If you'd spoken with me about Magic: The Gathering six months ago, I'd have told you that I expected 2015 to be the year that the Duels of the Planeswalkers games would lay down their winning hand. The circumstances couldn't be better. The series has had five years now to perfect its gameplay and options, and the success of Blizzard's Hearthstone has introduced an enthusiastic new generation to the addictiveness of collectible card games. And yet… this is what we get. Developer Stainless Games may have finally introduced some form of the open deck-building players have clamored for since 2009, but it's smothered under a bland presentation, a shocking lack of expected features, and one of the saddest cases of tripping over its own microtransactions this side of last year's Dungeon Keeper.

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A silver lining of Magic 2015’s depressing cloud is that its disappointments never entirely shatter the basic appeal. The tutorial is as helpful as ever, competently introducing new players to its language of using "land" cards for resources for abilities, buffs, and summons along with some introduction to the time-tested feats of strategy needed to whittle away your opponent's 20 health points. It explains the strengths of the five colored decks well enough, so a newcomer could at least jump into the main campaign knowing that white decks are all about healing and angels and green decks place a heavy emphasis on conjuring beasties to aid you in battle.Yet problems pop up immediately, such as the fiddly interface that's clearly designed specifically for the tablet version that came out a week before. It relies heavily on swiping back and forth through menus and options. While that's at least understandable (if not exactly efficient) on an iPad, on the PC it keeps essential options, such as manual land selection and simple graphics tweaks, stuffed behind overlong transitions. All of that drags actions that should take 10 seconds into half a minute of drudgery. Duels games have always suffered from minor interface inconveniences, but just getting around in Magic 2015 sometimes seems to take as much mental effort as the puzzle matches of Duels past, with none of the payoff. Adding insult to injury, those enjoyable puzzle modes are strangely missing in this year’s version.But at least we can start craft our own decks for the first time, right? Yes, but oddly enough, the implementation of a feature I thought I wanted marks a major step back for Planeswalkers’ potential for fun. Deciding which kind of deck you liked to play with used to be a issue of fighting themed bosses and winning their deck for your own use, which ensured you knew how to use it. Didn't like it? You could just abandon it and switch it out for another one you won off a different boss. (It's worth noting that Hearthstone works this way.) In Magic 2015, you're stuck with the deck you used to win the tutorial until you can grind it into something useful.That deck is always a hybrid consisting of two colors, which on the surface marks an improvement over the single-colored decks of some of the previous games. But let's say you only settled on that deck because it worked especially well against the tutorial boss. There’s nothing you can do about it now, and Magic 2015 compounds the frustration by only rewarding you with new cards as you battle through the short, boring campaign. My experience with these rewards hasn’t been good — usually they make weak additions to my deck, and just as often they're worthless duplicates. The pace of progress is a slog.Thus, from here on out you're expected to grind, most notably through a new Explore mode that sends you into battle against a sea of random decks. Because of the poor rewards, I felt compelled to pay beyond the initial $10 buy-in to get the most out of Magic 2015, by which I mean to have a chance in multiplayer. The option to purchase themed decks was available in the past, but here the sale of cards from each arc of the campaign feels more like a necessity in light of the grind that awaits—a decision which makes some sick sense in light of the iOS version's blank price tag. (Why even bother, then, with a cover price on Steam?) Hours of grinding still won't net you the 10 best cards, however, which are only available through premium booster packs that run for $1.99 a pop.Microtransactions aside, it's a shame that the 2015 version of this once-proud game feels best defined by what it lacks. The questions fly by like bullets to anyone who's played the series before. Where are the revenge matches, the Two-Headed Giant cooperative mode, the Archenemy multiplayer mode? They have passed like rain on the mountain, apparently.It’s also a dreary-looking game. Magic: The Gathering has the kind of artwork that could keep me entranced for hours, but the playing field here is a bland affair that looks like a white sliding door from the U.S.S. Enterprise turned on its side. The colored and detailed boards of the past suited the artwork better; consider, for instance, the crimson layering of Magic 2012 or the deep blue field of play from last year's incarnation. Here the cards, seemingly tinier than in years past, get lost in the achromatic sea.The best thing I can say about the situation is that somehow the old satisfaction of making a comeback when you only have two health points left still manages to shine through in all this mess, particularly in the multiplayer matches for three or four players. It's the kind of game that might hold some attraction if received as a gift, but if you're looking to jump into the video game versions of Magic yourself, you're better off looking at a more consistently enjoyable Duels game like Magic 2013. Or better yet, just stick with Hearthstone.Hey, Wizards of the Coast—whatever happened to the magic, man?