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  1. Nine Parchments from developer Frozenbyte brings all the fun of classic co-op to the Switch: battling hordes of monsters together, overcoming massive bosses together, and occasionally blasting each other apart with fireballs. This Gauntlet-style action-RPG puts every player in the role of wizard, but the catch here is the wide assortment of spells to choose from, along with equipment you can find throughout the game, skill trees that you can customize as you level up, and unlockable characters for subsequent playthroughs. Nine Parchments has a few rough edges but at its core it's a fun and frantic take on classic co-op gameplay. In Nine Parchments you play as a group of student wizards eager to prove their magical capabilities. When an explosion at the academy sends nine valuable pieces of the academy's spell book flying out into the world you take it upon yourself to retrieve them and prove your worth. But aside from that prologue the story takes a bit of a backseat in Nine Parchments. There's some scattered narration and your characters occasionally engage in banter during a level but for the most part the plot isn't a significant part of this game, which feels like a missed opportunity. When you're in the middle of blasting away enemies alongside your friends though, you won't really mind the light story. Nine Parchments is an action-RPG that is essentially controlled like a twin-stick shooter. In each level you'll come across groups of enemies and you'll use the right stick to carefully but quickly aim your selection of spells. You can't just blast away willy nilly for a couple of reasons. One, there are different elemental types in the game, and monsters are immune to their own type, i.e. an ice spell used on an ice monster deals no damage. Perhaps more importantly though is the friendly fire aspect of Nine Parchments. It's very easy to hit allies accidentally, and whether you just graze them with a fireball or temporarily stun them with a lightning blast it's poor form to bewitch a fellow wizard. At first the friendly fire mechanic may seem chaotic but it actually helps rein in some of the chaos of Nine Parchments. When you need to pick your shots a little more carefully battles are more engaging, and require some coordination—going into every fight with full force would probably get stale pretty quickly. You can even combine your spells with another player to dish up a more powerful combo, if you can aim it properly. Ultimately the friendly fire aspect of the game promote a more rewarding sense of co-op gameplay. The game can still be fairly difficult at times though, even when you aren't getting shot in the back by a friend. Thankfully these wizards are well equipped to deal with all manner of monster. There is a decent variety of spells in the game, even with some repetition since the same spell type can have different elemental affinities. After each boss encounter when you retrieve one of the eponymous nine parchments you'll add a new spell to your repertoire, which helps make each playthrough somewhat unique in addition to increasing your power. It can be fun just seeing how the different spells work, though it's always best to try to keep a variety of elemental types on hand—you don't want to be caught with only ice spells against all ice monsters. You may have to resort to just whacking enemies with your staff, which somehow feels undignified for a wizard-in-training. The gameplay, then, is about aiming your shots thoughtfully, sticking to the right elemental affinity as necessary, and most importantly managing your spells' mana. Each of your spells has a separate mana pool, and each spell has a different rate of mana regeneration, so your more powerful spells may take more time to reload but you can blast away with the weaker but more frequent spells. Battles can really be a juggling act as you manage your mana, which again gives Nine Parchments a layer of strategy—you can't expect to just walk through every enemy encounter in this game. And here's an invaluable tip you might not notice at first: you can aim area-of-effect spells that you lob out by hitting ZR a second time while the spell is in mid-air, causing the spell to drop down and land. I went a few too many levels without realizing that's how you're really supposed to use those spells. Although Nine Parchments can be played solo it's definitely a game meant for multiplayer, and local multiplayer at that. You can jump into an online game with strangers or try to join a friend's game but since there are no communication options on the Switch the experience just isn't the same as when you're in the same room as the other players and can quickly call out strategies or requests for healing spells. And however many players you have the game scales in difficulty, so you won't be completely overwhelmed by enemies if you tried to play alone (though it still is pretty difficult to play solo). Despite the option to play solo, locally, or online Nine Parchments runs into one rather confounding problem: there's only one save file, meaning that if you play a few levels with some friends then want to play solo, you'd start over at the beginning (or continue playing new levels, just without your friends). On one hand this all sort of makes sense since there are unlockables which you might miss by jumping around and playing levels out of order, but it is a rather obnoxious limitation all the same. One full playthrough of Nine Parchments can last a good eight hours or so, which isn't quite short enough to justify restarting over and over when you just want to try out a new character. However, the good news is that the developers have already announced that they are working on a patch which would allow you to keep separate save files for your different playthroughs, which should make it much more convenient to start up a game with friends but also experiment in solo play on the side. Much like Frozenbyte's Trine series the graphics in Nine Parchments are almost absurdly rich and vivid, full of bright colors and gorgeously detailed backgrounds. It's hard not to get caught up in the scenery at times—just be careful you don't fall off any cliffs! There are only a handful of different monster types in the game but the scenery from one level to another more than makes up for a bit of repetition in the enemy designs. The soundtrack is just as engaging in its own way, and is also distinctly reminiscent of Trine. The music style is somewhat airy, which is kind of perfect for a game focused on fantasy and magic. Nine Parchments fully delivers on the promise of good old fashioned frantic co-op multiplayer with a variety of spells, characters, and opportunities to "accidentally" freeze your friend in the heat of battle. Juggling your spells' mana and their elemental effects gives the game a satisfying degree of depth and challenge, especially once you have several spells at your fingertips. The game's emphasis on multiplayer means solo games can be a lot more difficult and a lot less rewarding, but if you can't wrangle together some friends for couch co-op there's always the option of online multiplayer. No matter how you team up, Nine Parchments is a satisfyingly chaotic action game, perfect for scratching the co-op itch. Rating: 8 out of 10 Parchments Review copy provided by the developer Nine Parchments is available now on the Switch eShop for $19.99.
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