Eternal Darkness: Spells
Part of what has always struck me about Eternal Darkness is that the developers seem to have quite underestimated the utility of magic in the game... and, oddly enough, my impression is most players underestimate magic as well. I've watched parts of Let's Plays, read the wiki and run across guides and the occasional forum conversation, and while I've rarely seen someone describe the game's magic as weak, the default seems to be to treat it as supplementary.
This LP, for example, makes a point of walking the audience through the relative strengths of various ranged weapons all the way to the end of the game, and never uses the Magical Attack spell to clear out Trappers... even though there's really no reason to use regular ranged attacks for clearing out Trappers once you're partway through the fifth chapter of the game. Even if you're respecting the game not giving you the scroll for Magical Attack until much later (For eg LP purposes of showing what a real first-time player would have decent odds of doing -though I personally accessed Magical Attack the instant it was available on my first playthrough by experimenting, as the system is designed to support and even encourage), there's still a ton of Trappers in the final chapter of the game that there's really zero reason to bother wasting ammunition on. Magical Attack will clear a room faster, in the case of invisible Trappers you don't even need to bother with revealing them beforehand, and it can even be abused in larger rooms to clear out zombies before they spot you and thus drain Sanity. It can also be used to discover Bonethieves hiding in civilians, as Magical Attack will target them even if they haven't gone actively hostile as yet, and... come on, mana is unlimited and frankly casting even a 7-point spell tends to take less time than reloading a ranged weapon. Micheal's chapter with the rifle is the only real exception, and to an extent that's not just about how powerful the rifle is but also how limited Micheal's mana reserves are.
Similarly, there's really no reason to not be running the Shield spell at all times. It lasts forever, it prevents you from flinching from hits and so allows you to be more reckless and finish combat faster, more than making up for the time spent casting the shield, and it can absorb a surprising amount of punishment even when you're just using a 3-point circle. And of course it saves you from having to spend time healing after a fight.
Damage Field pretty much breaks encounters with Guardians. Not only does it prevent enemies from traveling into it and inflict damage on enemies that touch the edge of the field, but it actually also blocks projectile attacks -including the lightning effects Horrors us at range and that Guardians use via Magical Attack. And since it discriminates between friend and foe, Guardians lack Dispel, and you can Dispel their fields from inside your own without Dispelling your own field, you can just stand inside a Field and use either Magical Attack or your conventional ranged weapons if you don't want to be forced to run circles inside your field to recharge your mana, all while the Guardians can't do anything to you aside drain Sanity through their summoned Zombies.
Amusingly, the game seems to have expected summons to be strong, but they're really not that useful. It's cool that summoning a Trapper and having it dump an enemy in the Trapper Dimension does, in fact, lead to that enemy being inside the Trapper Dimension if you hop in later, but summons are in this awkward space where they're only particularly useful for going first into areas you already know will have a dangerous number of enemies. A new player scouting with them is just creating trouble for themselves most of the time, and there's very few rooms where it's both reasonably useful to send in a summon and possible to do so.
Really, Magical Attack and Damage Field in particular are so good that back in the day I messed around with going through the game only using magic to attack enemies. (Once that was an option) It was kind of annoying on the level of having to occasionally run in circles to recharge my mana, but except for Gatekeepers and the final fight itself I never found it an unreasonable rule to impose on myself. Magic is simply that good in Eternal Darkness.
This LP, for example, makes a point of walking the audience through the relative strengths of various ranged weapons all the way to the end of the game, and never uses the Magical Attack spell to clear out Trappers... even though there's really no reason to use regular ranged attacks for clearing out Trappers once you're partway through the fifth chapter of the game. Even if you're respecting the game not giving you the scroll for Magical Attack until much later (For eg LP purposes of showing what a real first-time player would have decent odds of doing -though I personally accessed Magical Attack the instant it was available on my first playthrough by experimenting, as the system is designed to support and even encourage), there's still a ton of Trappers in the final chapter of the game that there's really zero reason to bother wasting ammunition on. Magical Attack will clear a room faster, in the case of invisible Trappers you don't even need to bother with revealing them beforehand, and it can even be abused in larger rooms to clear out zombies before they spot you and thus drain Sanity. It can also be used to discover Bonethieves hiding in civilians, as Magical Attack will target them even if they haven't gone actively hostile as yet, and... come on, mana is unlimited and frankly casting even a 7-point spell tends to take less time than reloading a ranged weapon. Micheal's chapter with the rifle is the only real exception, and to an extent that's not just about how powerful the rifle is but also how limited Micheal's mana reserves are.
Similarly, there's really no reason to not be running the Shield spell at all times. It lasts forever, it prevents you from flinching from hits and so allows you to be more reckless and finish combat faster, more than making up for the time spent casting the shield, and it can absorb a surprising amount of punishment even when you're just using a 3-point circle. And of course it saves you from having to spend time healing after a fight.
Damage Field pretty much breaks encounters with Guardians. Not only does it prevent enemies from traveling into it and inflict damage on enemies that touch the edge of the field, but it actually also blocks projectile attacks -including the lightning effects Horrors us at range and that Guardians use via Magical Attack. And since it discriminates between friend and foe, Guardians lack Dispel, and you can Dispel their fields from inside your own without Dispelling your own field, you can just stand inside a Field and use either Magical Attack or your conventional ranged weapons if you don't want to be forced to run circles inside your field to recharge your mana, all while the Guardians can't do anything to you aside drain Sanity through their summoned Zombies.
Amusingly, the game seems to have expected summons to be strong, but they're really not that useful. It's cool that summoning a Trapper and having it dump an enemy in the Trapper Dimension does, in fact, lead to that enemy being inside the Trapper Dimension if you hop in later, but summons are in this awkward space where they're only particularly useful for going first into areas you already know will have a dangerous number of enemies. A new player scouting with them is just creating trouble for themselves most of the time, and there's very few rooms where it's both reasonably useful to send in a summon and possible to do so.
Really, Magical Attack and Damage Field in particular are so good that back in the day I messed around with going through the game only using magic to attack enemies. (Once that was an option) It was kind of annoying on the level of having to occasionally run in circles to recharge my mana, but except for Gatekeepers and the final fight itself I never found it an unreasonable rule to impose on myself. Magic is simply that good in Eternal Darkness.
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