A sequel to Magicka released for PC and PlayStation 4 on May 26th, 2015, Magicka 2 is another top-down spellcasting-based hack-and-slash-like game, allowing you to control a Wizard and cast various spells in various ways in order to kill enemies while simultaneously avoiding (or not) killing your friends. The spell system was reworked, allowing players to move in various directions while casting simpler spells, while eliminating some game-breaking options. The story runs on self-referential, pythonic humor as seen in previous game.
Provides Examples Of:
- An Arm and a Leg: Vlad is missing his right hand in this game. We never learn what happened to it.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Magic Quickslots allow you to cast magicks without remembering their element combinations, or risking mistyping them, or accidentally killing yourself because you were trying to cast lightning when wet. The downside is that there's a longer cooldown compared to manual input.
- All checkpoints are automatic now. Also, they work even after turning off the game.
- If you fall for the Schmuck Bait it's still possible for you to pick up your weapon.
- Basic weapon enchantments now last far longer than just one hit. Compared to the first game, where melee was next to useless, this means the constant zerg rushes you're faced with are a bit more manageable with strong melee.
- The fairy can now be revived, so as long as you remember to do so you can avoid having your progress reset because you died. This addressed critism of the first game's unbalanced difficulty where solo is
Nintendo Hard because no friends to revive you means one death and it's game over, but even just one friend drops difficulty tenfold since death immediately becomes cheap.
- The Alliance: Dwarves, Elves and Humans all allied to help Lok take over the world and get rid of the Beastskin. You end up fighting them.
- The Archmage: The child of prophecy is implied to become one. She does, even inventing new elements. There are a bunch of problems with her actions though...
- BFS: Vanir's swords are pretty big.
- Bilingual Bonus: Right at the end of Chapter 3 you meet Follower Tabete and Follower Tetsuo. Tabete means "eat" in Japanese, and Tetsuo is a common Japanese surname. And as it happens, they are speaking Japanese - what they say, however, is slightly different from what the subtitles say they say:Tabete: 私のホバークラフトはうなぎで一杯です。一緒にノストリルお取りませんが、英語の話せる人はいませんか。TranslationTetsuo: 頑張って！TranslationTabete: ごめんなさい！Translation
- Crystal Prison: How Lok decides to thank you for saving her.
- Destructive Savior: The world actually hit a golden age with no wizards around to save them by burning crops and everything around them.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Subverted. The game was clearly designed to be played with friends who can quickly revive you in-case either of you go down. Whether you're playing solo or with 3 friends the number of enemies you have to face is the same, and two bosses are unbeatable on higher than Normal difficulty if you're alone because they regenerate too much health for your spells to take off while knocking you all over the place or killing you.
- Evil Chancellor: Elin. Eventually.
- Flunky Boss: This game likes this trope very much. Most of bosses you'll see are flunky bosses. In one case it's even a flunky Wolf Pack Boss.
- Flipping the Bird: Lok doesn't take being sent home kindly.
- Freudian Excuse: Elin's despise of wizards comes from being a victim of their reckless "saving".
- Giant Enemy Crab: Along with the not so giant though still huge enemy crabs, and the relatively big crab spewer healer things. In-universe, one even gets a name drop, though it's implied to be even bigger.
- Gratuitous Japanese: It's never explained why two of the characters encountered speak Japanese. Also see Bilingual Bonus above.
- Gray-and-Gray Morality: Lok seems to just naively think her race lording over other people is for the best and even liked the wizards, she only acts antagonistic when you kill everyone in the castle as she realized the stories about wizards' reckless and destructive behavior were well founded.
- Heroic Mime: Similarly to the first game, parodied to a level, though not as much as last time. The worst thing that happens is you getting stuck between two army commanders "negotiating" and finding you to be the opponent's ally, then being forced to destroy both warrior groups. Vlad learned to interfere in time in most cases though.
- Improvised Platform: To cross water, the wizards have to freeze it into a platform using the Cold element. Cue a bunch of wizards firing off poorly aimed freezing spells as they slide along the ice.
- Laugh Track: The Sitcom Artifact adds one to game.
- Mr. Exposition: Metaxas the Goblin Shaman. Also, Vlad, though to lesser level than in the first game.
- Nerf: Compared to Magicka 1. Multiple Magicks are simply missing, but barring that:
- Steam and Ice are no longer considered "combined elements"; they're still in the game, but they're a sequence instead of merging into one. This means that you can't have three or more of these elements within a spell, and also that you can't mix them with Lightning since it would cancel out with Water.
- Lightning has priority over Life/Arcane, blocking you from creating electric mines and beams.
- There is a cooldown period between using any Magicks.
- Most elemental shields don't protect you from associated status until you add them to your spell queue at least twice, making it less likely you can No-Sell all damage.
- Haste, the Magick that speeds a Wizard up, works for noticeably shorter amount of time.
- Being frozen reflects beam damage, and continuing to apply cold to a frozen enemy will not reset frozen status, so you can no longer immobilise everyone and then take them out at your leisure.
- A later patch fixed/changed the first three points, so Steam/Ice only takes up one slot on the conjure bar and arcane beams take precedence over lightning. These two changes allowed the fan-favourite "Super Steam Beam" (one of the strongest spells in the previous installment) to be cast again. A new element, poison, has also been "added" (as in it can now be cast; before, it was only available if you had certain gear and enemies) and the cooldown for Magicks has been reduced to only a few seconds.
- No-Sell:
- Wards can be created to either shorter the duration of status effects, make you immune to them, or cause them to heal you instead.
- Disruption makes you invulnerable and causes beam spells to fall to the ground harmlessly.
- Plot Twist: After the Wizards save the child of prophecy from the goblin'n'ork army, she traps them together with Metaxas, the goblin shaman, who explains that now she'll get too powerful for the world's good. Then another twist is that Vlad involved you in to open a new wizard's school.
- Prophecy Twist: Depending on your interpretation, either that or it was muddled by Nostrir all along. If it wasn't, either Vlad and the Wizards are actually the dark force stopping the child of prophecy or it's Elin who used Lok's powers to establish Vanir supremacy.
- Saying Too Much: The new enemy would not have taken notice of the Wizards immediately after their appearance, if it wasn't for the fact that Vlad reminds them loudly to not reveal their true intentions.
- Shout-Out: Like, a lot.
- Schmuck Bait: "Note to self: This is a bad ending. ~Stanley."
- Squishy Wizard: Compared to the original where any physical damage barely hurts, now you can get killed in one hit.
- Tempting Fate: "Yep. Nothing ever gets past me."
- Three Laws-Compliant: The Golem Lok made apparently has them she tells it to delete the first law when she sees you murdered her mentor and everyone in the castle.
- Time Skip: After the events of the plot twist.
- Underground Monkey: Ice crabs.
- Wham LineElin: Now kill the Wizard.
- Zerg Rush: Your enemies' favorite strategy.`
