Enigma – Skylander Review

Enigma – Skylander Review

Enigma is a new Magic Trap Master Skylander making his debut in Skylanders Trap Team. He was brought to Skylands by a Mabu Mystic who one day wanted someone to play Skystones with. The Mabu was able to open a gateway to a nameless place between the worlds and through it came Enigma. Enigma thrilled the Mabu with stories about his mysterious homeland. Unfortunately minions of Darkness learned of these stories and the open gateway, and saw it as another realm to conquer. A legion of minions gathered to lay siege on the open gateway, but the Mabu had no idea about how to close it. With no time to spare, Enigma chose to use is staff of Mystery to seal the gateway forever. This saved his homeland and people from invasion, but it also trapped Enigma in the Skylands forever. This sacrifice caught the attention of the Trap Team who welcomed Enigma and gave him a new home as a protector of Skylands. Now Enigma puts a world of hurt on evil everywhere.

Enigma is certainly a mysterious character. He is shrouded in a cloak that is part red and part see through. It’s as if Enigma only partially exists in this world and still partially exists in another. When you try to get a look at the character in the cloak, you see nothing. There is nothing inside the cloak. It’s as if he is invisible or a ghost. However, he does have solid arms with blue hands. One of those hands is holding his large Traptanium Staff of Mystery. It’s a purple staff with a large round crystal that looks like an eye. As his cloak starts to transform from solid looking cloth to a see-through material, so does his body. From his waist down, his legs become clear and see through which adds to his mysterious look. Since the focus on his character is his large Staff of Mystery you can guess that he will probably have some magic attacks coming from it. You also might figure that he could use the staff as a melee weapon. In both cases you would be right. There is also a reason his character looks like he could be invisible, but for more on that lets take a look at his attacks.

His main attack is his Mystic Staff. You can swing the staff by pressing the Attack 1 button. You can also press it twice then hold it once for a built in combo attack. These melee attacks do a good amount of damage. His secondary attack isn’t an attack at all. When you press the Attack 2 button you will enter Invisibility Mode which turns Enigma invisible and allows him to move around the level for a bit without being seen. In it’s basic form, its not very useful except to escape and get into a better fighting position. After a few upgrades though, it becomes a powerful way to perform a sneak attack. A third attack can be purchased with the Paradox Pound upgrade. Pressing Attack 3 will slam the staff into the ground and damage all nearby enemies. The ground pound move is one we see in many characters, but it makes sense for Enigma. Another upgrade called Magic Mist will cause a mist to fall whenever Enigma enters Invisibility Mode. The mist will damage enemies who touch it, but it’s not an all inclusive mist. It’s patchy, and it will only damage enemies who walk into those patches of mist. It doesn’t do as much damage as you would hope. The Cloak and Dagger upgrade causes Invisibility Mode to last longer and to freeze enemies. The cloak that is left on the ground will also damage anyone who touches it. The last basic upgrade is the Paradox Power. This upgrade allows the Paradox Pound attack to do more damage.

To specialize Enigma, you will have to chose between the Invisible Invader path which increases the Invisibility Mode attacks or the Chief of Staff which increases the Mystic Staff attacks. The Chief of Staff path mostly adds combos, so like most characters, we did not choose this path as combo attacks are not our favorite. The Eye Dash Combo and the Cloak Dash Combo are two upgrades that adds two more combo attacks. The last upgrade in that path is called It’s Raining Eyes and by holding Attack 3 you will charge the Paradox Pound which will deliver more damage and also cause magic eyeballs to rain down. We chose the Invisible Invader path just because it sounded more unique. The first upgrade is called Ninja Style and allows your first attack coming out of Invisibility Mode to do extra damage. It’s basically a free attack, as the enemies don’t know where you are when you are invisible and you can get right behind them for a very powerful first attack. This attack will finish off most medium or smaller enemies. In the rare times that it doesn’t, then one more usually does the trick. The Mindboggling upgrade gives the Paradox Pound more damage and also blasts enemies back. It’s a great attack to use when the enemies get too close. The last upgrade is called Give Up The Ghost. When entering Invisibility Mode three ghost versions of Enigma will appear. These will distract the enemies and attack them while you get into position for a Ninja Style attack. This combined with the basic upgrade Magic Mist, causes the battlefield to become a dangerous place for the enemies. The Soul Gem ability is called An Eye for Several Eyes. It’s a bit complicated to pull off as you have to hold Attack 3 and then press Attack 1 at the same time. You can’t hold Attack 3 for long either or it won’t work. When it does work, a powerful fire beam will come from the Mystic Staff and heavily damage enemies in it’s path. It’s also supposed to rain down eye balls, but in our use of the attack it never did that. Unfortunately it doesn’t last very long, and given it’s complicated nature to execute, we find that we just never use this move. Even without a good Soul Gem attack Enigma is pretty powerful and useful with the path we chose.

From an attack perspective we find Enigma much more useful than the other Magic Trap Master Blastermind. However, Blastermind does have the ability to skip lock puzzles. Overall, if you only could have one Magic Trap Master, we think that Enigma is the way to go. His Invisibility Mode when upgraded with the Invisible Invader path, makes his first attack a lethal attack for those enemies he can hit with it. If there are too many enemies nearby to deal with then the upgraded Paradox Pound will send them flying. He’s not the flashiest of fighters, but he is mysterious and he gets the job done in interesting ways.

SkylanderNutts gives Enigma…

8.0 out of 10

Enigma Video Review

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