If you're looking at the game from a purely balance perspective, magic is completely useless outside of elementals. And even then, they're not really all that useful beyond the passive buff.I'm not seeing the need for magic, when I can do this with a basic pair of knuckle dusters and enchantment limits ENABLED (using 25 points). Meraxis and Lunexis took 1 round of combat to beat, with no magic required. The only fights I have had that lasted more than 1 round of combat were the imp gangs and succutars in the amazon city, and those took 2 rounds.
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The single healing spell in the game is a joke, it heals you for 40% of your health and consumes all 3 action points for your character. Also, if you are using 'shit tons' of potions to heal, you are doing it wrong. Enchant an Imp Brew 2x with major enhancement and you heal for 100% health and Mana AND you still have 2 actions left after that.
Magic is still very useful and can skew melee combat even more, but it isn't NEEDED to be able to beat the game.
The games complete lack of progression is a major problem, and the biggest contributor to this. You basically go from tutorial monsters to end game monsters in a single, very underwhelming step. And the player progression is equally underwhelming, you go from basically no damage to alpha striking three mobs a round.
So back to magic, why's it bad? Because it can't kill everything in a single round, and the other strategies do. Why would you ever use a spell that couldn't just instantly end the fight unless you were intentionally trying to make the game harder? It's never needed.
This game is fucked. At one point I assumed stuff like this was placeholder garbage that would get phased out, but then like 6 years went by without it being touched.
At least combat is fast, I guess. Don't have to spend much time on the weakest part of the game.