10 Gaming Franchises That Suffer From Extreme Over-Complication

7. Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering deserves all the credit in the world for bringing the collectible card game to the masses. Many a kid in the 1990s bounded into their local collectibles shop to purchase packs of cards that represented spells, creatures, mana, and all manner of wonderful fantasy creations. It was a massive success, not only legitimising the Collectible Card Game (CCG), but was the cornerstone for the Pokemon cards and Yu-Gi-Oh cultural takeovers as well. Magic is so popular that there are now over 15,000 cards in circulation, and getting a handle on all them - with the various play formats and card synergies - is practically impossible for the new player. Getting acclimated to MtG requires an investment and dedication that ultimately rewards you with...more confusion, an empty wallet, and possibly a headache if you want to become competitive. While the player community is helpful, most of them have been playing for years and years and can rattle off card types, expansions, and particularly deadly strategies off the top of their head while you're still busy trying to thumb through your deck for that all-accessing land card. In today's day-and-age, Magic: The Gathering is more important than it is 'good' by current tastes. With games like Hearthstone, Scrolls and Shadow Era available on multiple platforms that cut down on the number of available cards, and do a lot of the math and mechanical upkeep for the player, there isn't really much of a reason to invest in Magic:The Gathering if you're looking for a CCG fix - unless you have a thing for the classics.