Having come across videos of that new Dragon Age game and its (by the look of it) cool looking combat I’ve gotten the urge for something similar. Action RPG of some kind, being able to rock on as a wizard and blast spells all day. Some tactical element to spell slinging and comboing would be nice.
Love me some recommendations!
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Theoretically, Immortals of Aveum could be good for this. It’s basically a shooter, but with spellcasting for the shots.
This one is completely different from your typical ARPG, but I’m going to recommend Noita.
It’s a 2d game where you play as a wizard off spelunking. The magic system is rad as heck, you find wands with spell slots in them, and spells that you can put in the wands. You can rearrange and combine spells to get some truly bizarre effects
I’ve killed myself in a dozen hilarious ways trying to make the perfect wand. It never gets old
noita is insane and has absolutely zero handholding. it’s truly hardcore and kinda souls-like in difficulty/lore, but truly excellent!
magicraft is the king in casual spell crafting, very good game to play a bit after work, can call it quits anytime and pick it back up again. just had it’s full launch as well and might still be -20% (about 12€)
fictorum is fairly unique, because it’s first-/third-person and 3D, and also very good with an intuitive spell system and a little bit of indie game jank
I’ll go a different route. Control.
Control has been really good so far, but the pacing of the difficulty is really wonky. Everything is a breeze, right up until something is damn near impossible. So I keep starting and stopping it.
Btw, have you played something like Hades? You’re not technically a wizard, but close enough. And there’s other hades-like games which might be more “wizard-like”.
You should try Oblivion
Yeah lots of recommendations here but let me give you some that I think answer your request more specifically.
Wizard Of Legend is a top down roguelite where you play a wizard that can equip different spells and upgrades. The combat and strategy is very focused on spells and how good you are at slinging them between dodging enemy attacks.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/445980/
Margoq’s Lair is a top down roguelike where spells are cast by composing them from elements, for example fire + shield casts the spell fireshield. It makes for a much more satisfying experience than pressing a button to cast a spell.
Magicka comes to mind but it was utterly unplayable single player. Maybe the sequel is better.
It feels very wizard like because you don’t have a static list of spells. You have 8 elements you.can combine into spells. (It does have unlockable spells but those are sort of secondary.) So using the fire and shield elements makes a wall of flame, for example.
Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind lets you fly around, jump over whole cities, and kill most NPCs with one high powered spell. It’s a very unique game, but if it clicks with you there’s nothing quite like it. Vibrant modding scene too.
The base game is certainly playable, but if you want modern resolutions and some vanilla-friendly bug fixes OpenMW is an open source recreation of the engine, there’s instructions on their website.
Morrowind is great and people should definitely play it, but god damn will it not meet the need of feeling badass. It makes you feel like a wooden chess piece and you just get used to it.
Those spells area very cool, though.
I really struggled to get into modding with Morrowind. I’m so used to mod launchers that make it so easy and I was expecting the same with openmw but nah.
You can install mods directly into the OG game directory, why OpenMW doesnt tell you that I dont know. Only problem is that ya need to do trouble shooting the old fashioned way.
If you are cool with CRPGs may I suggest Arcanum? Probably has one of the most weirdly in depth magics systems.
Play Skyrim with ordinator mod that adds more spells.
ARPG: Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn.
Also consider the survivors/bullet hell kinds of games: Vampire Survivors, Soulstone Survivors, etc.
Badass wizard eh? Try Magicka! 😁
This was going to be my recommendation. Probably not what OP wants, but definitely what they asked for!
Is it good solo? I don’t have a lot of time for games but this looks like it might be able to scratch my (MMO)RPG itch a bit without being too much of a time sink.
I enjoyed it solo, though it did become impossibly hard at one point. I don’t know if you need to have friends to help or if I just needed to be better at the game!
What’s important is the combos. There are very powerful combos that render the game very easy.
What are your combos of choice? I remember having a few good ones committed to memory at the time.
I had muscle memory, but I think it was QRRASE or something like that then put on weapon. Next time you attack, you cast a row of exploding icicles that put wet status and electrocute your enemies and really slow them down. Almost nothing in the game can resist. It makes the game stupid easy. You kill any boss in a few hits. You can also cast it around you, but it’s way too easy to kill yourself. The combo is hard to pull off the few first time, but once you get the touch, you’re unstoppable.
Also, cast SAFE on you regularly, easy to remember and its a very strong defense.
A lot of people use a combination of QFQFASA beam. It’s high damage, but you’re a sitting duck, never liked it.
I’ll give a shout out to Fictorum, which is kinda janky but is a physics-heavy wizard simulator with on-the-fly spellshaping and some real wild spellslinging combos. Between the combat levels, there’s a travel/encounter-type rpg thing vaguely similar to FTL as you try to stay ahead of a wave of Bad Thingstm
Fictorum is the game that most scratches the wizard itch for me. It’s an indie game, so don’t expect AAA polish, but what is there is absolutely what you might call a “hidden gem”.
