For an exceedingly long time, The Binding of Isaac was my go-to roguelike game, a quick*, easy, customizable experience that I’d play whenever it struck the mood. Believe me, I’d taken a shot at other games in the genre, a taste of Nuclear Throne, I have Enter the Gungeon on my Switch, but they didn’t quite strike my fancy. I’m not sure about Dead Cells either, I have metroid-vanias, and I’m not sure about a roguelike version of one. Might give it a shot one day, but until then, you know what other game I have on the Switch that happens to be a roguelike I can just start up whenever?



Now this game is incredible for what it’s trying to do, a vastly customizable, action packed dungeon adventure just for the sake of it really. You are John Wizard, your mission, return to the past and become a Wizard of Legend by besting the chaos trials, where wizards were once tested to see if they had incredible nerves and improvisation. It’s a simple premise.

You may customize a wizard to enter the gauntlet, their enchanted cloak buffs, one relic (basically items with buffs), and four arcana abilities; the basic attacking arcana, a dash effect, one standard arcana, and a signature arcana, an improved version of select standard spells that can be charged into a potent finisher move, and it will stick with you for the whole experience. From the plaza you can spend crystals earned by competing in the trials over and over to unlock more arcana, relics, and bonus effects, and once you’re ready a set order of dungeons will be picked, each with an elemental theme and a council member serving as a landmark challenge. You’ll fight your way through enemies and traps, earn gold to get more relics and arcana, progressively getting stronger as the dungeons become harder the deeper you go. You’ll repeatedly fall, but repeatedly get stronger and wiser from each defeat, if the word addiction comes with an image in the dictionary, well, it would probably be a drug, but a screenshot from this game would fit in as well.



So, as I’ve stressed, the customization of this game is one of the biggest selling points, and the crowning jewel has to be the combat system, you’re given a chance to handpick the spells you want to chain into your attack pattern and totally dictate your playstyle from it. You may go into a run with one plan, and follow that plan down the whole way, or you may find tools that encourage a different approach, so to make an example of this point I’ve gone and made a top fifteen list of my own favorite arcana to use, and just how good they can be.

I do have some rules, first up, these are all standard arcana, they’re just easier to compare and usually have the leg up from basic attacks and dash effects. The basics are pretty balanced, er, more or less, and are more of an indication on how you want to play or what elements you prefer. As a side note, an honorable mention if you will, I like the ignition rush, snare track, and wave front dash arcana most of the time, briefly put, one is like a mini damaging proximity buff effect, another pins a lot of foes at once, and the last is a good defensive, albeit less reliable evasive maneuver, but more than anything a decent projectile. Also, no chaos arcana allowed, I mean, have you seen them? You can banish your enemies to another dimension with a wave of your hand, how is that fair for the list!? This list is based off of the game as of the recent sky palace update, adding a new dungeon, new enemy elements, and a bunch of new spells, signature effects, and items. And that weird fall cloak playstyle.



15: Magnetic Follow-up

Starting off with an earth arcana, magnetic follow-up relies on your basic arcana to have an effect. On one hand, each basic attack spawns two-ish rocks which are then hurled at your foes, but that’s the thing, on the other hand the amount of rocks spawned is entirely dependent on the rate of your basic attacks. Quicker attack succession, like with bolt rail, means more rocks, and they always do the same amount of damage, so with something like earth knuckles they won’t be living up to their potential. But, paired with enough effects that increase basic attack rate, and you have a lovely DPS increase on your hands that can hit foes from a distance, but the amount of circumstance needed to make it shine holds it back.

14: Obsidian Cascade

Giving another earth arcana the benefit of the doubt before we get into the real meat, this projectile based arcana really sets itself apart from the other earth spells by being fast, reliable, but still punishable. Otherwise it wouldn’t be in the same category as such spells as “stand still while drilling into Jerry” or “protective shields that don’t actually block arrows” (granted, earthen aegis was at least considered for the list, maybe a better spell than snowflake chakrams). This arcana spawns an array of five obsidian daggers that impact the first enemy they hit. Now the unenhanced version is sorta meh, but fortunately it comes available as a signature, therefore you have access to the version that stuns opponents. You’ll notice that a deciding factor for many of these spells is crowd management, funny thing was that I considered knockout boulder for this spot as well, a larger, single projectile that stuns even when unenhanced, but the startup is slower and with the daggers it’s at least possible to get a few shots in before cancelling the effect. Being smaller though, they are harder to aim than a huge rock, but if you can get past that, they’re a good source of damage, crowd control, and the finisher of the signature version is just crazy, like pissing off a thousand-year old nuclear anime girl. That’s a lot of damage you can manage from a safe distance, and it feels so satisfying! Just make sure that if you use the fully charged signature that no one will hit you from the sides, you can slightly turn your aim, but not nearly enough to handle multiple angles.

13: Rock N’ Roll

I did throw these three earth arcana a bone by putting them in the list at all, cut me some slack. Rock n’ roll, also known as the stone buzz saws, is a good fire-forget kind of spell, covering a decent length and width, incapacitating foes it hits, and also opening the way for combos. It helps that if you use them on an enemy at point blank range, they are kept at approximate melee range for your basic arcana. They also might push opponents off ledges, which is always convenient, though I wouldn’t count on it. When fighting a boss, this spell is a great initiation spell to catch them off guard and start hitting with other spells, while securing reliable damage.

12: Water Prison

Have you ever wanted to just deal with a specific chaos enemy, but later? How about a ranged projectile that encases enemies in water, rendering small threats immobile while still dealing residual damage to larger enemies. The silver lining here is that it has multiple charges, meaning you can incapacitate multiple foes while you deal with a select target, trap the select target while beating them into a pulp, or you can just stack the things on the boss and hope it wears them down a bit. I always envision Zeal’s muffled high-pitched squealing within these things.

11: Volt Pinball

Maybe it’s obvious at this point that I like enemies off of me, so here’s that spell that got me looking at homing flares, earthen aegis, and snowflake chakrams. Among all of them, volt pinball easily trumps them. What all these spells have in common are floaty borbs that hurt things near you, but volt pinball takes it a step further. When a “pinball” hits an opponent, it may go flying off to hit other opponents, kind of like bouncing bubble. That and the balls float around you for quite some time, given a few cooldown reduction effects, and even a full signature charge, and you could amass a large collection of pinballs around you, ready to drive into the nearest punching bag. You’d be shocked at the damage it can do to bosses. Wait did I jus-

10: Tidal Blast

If there’s a trend I can pull from most water arcana, it’s either disruption or having safe spells to keep opponents back. Tidal blast is nice in that it has a wide area of effect, if you were looking through the eyes of your character, this is a spell that hits everyone in your range of peripheral vision. Enemies will be briefly encased in water like water prison before being launched back. In addition, the enhanced version, available through the signature version of the spell, provides a water shield to protect you while executing the attack. This is just a spell that opponents can’t really do anything about. Trying to flank the wizard? You might just get caught in the blast zone, and even if it’s something like a leaping lancer, archer, or teleporting rogue, they can’t even do any damage before their friends are cast into the nearest available pit.

9: Magnetic Breakers

Not to be confused with magnetic follow-up, this is a lightning projectile, rather a group of zigzagging projectiles that have really good knockback. Much like the buzz saws, this is a spell where you’ll feel pressured, and then just press the button to fix your problems. Wide area of effect, keeps baddies away, damage from a distance, certainly something to appreciate.

8: Blurring Falconry

As the name suggests, you’re given a trio of wind birds to fling at opponents, and they will continually strike anything around the first target they hit. I always call these guys pigeons for some reason, don’t think that’s lack of respect though, a pigeon saved my father when he fought in Kuwait. Since you have three charges of falcons, you can choose to dump them all on one target, or spread them out to cover as many enemies as they can, knocking them about. It’s like that Jontron Clocktower skit about dying because you fell off a cliff while being pestered by birds. I still cry. The signature finisher of this spell is ridiculous, it just throws a giant bird that splits into a bunch of the smaller birds and wrecks whoever you hit with it. This is the kind of spell you may consider firing in the middle of a council member’s attack phase for the extra bit of damage, or if anything, catch them off guard before they continue attacking.

7: Frost Fan

This is actually one of the first arcana you are given at the start of the game, and it holds up for sure. You shoot 5 spikes of ice in a wide radius, and any enemy hit will freeze. This goes back to the thing about water prison, the freeze effect is another way to incapacitate enemies, and being able to freeze multiple enemies in one stroke is nothing to sneeze at. Oh, one enemy in this wave didn’t get frozen? Guess they’ll die first. Another point I must make is that each spike does 25 damage individually. What this means for us is that if you get into close quarters with an enemy you can do more damage by lining up multiple shots. If you get a fully charged signature, you throw a total of 20 spikes, or as I call it, the boss shredder. So many fights have been decided by landing a close quarter shot with that finisher move, just because you got something as a starting tool, doesn’t mean it will ever be outdated.

6: Tearing Whirlwind

I always tell people that tornado Kirby was my favorite copy ability, this arcana is the perfect showcase of why. Using this ability lets you rip around on a tornado, pulling in enemies and taking them for a ride. Now this ability isn’t just for damage, these kind of tornado abilities require someone to get technical with their movement. Enemies may be too big to get sucked in, so you’ll need to know where to buzz around them. Maybe you have a cliff nearby that you can “deposit your load” into. Or maybe you just want to dodge an attack? Another plus, which is also a minus, is that enemies will be very close to you when the effect ends. You might get yourself into a position where you’re beaten like a pinata, but with the proper loadout of arcana you can chain the whirlwind into other devastating attacks that obliterate anything left standing. Still, being stuck in the whirlwind has occasionally left me victim to some archers and even lancers. God, I hate the lancers.

5: Whirling Wind Agent

Agents are arcana for each element that allow you to spawn followers to battle along with you. The agents have health bars as well, and while they are active you can work together to chain some decent combos. Each agent behaves differently, but my favorite has to be the wind agents. Rather than spawn one, you get three little whirlwinds to work with! All three of these fast guys allow me to multitask in any confrontation with enemies, from the chaos army’s point of view there’s so many targets to focus on, it gives me the breathing room to handle them one by one. These agents are also great at stunning slower attacking enemies, like archers and lancers, and even knock enemies into cliffs. Is it obvious I like knocking enemies into cliffs? It's a free win and I don’t even need absolute finale to do it. Granted, the agents in general really aren’t as good against late game bosses, they have long cooldowns and will be easily decimated when Frost Queen Freiya pulls 70,000 projectiles out of her bosom, but while they’re around you generally have less to worry about.

4: Dragon Blast

There’s a lot of “class” arcana in the game, a bunch of similar effects that span the elemental groups, for instance, there are quite a few dragon arcana. The wind version happens to be my favorite of the bunch, mainly so I could get another chance to tell you all about our lord and savior The Abyss. For this arcana you summon a large dragon head that sucks in enemies before launching them back out. So that means it can both blow people into pits and suck them into pits from the other side of a chasm. Wonderful. Aside from that, it does really decent damage, and it nullifies incoming projectiles. He protecc, he attacc, but most importantly, he blow bacc, so you can, I dunno, charge in like a drunk viking. The spell also has a wide berth, an even wider berth when enhanced, and on top of everything, it applies a slowdown effect to limit enemy movement. Thanks, Venfusnos.

3: Heroic Blaze

Ok, now we’re hitting the big boys. There also happen to be several of these kinds of spells for each element, the jump spells if you will. They let you vault forward into the fray and avoid damage while in the air. Of note, binary splashdown does good damage to groups because it bunches them up, and using thunder drop is like instant transmission, and it has an aftershock, but the flashiest and most painful of these is surely heroic blaze. This one is also kind of the odd one out, the others typically launch you forward, whereas you remain stationary during this spell. Basically, you transform into a blazing fire tornado of resolute fury all casual like and things near you die. That’s it, they just get fifth degree burns and die. It’s such absurd damage, I’ve equipped the fury cloak, which basically focuses on buffing the power of your signature ability and reduces the charge requirement, and after a few more damage buffs and gaining the enhanced version of tearing whirlwind to get everyone roooight in dere, this thing was just a room clearer, also did I MENTION YOU’RE INVINCIBLE WHILE IT’S HAPPENING!? Oh yeah, and the final form of the signature version is just, oh lord. Sura never stood a chance.

2: Fueled Berserk vs. Evading Zephyr vs. Lightning Aspect

via Imgflip Meme Generator

I really wanted to place one over the other, but my god, all these effects are just so good. It was like an injustice to leave two of them off the list, but I tried to apply my reasoning to it. These three are buff effects, fueled berserk increases the attack rate of basic arcana by a high amount, evading zephyr causes every attack to miss you while you are using basic arcana or moving, and lightning aspect coats you in a cloak that shocks enemies that come too close. I went back and forth, battling myself and challenging what is truly important in life, offense or defense. Fueled berserk naturally focuses on offense, letting you unleash absurd amounts of damage over a short time, and the enhanced version causes you to burst out flaming energy while you do it. Combined with magnetic follow-up, such a combo will demolish everything in your path. In a similar light though, lightning aspect causes consistent damage to anything near you, and often stacks with your regular attacks, and the enhanced version has more area of effect on who it shocks, which is like a brief stunning mechanism. Evading zephyr allows you to attack enemies uncontested, or straight up negate enemy attacks. You can bring the entire magic council to your knees every twelve seconds or so, and the enhanced version lets you move faster AND run over pits! Just in case that lancer manages to find the 1 frame shot to launch you off a cliff, I wouldn’t put it past them. Any of these spells are like your bread and butter, cast them when you begin combos, cast them as you end combos, cast them as you enter rooms, exit rooms, cast them before you go to bed, before lunch, while you walk the dog, cast them in the house, cast them with a mouse, cast them in a car, cast them at the bar, cast them in a box, with a fox, in the dark, at the park. Just press buttons.

1: Blazing Lariat

Now up until this point, every arcana has had its uses, from keeping enemies at bay, incapacitating them, repositioning, synergizing well, protecting you, or dealing a bunch of damage. Now, as our grand finale, an arcana that serves as a swiss army knife. When used, blazing lariat causes you to spin out a lash of damaging fire that burns enemies and knocks them back. Doesn’t sound like much? Is that not enough for you? Does nothing please you? Look, the issue with tearing whirlwind was that it was the kind of relationship you had to be committed to. Blazing lariat doesn’t care, it just wants you to be happy. Press the button, whether signature or standard, you spin forward, deal damage, back to business, like a dash but better. It isn’t like voltaic needle or tectonic drill that will plunge you off whatever you aim for, leaving you vulnerable, helpless, likely falling to your doom, blazing lariat is smarter than that, it will take you by the edge, let you check the scenery, and push others off the ledge for you while it’s at it. Need to get to an enemy? Need to get away from an enemy? Blazing lariat has you covered. Looking for a sick finisher? Blazing lariat’s signature charge basically rips apart bosses for free, and even if it isn’t the signature it generates an obscene amount of energy for the spell that is. Do you have crippling debt? Blazing lariat will tear through all the pottery in the land to earn you a bit of income. Are you surrounded by chaos zombie guys? Is the frost archer trying to freeze you from across the map? Is a rogue teleporting behind you? Is crash knight only vulnerable for half a second after charging? Do you need to kill all of the grand summoner’s agents at once? Trying to escape Shuu’s vortex? Is Freya laughing at you because you aren’t fast enough to get out of her barrage? Blazing lariat will always be by your side. Even if you didn’t bring it along, when you’re in the third stretch of the chaos trials, at an inch of your life, chances are blazing lariat will be waiting to bring you out alive.

That’s because blazing lariat believes what no one else may.

That you matter.





So yeah buy this game it’s freaking awesome.