do and reward chests to collect. It really is feeling like a new KoA to me - as you said, just a solid, mid-tier action RPG.
So considering that we’re in patientgamers… add to a wishlist and wait for a sale? :P
Added to the list! Thanks for the recco, it sounds like a good game to go in to if you’ve got reasonable expectations.
They did a remaster a couple years ago. I love the ease of changing and variety of gameplay styles it affords.
Maybe less open environments to make it feel less like an MMO. But yes.
ARPG: Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn.
Also consider the survivors/bullet hell kinds of games: Vampire Survivors, Soulstone Survivors, etc.
Last Epoch is so good ! It’s less chaotic than PoE
It is mayor jank but Dragons Dogma was the closest to feeling like a mage I’ve ever experienced. There are no cool downs in the game but channeling spells takes some time and upholding a continuous spell drains your stamina. In this setting the art of a mage was reading the battle and estimating how much space you have to channel spells, several of which can easily break the encounter wide open.
Edited since neither my English nor my autocorrect were working as intended.
In this setting the art a the mage was reading the battle and estimating you much space you have to channel which spell
Am I just not awake yet or is this incomprehensible
Yeah that’s a horrible sentence my bad. You’re not the only one who’s not fully awake.
I mean you only have to change a few words to figure out what they intended to write so I’d say not awake fully?
“In this setting the art of the mage was reading the battle and estimating how much space you need to channel each spell”
At least that is how I read it
Thank you, but now that I’m more awake I’d have to disagree with you there. You did some magic reading that.
I just estimated how much space I needed and channelled the right spell :p
If you never played Magicka you should give it a shot.
Yeah lots of recommendations here but let me give you some that I think answer your request more specifically.
Wizard Of Legend is a top down roguelite where you play a wizard that can equip different spells and upgrades. The combat and strategy is very focused on spells and how good you are at slinging them between dodging enemy attacks.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/445980/
Margoq’s Lair is a top down roguelike where spells are cast by composing them from elements, for example fire + shield casts the spell fireshield. It makes for a much more satisfying experience than pressing a button to cast a spell.
You should try Oblivion
Heretic and Lichdom: Battlemage
The Excellent YouTube channel TheStellarJay has a small series (3-4 Videos, ~10min each) about the state of wizard games.
This is part 1: https://youtu.be/quPKQIVEX5A
I’m sure you’ll find something that piques your interest
Wayfinder. Recently discovered it and i’ve been having quite a bit of fun with it. It’s a former live service converted to singleplayer/coop, so the story kind of blows. But it’s a good ARPG - a Torchlight meets Warframe sort of thing.
Lots of good suggestions already, adding Magicmaker as a fun build-your-own-spells game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/319250/Magicmaker/
This one is completely different from your typical ARPG, but I’m going to recommend Noita.
It’s a 2d game where you play as a wizard off spelunking. The magic system is rad as heck, you find wands with spell slots in them, and spells that you can put in the wands. You can rearrange and combine spells to get some truly bizarre effects
I’ve killed myself in a dozen hilarious ways trying to make the perfect wand. It never gets old
Also, there’s actually an egregious amount of content in Noita. There’s so much to explore
I advice people to not install invincible mods right away. But the game is full with content and you often die instantly. I personally had to use a respawn mod to see all of its content. The game is really hard, probably the most difficult game I’ve ever played. Souls games are a cakewalk in comparison.
Read the title of this post and immediately thought Noita. It’s such a fantastic game both stock and modded and even after 100 hours in it, I’m far from an expert.
You definitely will feel like a badass wizard.