I really enjoyed Magicka 1, but was so disapointed with its lack of a functioning local multiplayer. It did have local multiplayer, but it was just unplayable on a gamepad with the control set-up they had. This being the case, I was very excited when I not only heard of Magicka 2, but also that it was being developed with gamepads in mind. I am here to confirm, that BOY did they ever deliver.

On a control basis, the game is now as perfect as it's ever going to get. None of the functionality of the old methods of the keyboard-based set up are gone: There's still self-cast, AOE-cast, and weapon-cast bound to the shoulder buttons, with the beam-directional casting now bound to the direction your point the right thumbstick. Additionally, you can now MOVE while casting, meaning the whole dynamic of combat has fundamentally changed. There are still 8 spell elements, and you can pick one of the eight by pressing one of the four right-hand face buttons, and then holding L1 to toggle between the first set of four and the second set. It takes a little getting used to, but I picked it up really quick, and it's far FAR better than the horrible old method of doing different-directioned quarter-circles on the right joystick to pick elements.

Other miscelanious control and gameplay improvements are that the d-pad is now used as hotkeys for your different magicks (the specific, special spells gotten by combining different spell elements (things like haste, or revive)), and the single player mode has been improved dramatically by the addition of a familiar which will revive you upon death, and can be resummoned with the revive key. It certainly beats just having to NEVER die like the first game Xp

Other than those control evolutions, the core of the game is still good ol' Magicka. A silly story for one to four wizards led by "definitely not a vampire" Vlad, on a mission to save the world! A very light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, self referential fantasy story, with tons of pop-culture references sprinkled throughout. My personal favorites being "Sir Antburrow," who gives you weird nature trivia when you talk to him, and "John Frost," who will warn you of an incoming cold-front from the north :wink:

Verdict: Highly recommended. The co-optional wizard homicide simulator has still got it! An action game that's still great fun to play on your own or with friends. However, I'd still be hesitant to play it with young children not only because of the somewhat complex control nature, but also because things tend to blow up into bloody chunks when killed with death magic x3

Spent the weekend with some friends at my sister's place. We had some down time, and I'd brought the PS4 for Jackbox games, so I sat down and played some Magicka. Our friends thought it was pretty cool, so the three of us went through the first half of the game on normal, then the second half on hard, and then the first half on hard to round off the whole hard-mode experience :P

This was the first time I'd played Magicka 2 multiplayer, and it really holds up to the single player experience. 4-player mode has some pretty ludicrous amounts of enemies at times, it felt, but so does 3-player mode (just not to quite the same extent). 2-players felt the most player-tilted in terms of number of enemies Vs. how strong you as two separate entities are, but that may just be down to which levels we 2/3/4-playered respectively (depending on who was awake at the time :P ).

Hard mode REALLY don't fuck around. You can get through normal mode fairly comfortably without regarding mechanics like shields or weapon enchantments too heavily, but DAMN do you really gotta think with everything you have on hard mode. The game REALLY wants to kill you, and it tells you exactly how it's gonna do it (you can see exactly what modifiers hard mode and BANANAS!? (very hard) mode impact on the game. I also feel like some encounters have more enemies in them, but that may just be my imagination. Still loads of fun though. It really forces you to think strategically, and not just go in beams-blazing. I cannot imagine doing hard-mode in single player with how damn hard some of the hard-mode bosses are. BANANAS!? mode is like literally twice as difficult as hard mode, so I cannot imagine playing through that in any capacity ever XP

As a side note, perhaps it's just nastolgia talking, but I still liked the jokes in Magicka 1 better than this one. Magicka 2's main story is a little better nuanced (for what that's worth), but Magicka 1's story campaign modes really beat it out in terms of flavor (I don't think there have been any mission DLC's for Magicka 2 ;_;).

Verdict: Still Very Recommended. It's a fantastic game to play with people who are familiar with gaming. If you have an evening with the lads, this is a great one to crack out to see just how coordinated you are at action games.

I had my friend whom I play Magicka 2 over with yesterday. We never really planned on beating Magicka 2, but we just eventually started playing just to see how hard we could get on BANANAS?! (very hard) mode, and then 6 or 7 hours later we'd actually done it! I never thought we'd actually be able to beat that game on that mode, but we actually did! I still can't believe it x3

God DAMN, that game is a mean son of a bitch on very hard mode. I don't think it's just because we had two people, but there were SO many really hard enemies SO much earlier than they should've been otherwise, and the fact the regen some monsters had was so fucking crazy didn't help things. We actually got WAY better at imbuing our melee weapons with elements, and the Mallet weapon imbued with something like fire or steam really wrecks shit up, because the beam weapons, even a lot of concentrated beams, really just aren't reliable enough on a DPS or "not getting interrupted"-level to actually be effective when you have the very hard mode difficulty modifiers on (50% health, slower Magicks regen, 300% friendly fire damage, crazy enemy health regen and 150% enemy health).

Verdict: (still) Highly Recommended. This game is still awesome. One of my favorite multiplayer action games I've ever played. I could and probably will beat it again someday with a friend. It's just so damn good. I go into more detail in my other reviews exactly how, so I'm gonna leave it a bit short here, but this game really is SO fucking well designed, and it's a damn shame that Magicka 2 never got any of the big story DLC's like Magicka 1 did.