izigame.me

I got this along with some friends since I've always heard that Magicka was great coop fun; the first game is effectively non-functional on Steam, and this one was on sale, so we refunded the first and went for this one. I'm almost speechless at how bad this is and bewildered this has 82% on Steam. This is all the more impressive considering the game's short length; it would've been easy to be forgettable, but Magicka 2 managed to be terrible in remarkably little time.
You control a wizard that can conjure an enormous assortment of spells by combining different elements, each corresponding to a keyboard key; so far so good, the idea is great. Where the game goes wrong is, well, everywhere else. Levels are short but seem overly long due to unending combat encounters with uninteresting enemies with inflated health pools. Oftentimes, I caught myself running away to the edge of the screen trying to progress, assuming the enemies were respawning infinitely - about 10% of the time, that was indeed the case. This terrible game design decision kept me paranoid, making me constantly question if I was wasting my time by killing enemies.
To make matters worse, any and all charm the spell system has is lost once you realize 90% of the spells don't matter, and going in blind is an awful experience. Many enemies - especially later on - only take a meaningful amount of damage from their elemental weakness. This makes you feel underpowered and creates a revive conga-line effect when playing with friends, slowing the game down even further. Friendly fire is also one of the game's core features, freezing what little pacing the game had left with random deaths; it is common to be revived then immediately die to a random enemy or a friendly beam/wall of fire.
Adding to the annoying gameplay, there is no visual clarity. We were often trying to find our characters onscreen and killing ourselves trying to understand what was going on; the game's zoomed-out camera doesn't help, but there are no visual elements to help either like outlines or visually distinct enemy/player design and coloring.
The sound design is also terrible. Half the time, the game sounds like a cacophony of laughter and random "simish, alongside some mediocre spells' sounds that don't help in making them feel more impactful.
I could go on or articulate my previous points a bit better with more examples, but then I'd feel like I put more effort into writing this than they did making the game, so it's not worth it. If you want a coop game with random elements where you can kill your friends and have fun doing it, go play Helldivers 2 instead. Don't buy this.