Review Insights · Google Play
Magic: The Gathering Arena
Wizards of the Coast LLC · 284,637 ratings · ★ 4.1
4.1
★★★★★
284,637 ratings
🎯 Build a better version
Top complaints - extracted from 71 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
49 negative reviews mention this · 69% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Last update made game unplayable and freeze on mobile. Worst mobile client across any game I've ever played" - Nicolas Coghill
2
"play"
20 negative reviews mention this · 28% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Last update made game unplayable and freeze on mobile. Worst mobile client across any game I've ever played" - Nicolas Coghill
3
"cards"
18 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "marina infinite loop...Paradigm who thought that was a good idea it wasn't. Destroy all decks literally just making the game go on forever until you run out of cards. Not getting lands is not fun. infinite life steal loop is not fun why is …" - I have the best words
4
"deck"
14 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "After a certain point, the game becomes completely unwinnable without spending money on current decks. Losing match after match gets super old quickly. Fun, but super buggy. The game crashes on the phone all the time in the middle of a matc…" - Russell Giminski
5
"decks"
11 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "After a certain point, the game becomes completely unwinnable without spending money on current decks. Losing match after match gets super old quickly. Fun, but super buggy. The game crashes on the phone all the time in the middle of a matc…" - Russell Giminski
6
"playing"
11 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App is glitchy af. Online MTG community is toxic and unoriginal. If you feel like playing against the same 5 decks over and over with a 25% chance that the game will just disconnect for no reason, you've come to the right place 👍" - Michael Dodds
7
"every"
9 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "marina infinite loop...Paradigm who thought that was a good idea it wasn't. Destroy all decks literally just making the game go on forever until you run out of cards. Not getting lands is not fun. infinite life steal loop is not fun why is …" - I have the best words
8
"money"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "After a certain point, the game becomes completely unwinnable without spending money on current decks. Losing match after match gets super old quickly. Fun, but super buggy. The game crashes on the phone all the time in the middle of a matc…" - Russell Giminski
9
"magic"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "More like Magic the Gathering of Counterspells and Spot Removal. No actual physical gameplay has as much as this RNG. Just quit every game until you find one that isn't overloaded with it." - greedo 11
10
"2026"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "30fps lock in 2026 is unplayable" - Tristan Ross
11
"player"
8 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game is completely unplayable on mobile now. please for the love of the game give mobile players an option for something less video intensive. I've literally played on sticky notes I don't need my cards to talk I just want to play the game." - branden walker
📋 All 71 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Last update made game unplayable and freeze on mobile. Worst mobile client across any game I've ever played
After a certain point, the game becomes completely unwinnable without spending money on current decks. Losing match after match gets super old quickly. Fun, but super buggy. The game crashes on the phone all the time in the middle of a match. You cant leave the game if you get a text and come back or it just gets stuck and you have to lose the match. "Sparky" the intro bot is stuck on the same section of her intro tutorial and I finished that months ago now.
Algorithm is trash. Always mana screwed or flooded regardless of how you build a deck
marina infinite loop...Paradigm who thought that was a good idea it wasn't. Destroy all decks literally just making the game go on forever until you run out of cards. Not getting lands is not fun. infinite life steal loop is not fun why is that considered functioning as intended wth. here's a tip everyone who runs out the clock loses due to inactivity should have to play each you know like a cheaters only punishment like other games do. Real smart to add land destroying creature...
App is glitchy af. Online MTG community is toxic and unoriginal. If you feel like playing against the same 5 decks over and over with a 25% chance that the game will just disconnect for no reason, you've come to the right place 👍
Terrible networking; disconnects you when the network source changes regardless of how small the downtime is. Then doesn't reconnect you to the match you were in. Uninstalled, not fit for purpose
game is broken and does not load, pay to win, ranked is computer botted.
any chance y'all can fix this broken piece of trash?? Takes ages to be able to get into the game.. Once your finally in it will freeze a bunch and just stay stuck on waiting for server... Wizards should be embarrassed to put their name on such a trash platform... Also your layout sucks... I really wanted to enjoy this game, but it's clear this game has a bunch of lazy Dev's that don't have a clue and are just collecting a paycheck while leaning on wizards name..
Fix your stupid game, is so full of bugs. I have been losing because sudden disconnections and became the game is bugged. The game ends up punishing me because of bugs of the game.
this game is coded terribly. it will randomly lose connection and fail to reconnect unless you restart the app, but if you do, you most likely have skipped a turn and probably lost the match too. did they vibe code it? are the programmers at wotc just incompetent?
Game is completely unplayable on mobile now. please for the love of the game give mobile players an option for something less video intensive. I've literally played on sticky notes I don't need my cards to talk I just want to play the game.
More like Magic the Gathering of Counterspells and Spot Removal. No actual physical gameplay has as much as this RNG. Just quit every game until you find one that isn't overloaded with it.
Phone now running hotter than the sun playing this game after yesterday's downtime
30fps lock in 2026 is unplayable
geniuely one of the least optimized and buggy pieces of software I have ever used
it won't accept my email, I delete and redownload, it freezes during the fight against the reaction women in the first fight, and then it won't let me click after reopening it, if I could give it a zero I would
explain to me how it's possible for me to go 9 turns without drawing a land with a perfectly balanced deck I'm literally tweaking rn. i would literally rather have the game tell me that it doesn't want me to win that game in the benefit for the other player whatever reason that may be there's just no way that its not rigged one way or the other.
Used to love this game. Spent money on it. Now only greedy monetization, terrible decisions. Sacrificing the golden goose for short term profits. Hopefully they recognize the union. Maybe something will actually change and I can actually play again at that point.
Keeps disconnecting during matches. Should be possible to reduce resolutions to make the game run a lot smoother. Also random crashes when using app. Unusable as it is.
edit: 4/28 update made the game unplayable. thanks.
im a huge MTG fan but this takes the absolute piss. Massively p2w(upto £30 to enter 1 draft game), possibly worse than Chinese scam gacha games, so many pre made decks you cant actually use as full of illegal cards. Unless you have a 6 figure job at minimum or a huge problem with money management your getting no where and free to play? hah if i could 0 star i really would
WotC needs to recognize their employees unionization efforts
not great at best. the script takes way too long to load the friend system is completely broken and I can't search for anyone's handle and the loading sequences are lame as hell and bloaty . the only thing that saves any of it is that it's physically playable
I had a very detailed review but the letter counter so I had to shorten it This game has large updates regularly. Their customer service is some of the worst I have ever had. After one of the huge updates my sign in stopped working. I reached out through email with a detailed explanation. they didn't answer any questions and sent me a generic reset password thing which wasn't the issue. it's been 3 weeks of me emailing them several times. They simply refuse to reply. I uninstalled the game.
Trash game, fix the bugs. played 10 games other player always goes first n yet other player always has the better hand. how boring waste of time
The precons don't come with booster sample anymore since Strixhaven
Game is poorly managed. There is no casual sense of the game. Digital only cards ruin the gameplay. You will need to grind for years or pay-to-win to enjoy playing. Crushes constantly. Randomizer/Shuffler feels rigged when you draw 6+ lands in the top 10 cards repeatedly.
toxic player base and a card base so overly broad that its no longer fun to play. this game has been ruined by an absolute lack of quality game design and a meta game that is anything but fun
100% Rigged. RNG not random - matchups are garbage. You'll disproportionately face niche decks that "coincidentally" counter your build. Timers are too long - roping ruins most games. Forced "drama." Just let it be MTG...stop making every game artificially "exciting." Predictably unbelievable...expect every player's draws to ruin all rational game outcomes. If your opponent has 1 out in their deck, they will pull it. It's transparently frustrating in an attempt to tempt you to pay to play.
needs waaaaay too long to start, if it doesn't crash at 95%...
the card base is terrible and has been for several years. wizards of the coast decided to increase production instead of addressing the quality issues. Needless to say the solution to a terrible card base isn't to increase how many terrible cards you are making.
app has some hiccups, but the 1 star review is for the union busting hasbro and wotc. they are evil
Something isn't adding up. I'm playing the SOS collectors challenge, and either others are cheating/ hacking the game, or the game is broken. every time I've tried, I get "ok" to decent cards, but every person I've challenged has a stacked deck. either I'm playing bots, and it's rigged, or I'm playing hackers, and it's rigged. It's getting to the point where I should've just spent the money and got it from a shop somewhere. Very disappointing, I expected better from Wizard/ MTG
This game crashes if you look at it wrong. I just played a match for 40 minutes and was set to win it and got a popup and it instantly crashed and kicked me out of the game. I cannot comprehend how you think it is acceptable to release a game in this state and have it for years with all the budget and popularity Magic has. Sincerely, a frustrated TCG player
it's almost nothing to do with the game I grew up with
The play is great. however all the players quit before you can finish them. There should be a quit penalty or something. Because the amount of people quitting on their last turn turns me off to this platform entirely!
edited may 1st 2026. something causing the game to close out shortly after opening it. I Will reassess my review upon the fixing of the issue.
This is the worst this game has ever been. Every single player is using the same mono-green badgermole cub deck and winning on turn 2 or 3. I've played this game for 15 years and standard has never been this unplayable. The format has been basically pay-walled irl and when you get on here there's no variety anymore. It's literally the exact same deck you're facing against almost every single match. I would rate this 0/5 stars if it would let me. Boring, unstable, and a genuine time waster.
3rd post and update. Last one was 2024 and now 2026. still garbage. People still wasting everyone else's turns. destroying my hand before I can even have a turn 1. make the timers shorter, those of us that actually know whats in our decks and can read and plan would like to not get stalled out by the illiterate ones that take too long to read.
If you enjoy A.I manipulating your games. A.I monitoring your account and spending habits, this is the app for you!
Shittiest game app ever used. Besides it's extremely slow to load, it's so unstable. It requires super stable connection. If you lose connection for half a second when playing you're done. The game most of the times won't reconnect and you are forced to reboot the app (which takes ages every time). If you're unlucky enough, the app will also bug and it will ask to download like 900Mb of data to repair itself. Very frustrating if you expect it to work reliably.
hasbro is a bunch of union busters. support the arena devs also this game is laggy and features a ton of bad practices to persuade you to spend real money on fake cards
UPDATE (May 2026): back one year later and still running into the same issues but not as consistently, might get one good session a week to play and the rest of the time I can't even get past the load screen. PREVIOUS REVIEW (June 2025): cannot load past the connect server screen, I've uninstalled/reinstalled the game 3 times with no change
not sure if it's their servers or other issues with the app but I have never seen anything with such bad connectivity issues. it has been weeks of this with no official mention of it. the game in general is 3-4 stars when it works. it still has a LOT of problems like not having access to a good portion of existing cards or being very limited on which game formats are available. the game needs a complete overhaul to the point where we can play full commander with 3 friends.
update to reflect state of game: currently unplayable on mobile. constantly crashes out of games and reloads the client, makes you think the game was lost, reload into the same game that the opponent crashed out of and force you to sit and watch. currently Play store is trying to install another Hotfix that can't be completed or cancelled.
Buggy all the time, play the same three decks unless you do a draft, which are about as expensive as playing with actual cards. Avoid.
double blech... do better about being able to play offline
TBH kinda bad. I wanna love this game. but everyone uses the same cards almost the same decks and it just makes you forfeit over and over. until you just turn it off. but when you don't get those people it's kinda fun. but I sadly give this game 1 star for that and I've waited 4 months to post this. they should just do a commander
the game crashes every other game and to be honest it looks like it was developed in 2004, the worst platform to play magic by far
WotC is taking an anti-union stance against their devs. automatic no from me dog
+ 21 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
76%
Positive (4-5★)
4%
Neutral (3★)
19%
Negative (1-2★)