Magic: Legends Looks Like Diablo With Deck-Building

The action-RPG Magic: Legends was announced at The Game Awards, but the cinematic trailer didn’t give much idea of how it would actually play. Now we have much more detail on that front, due to the February Game Informer cover story on the upcoming game.

As an isometric action-RPG, at a glance Magic: Legends looks very Diablo-like. But according to the story, it pays homage to its roots with some very CCG-inspired mechanics. You’ll have a customizable deck that you’ll use to determine your spells, complete with colored mana pools to cast them.

You build a deck of 12 cards, and hold 4 spells in hand at any time. Whenever you use a spell, it gets replaced by another card from your deck. You can mix up to two colors, just like in traditional Magic, but your mana pool with generate automatically and proportionate to your deck color. So if you have half-red and half-black, it will generate equal amounts of both, but if you skew heavily in favor of red, that will generate much faster than black. Your deck also feeds into the loot grind, as enemies will drop shards that you can use to upgrade your cards.

These deck customization options are on top of class loadouts like GeoMancer and Mind Mage, which come with their own passive buffs. You’ll also have access to summon points, which can be spent on foot soldiers or fewer (but much more formidable) monsters.

In the game, you’ll use these powers to take on enemies that are determined by a smart AI director, which will respond to player skill and performance to keep the challenge ebbing and flowing naturally. You can take on full-fledged campaign missions, or smaller “Ordeals” that offer a quick 10-minute loot loop. You’ll also be able to play against your friends with best-of-three PvP duels.

Magic: Legends is coming from Cryptic Studios and Perfect World, and you can sign up to try the beta through the official site.