Magic: The Gathering - BattleMage

THE BAD:
Chintzy graphics during duels, irritating territory-capturing techniques, inability to access creature stats during duels.

SUMMARY:
Before I got this game, I was expecting it to be much like the real-life card game, that I would be playing on a turn-by-turn basis.
Turns out that's not the case, it's actually a series of duels played in real-time, which honestly isn't that big of a deal, the only problem is that it's a difficult setup to get used to at first, and unless you play Duel Mode and arm your opponent with nothing but land, you'll more than likely end up losing a lot of fights as you acquaint yourself to the controls, as well as the differences inherent with how the cards work in the game as opposed to real-life.

Now, the library of cards are from actual 4th Edition and Mirage series, which is a nice romp through the land of nostalgia for those who have played the real-life game from the beginning, or haven't played in awhile altogether.
The annoying thing about the cards though is that you'll have to memorize your creatures' attack and defense points, because you can't access them while you're in the midst of battle, only their special abilities and the effects of other spell cards.
Sure, they have a blue meter that loosely represents your creatures' strength, but it's difficult to pinpoint just how high or low it is unless you spend an awful lot of time differentiating pixel size.

As far as the duel graphics go, the creatures are represented rather cutely, but the landscapes are disappointingly blah, and in the case of winter landscapes, the pure whiteness of it all can leave your eyes bugging out of their sockets as you try to focus on what's on your cards.
However, in stark contrast to the duel graphics are the beautifully rendered map-location art, which is very crisp and wonderfully done.

Campaign Mode is rather fun, involving the character of your choice battling against other Planeswalkers for control of the various territories in Corondor, but some of the methods for acquiring these territories can be quite frustrating.
When you're not straight-up battling someone for control of the land, you have to interact with different sub-characters, and based on your responses to them, they can either give you spells, gold, or join your cause.
Problem is, sometimes it takes two or three rounds of talking to these characters before you figure out the right response to get them to join you, meanwhile your opponents are sacking territories left and right and challenging you whether you have a good deck yet or not.

All in all, this game isn't too bad, it's not horrible, but it's not awesomely great either.
Most likely only hardcore Magic: The Gathering fans would really want this in their library.