Thinking about buying the complete pack http://bit.ly/elaWRZ from GG. Anyone has good / bad experience with the game? Is it worth the price?

The question shouldn't be HOW IS Magicka?, but How ISN'T Magicka?

Buggy as hell on release, fine now. Excellent coop, single worth it mostly for the great humour in writing.

Gameplay is as streamlined as it gets: no level-ups, almost no loot, waves of monsters being unleashed on you as you go, with culminating bosses which all require different tactics.

LOTS of spell combinations to experiment with.

For $12 I'd say definitely go for it.

I have heard that single player is not worth it and that it becomes a chore.
Main reason I haven't touched the game yet.

I don't care about the multiplayer much, since I don't have a single real life friend who uses Steam... Playing co-op with random people is not really fun.

I guess I should not be getting the game if I'm after the single player campaign?

In that case, probably not. I have played only a relatively small part of it SP and it gets old very quickly. The later parts of the game are also quite difficult, and in SP you have just one life and checkpoints are few and far away, so I imagine it must be very frustrating. (In MP, the other players can revive you.)

OK then. I guess I'll skip it for now.

Thanks for the replies.

Have The Witcher and Penumbra Black Plague + Requiem to finish first anyway.

Same here.

I don't have the game, but yeah, it looks like this game is meant to be played and enjoyed, only in multiplayer.

Yeah, it is pretty obvious throughout the campaign that it was designed for MP and SP was just an afterthought. But if you do have a real life friend or three you can play with, it's absolutely worth the price, and quite a lot of fun. I wouldn't want to make the impression it's a bad game, because that it most certainly isn't.

I found the controls being a bit unresponsive, and their design could've been better. The visibility is also a bit on the wonky side. The levels are linear, Dungeon Siege comes to mind. Played SP, reached chapter 3, gave up. My friend finished it in coop with his cousin a few times, he loved it.
The general concept is a neat idea [combining elements to get different spells] it just doesn't work that well in my opinion. When You're swarmed with enemies, it's more of a frantic Guitar-Hero-on-keyboard, than what it was supposed to be.

Magicka is best enjoyed with friends. It's humorous, you can joke and laugh about how you accidentally kill each other off and there's lots of spell combinations to try. The problem is, if you die in multiplayer, any of your friends can revive you and you can keep on playing till you finish the level. If you're killed in single player, no one revives you and you have to replay the level, because it has a checkpoint system instead of a save anywhere system. That right there ramps up the difficulty immensely in single player.

You also get very little loot from mobs, you only have a weapon and a staff as your inventory items and that is why killing mobs turns into a chore. You get nothing in return except advancing the story amd maybe a new staff dropped by a boss. I get swarmed over and over again and just trying to survive makes me rage every time I die in single player while in multiplayer it's a completely different experience. You sort of expect to die and be revived again, laughing at your mishaps and apologizing for shooting a bolt of lightning up your teammates ass.

In short, fun with friends, a nightmare on your own, unless you like playing the same level over and over again and find that rewarding.

I've completed the game in singleplayer and co-oped with Lowlyhong and his brother. Co-op is definitely more fun becaus it's more chaotic but singleplayer is fun enough as it is.
The start might be pretty tricky but once you learned your favourite spells both offensive and defensive, the game gets alot easier. I mean spamming Lightning Bolt every second on mobs is just pure ownage.
U get weapons as loot. There are staves that summon mobs, casts additional spells and even an M60 machine gun.
Boss fights are quite a few and are real fun. Has alot more variety and tactics than lol Dragon Age 2.
The spellcasting never gets old. Lots of combinations for u tonplay around.
For $10, Magicka is definitely a gem.

So, Steam appears to be mandatory for multiplayer, but is the Gamersgate version drm-free as far as the solo campaign goes?

"•Note: This product requires a 3rd party download and account"

GamersGate will only provide you with a key to activate the game on Steam, I think.

Actually, considering how MP games are set up, I don't think it's using Steamworks for MP at all -- it's all in-house code. And I believe the game is a Steam exclusive, no matter whether you want to play SP or MP.