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Upon beating Magicite, I experienced the same hollowing feeling that grasps the heart of any gamer upon the completion of a roguelike. It is an emptiness that creeps in and takes over, instilling upon the player the realization that the very thing they had been trying to achieve so hard–completion of the game–was in fact, not what they were enjoying so much. It is the survival in a roguelike that brings joy. It is the unexpected that brings happiness. It is the ability to push yourself and your character a couple inches further into an unyielding world of death and mystery that brings accomplishment. “Winning” a roguelike takes all of this away and simply replaces the experience with a feeling of “been here, done this,” which is by no means the fault of Magicite or any roguelike for that matter, but was nonetheless my feeling at Magicite’s end.
Magicite, unfortunately, will be the first game that I place in a lower Tier after completing the game than when I initially rated it in my first impression. It is still worthy of Tier 2, but as I played the game, a lot of the promised mystery unfolded in a less-than-ideal manner. Mechanical balance of the game became questionable. Class distinction grew less defined. Exploratory cleverness no longer seemed to be rewarded in the face of safe consistency. Probably one of the worst disappointments was the crafting, which seemed to hold so much promise, but in the end fell flat. By the time I wrote my First Impression review, I was under the delusion that I had only scratched the surface of the potential crafting recipes, when in fact I had completely exhausted them save for two of them, resulting in crafting feeling rather pointless and simply as a method of “using stuff to get stuff.”
Do I regret playing Magicite? No, not at all. Until its defeat, it proved to be a fun game that provided many hours of diversion. Until I had overcame its challenge, it was enjoyable to find the ways to press stats, skills and equipment as hard as I could into my favor, ultimately resulting in success. It is just that after a more comprehensive inspection of the game’s elements, questionable balance and underutilized mechanics, it no longer entirely deserves my previous acclaim. If you have some time to kill, I would still recommend it–it just must be understood that the longevity of its value or quality is not assured.
