When you think of "magic", images of witches and wizards from classic fantasy stories come to mind. You swish a wand, speak an incantation, and a spell is cast. In video games, magic is often portrayed in a similarly linear way. You choose a spell from your hotbar, wait for the casting time, and boom. For something as extraordinary and boundless ﷽as magic, it is honestly a little boring, no?

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Not all video games take the straight and narrow path when it comes to their magic systems. From customizing spells, crafting magi🦩c from resources, and even drawing your own sigils, here are some games which truly breathe life into using magic.

Updated February 15, 2023 by Ryan Bamsey: Magic systems in video games can be incredibly intricate, whether in gameplay or in the lore. The best games manage to do both, and make using magic in-game a satisfying and engaging experience. We've gone ahead and added some of our favorites to this list, including some real classics.

18 ꦜRomancing SaGa: Minstrel Song 🐷

Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song  Galahad Wave of Life

In the world of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, magic can be divided into a number of discrete classifications. Characters can learn spells from all of them, and ha🤡ve individual skill levels p🌳er classification, meaning they can specialize in the types of magic they need or become an all-rounder mage.

What makes this system interesting is that these magic schools are diametrically opposed in pairs, and a character can only have one half of a pair 'active' at any one time and be able to cast spells from it. This adds a layer of strategy and planning to tackling harder quests, as you can't simply switch on the fly, you have to visit specific NPCs who only show up in settlements.

17 ꦬ 🌺 Chrono Cross

Chrono Cross CureAll

On the face of it, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Chrono Cross has a pretty standard magic system for an RPG - you buy 'Elements' or find them in the wild and equip them to the various empty slots on a large Element grid that all characters have. However, there are some hoops to jump through before you can🌠 cast these Elements.

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You must charge up your Element Grid during battle by landing regular attacks - only by doing this can you unlock certain parts of a character's grid and cast the Elements slotted within. The higher slots require more charging, and thus cast stronger spells, so it's an interesting way to make you think about when and how to place and cast your spells.

16 ๊ Final Fantasy 7

barret using magic final fantasy 7 remake

Materia is one of the most well-known aspects of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7's world. Materia are small orbs of crystallized magic that, in-game, you can slot into pieces of equipment. These will alter your stats, but more importantly, also allow you to cast spells and use special abilities. Some pieces of equipment have fewer Materia slots than others, so it's a balancing game of raw stats versus the flexibility that comes with more slots.

It's interesting to see games that incorporate their unique magic systems well into their world-building. In Final Fantasy 7, Materia is treated as commonplace and the equipment and usage of it is a topic of general conversation, and its creation gets discussed at a few points during the story.

15 𓃲 Golden Sun

Golden Sun Dark Dawn: Adepts Using The Power Of The Djinn

The magic of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Golden Sun is known as 'Psynergy,' a cobbling together of psychic and energy. Only so-called 'Adepts' can use Psynergy, and as you'd expect, Adepts make up the main cast of all three games in the series.

While Adepts have the ability to use Psynergy intrinsically, they can also enhance their skills using Djinni, small magical creatures that the Adepts can find and recruit on th🎉eir travels across the world of Weyard. Djinni and Adepts come in one of the four elements, which is the standard roster of earth, wind, water, and fire - mix✨ing and matching Djinni of different elements allows Adepts to access new and, often, superior spells.

14 🏅 The Wizards

A player in first-person holds up a magic shield in their left hand and a fireball in their right, aimed towards monsters on tiers of dirt

In The Wizards, you are the pupil of the great wizard Aurelius, charged with the task of becoming a master spellcaster. Much in the same way that Arx Fatalis had players tracing sigils in order to cast, in The Wizards you use your VR motion controllers to mimic hand gestures that trigger specific spells.

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This combinatꦿion of VR combat against hordes of fantasy enemies, intuitive hand casting, and even challenging puzzles mak🥀es The Wizards stand out not only among VR titles but puts its above many magic-themed RPGs.

13 The𝓡 Witcher 3: Wild Hunt ☂

Yennefer using magic in The Witcher 3

The magic system in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher varies widely depending on which source you are looking at, but a few things remain constant. Magic is harnessed from Chaos, and while anyone can access Chaos to cast simple spells, some people known as Sources have a natural ability to turn Chaos to their bidding. In the Netflix adaptation of The Witcher, even the simple spells that witchers use take energy to cast. The more magic used and more grandiose the spell, the greater the physical toll.

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This evolution of the system likely takes inspiration from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3, in which Geralt has an a🐲rsenal of basic spells at his disposal knownꦐ as Signs, but which require a full stamina bar to cast them. While the philosophy of The Witcher's magic is a little more intriguing than the game mechanic itself, the use of spells in The Witcher 3 is satisfying and absolutely essential to winning difficult encounters.

12 Wizard101

A group of wizards stand in a circle on glowing spots, with some spell cards in the center

Likely to be the closest thing to attending Hogwarts you might ever experience, Wizard101 is a free-to-download MMORPG with collectible card spell mechanics. While it might have launched in 2008, the game is still seeing updates to this day and amazingly maintains a fairly strong player base.

You get sorted into a School of Wizardry and handed your first set of cards or abilities. If you like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:deck-building strategy games with a splash of goofy animations and calculated spell choices, try Wizard101. Be warned, while a good chunk of the game is free-to-play, many areas are locked behind subscription paywalls.

11 🦋 Blade And Sorcery

A player in first-person wields a magical glowing blue staff as enemies approach them on a bridge with their weapons drawn

You might be thinking, with a game so heavily focused on sword combat, can Blade and Sorcery really be a good magic game? Well, what if we told you that you could light your sword on fire with a fireball spell? Yes, in this physics-based VR combat simulator you can not only slash and hack your way through enemies but incin꧋erate them as well.

While the game might be aimless in its content, there is plenty of fun to be had in experimenting with new combinations of spells, weapons, and parts of your environment as you transform y🐓ourself into the ultimate battle♔ mage.

10 🔯 𒁏 Wizard Of Legend

A thunder spell injures multiple enemies at once in Wizard of Legend

You might be familiar with the meme of anime fights where the characters are so ultra-powerful that their movement literally cannot be tracked by the human eye. In Wizard of Legend, you get ꦛto expওerience that sort of magical prowess first-hand.

This rogue-like dungeon crawler relies on speed above all else. The key is to create a magical build for your character that allows you to chain together as many spell combinations as possible. The synergy between qu🎐ick spell casting and fast-paced movement really shakes up the standard spell casting procedure.

9 🐲 Pillars Of Eternit🦋y

Pillars of Eternity II Deadfire Battle gameplay

This crowdfunded fantasy RPG takes inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons not only in its essence but in its ingenuity in executing similar playable character classes. Much like D&D, players of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pillars of Eternity can choose to play as a Barbarian, Rogue, Ranger, and so on. The "Chanter" class, comparable to Bards in all but name, is unique in that you can create custom spells or "chants" by stringing together learned phrases.

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The game's "Priest" class is also singular, as the strength and effectiveness of your abilities are directly linked to your actions in-game, and whether they are "in-line" with your deity.