- The Bioshock series supports a spellcasting-based play style with a decent skill tree.
- CONTROL also involves a lot of eldritch force powers in its combat sequences
- I know you didn't really want sidescrollers or top-downs but Noita and Magicka are pretty great at delivering on the creativity of mage combat and scratch this itch for me.
This YouTube creator has published several quality videos what's going on in Wizard Games lately, which is a quick way to catch up on the genre: https://youtu.be/quPKQIVEX5A
Miserable game design for something that is trying to get players to come back every few months for content releases. "You can't play the new hero until you grind for it until you burn out or pay" is just not a compelling pitch to get people to resume playing your game.
It's only going to get worse over time as the proportion of premium characters grows... ๐