A rougelite, couch co-op action adventure that’s pretty fun

[DaivRules]

First: This game is not simply a Harry Potter clone. Yes, it's a wizarding school, but Harry Potter doesn't have a monopoly on every wizard school, and I'll always think of Terry Pratchett first anyway.

I saw this in a store on disc for $20 and my kid said they thought it looked fun so I picked it up, since it said we could play together. 

General story is something happened to the Wizarding school, you are a first year student, but you’re tapped to help figure it out by exploring the school, rescuing the missing students and teachers, and becoming a better wizard by learning more spells and leveling up the ones you know. Because of what happened, every time you enter the school, it completely changes it’s layout.

 

As you start out with your first spells, you will find artifacts that augment the spells you cast. If you die, you drop all your gold and your artifacts, but you keep your experience.

You will also be part of four factions/clubs and you’ll be working toward accomplishing all of the tasks for each of the clubs. 

The game has three acts/stages you’ll be trying to get through. The first is the school boarding rooms, the second is like class/lab rooms, and the third stage is some rural farms/barns/fields/greenhouses. As you move from one section in the stage, you must kill all the monsters in a section before you’re allowed to backtrack or move on to the next section. In one section in each stage will be a battle with a masked figure you must defeat to move to the next stage. Getting through all three stages takes you to the big boss battle. When you get the hang of what you’re doing, each run (three stages + the boss) will be about an hour. You can bail early whenever you want, but you generally have motivation to get as far as possible each time.

 

Yes, it’s repetitive, a bit grindy even. What makes it grindy?

• Rescue 100 schoolmates and you can only rescue up to 3 (one in each stage) per run.
• Learn all 18 spells (You spend experience to learn and level up spells)
• Collect 112 unique artifacts. There are 8 artifacts each for 14 of the spells.
• Collect all 12 potions.
• Defeat each of the 9 (randomized) act bosses
• Tame all 25 creatures
• Talk to each of the 100 schoolmates you rescued in the hub

 

BUT IT’S ALSO COUCH CO-OP (but not online co-op). While you can’t join in with another Playstation account, you can bring a 2nd player in. They essentially have whatever spells the 1st player has, but you can resurrect each other if one of you goes down. You can compliment each other tactically with your spells and clear levels much faster.

 

The platinum took me 87 hours and 84 runs. With RNG on your side, plan for at least 50 hours. Be warned there’s a couple glitches here and there to look out for that might add some hours on to your play time. 

For $20, it has been worth it for me. Up to $30 was probably still worth it. Over $30 not so much. Under $20, definitely. All of that is assuming you like the genre and like grinding and don’t mind some RNG.

 

 

I’ll append some tips that should help people shave off some time and frustration later on. 

@Mr_Wright95
 

[Mr_Wright95]

Sounds really good, a lot better than I expected! Really appreciate the tag. I will definitely be wish listing this one and grabbing the disc when it goes on sale.

Cheers legend!