Being a Magic: the Gathering player, and having played Magic: the Gathering Arena from the open beta, I think I've seen enough to write a review about the game.
First of all, the game is free to download and play. Of course you can spend all you want inside the game to get cosmetics and/or cards, play events, and get a season pass full of extra's, but that's everybody's own choice. I rarely bought coins/gens and the times I did was because I really loved the cosmetics or benefits from the season pass. Another way to get those cosmetics and all the other things in the games is just by playing. There are some daily quests that give you some coins, and the events can reward you with gems (while joining can be done with the free earned coins). You can do up to 3 daily quests at the same day, but only one will be restored once you've finished them. I can recommend to play every 2-3 days and do the daily quests if you want to get those cosmetics/events, but don't want to spend (much) money in the game.
I can recommend the game to both new players and the ones who have been playing from the early paper beginning.
For those new to the game, the tutorial in Arena is a good way to learn to play Magic: the Gathering. The basics are being explained in a clear way, and the distractions from a full game aren't there, so you can really focus on the different aspects of the game. A really helpful tool is the bot, named Sparky, who offers a safe place to test the decks and the mechanics you just built. Sometimes I prefer to run a deck a several times through a game with Sparky (poor Sparky) before the final version is there to play against other players.
There are enough challenging opponents, and there are enough different game modes you can play.
What I'm still hoping for is that they add the missing cards to the game, in a way the game can still handle it, and the rules will still be the same as reality (wouldn't like to have a combo reacti differently in the online version of the game, right?).
And finally still hoping for the option to play a game of Commander with 4 players, but that might be a whole different thing to program. Still hoping though!
The game runs smooth on Windows, Mac, iPad and iOS, though I can't really recommend the phone for playing, with all the information on the screen :P
