Master of Magic

The Good
First off, I grew up with this game. I have played this game probably more times than I care to admit, and I still find it infinitely entertaining. The fact that I also love Civ games probably didn't help matters either.

But really, that's what this game comes down to. It's a Civilization game but with magic. There are very few turn based games out there that allows you to play an empire building game with this level of freedom.

One of my personal favorite parts of this game though? The exploration and the heroes. Sure, fighting other wizards is fun and all, but sending your heroes to go around and exploring dungeons and what not? For some strange reason, it made the game for me.

I especially like the fact that you can have your multiple heroes, and deck them out from head to toe in full battle gear that you crafted yourself.

The addition of spells also means that your tactical choices are not as simple as you would with most Civ games. Civ games have you discover techs to unlock units. In MoM, your spells unlock not units, but tactical options.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the game is not without it's flaws.

For starters, there are a staggering number of bugs in this game that render a large number of powers and abilities simply useless.

second, there was little in the way of game balancing and proper AI control. The AI will know how to overwhelm you with forces (by basically cheating like crazy just like any Civ-like game), but they won't know how to combine them to make them more effective. (Or rather, how to undo some tricks that you might employ.)

The end result is that you'll have situations where a single nightstalker (the night elf unique unit) defending the city is more than enough to hold off a 9 stack unit, as the AI does not know how to handle an invisible unit that is intrinsically invisible. So it will sit around until the clock runs out and end the battle in a stalemate.

It is also the reason why late in the game while you're running with storm giants and the like, your foe could still be sitting around with spearmen.

And then we have the game balance issue. Races are not created equal, so god help you if you picked the kracken or the lizard folk as your starting race, you'll be spending the rest of the game trying to get another race that doesn't suck quite as much.

But even more infuriating is the diplomacy model. Or rather, the lack of it. Sure, you can try to create treaties with other wizards. but quite honestly, their personalities are so volatile that said union will probably dissolve in a matter of rounds in a orgy of schizophrenic messages. There is no point to it. And really, the only effective purpose of diplomacy in this game is to just make a treaty so that they don't attack you for now. Can't say how long that will last though, as these computer wizards seem to have a wild mood swings that makes a bipolar clown look sane by comparison.

The Bottom Line
Civilization in a fantasy setting

The Good
Master of Magic is a great game. Its environmental depth, the thrilling malleability of its heroes and creatures, its gloriously overpowered spells--what a mountain of effort they represent! A truly remarkable achievement on the part of SimTex.

MoM is often described as a synthesis of Civilization and Master of Orion, and that's pretty close to the mark. A more or less standard 4x empire builder is the core of the experience--the player starts from a single hamlet and seeks to conquer the randomly generated gameworld, settling/capturing new cities, mastering obstacles, controlling resources and researching technology (spells!) to achieve supremacy

The biggest change from your standard Civ clone is the world map. Dotted all around the world are not just opposing civilizations but monster lairs, magic nodes, neutral cities, temples, towers, and wandering critters spawned from all of the above. Scattered on two whole planes of existence (Arcanus and the magical Myrror), this local menagerie encourages exploration and defense in ways that faceless Civilization-style barbarians never have, and moreover they provide the player with a near endless list of varied obstacles to surmount. Long after dealing with the various enemy wizards scattered about becomes a bore, the "neutral" foes of the map will still pose a challenge (fear the great worms!) to even your finest stack of units.

And your units are wonderfully fleshed out. All gain experience and levels, and the boosts to their abilities are critical to beating the game. A complex system of mechanics controls all characters in the world. Grounded by routine combat statistics and elevated by supremely imaginative special abilities, this allows almost limitless possibilities, richly rewarding creative spellcasting from the player. Want to create a flying fleet of invisible fire-shooting warships? Want to eschew ships entirely and have your armies just walk on water? Do it! The degree to which player creativity is encouraged by these unique combinations of units and enchantments is one of the best features of the game.

Heroes in particular have some very satisfying and useful special skills. Worried your army is going to get wiped out? Just bring along a hero with High Prayer and your attacks and defense will be 30% more effective. Have lots of green, inexperienced units scattered about? Stack them with an Armsmaster and they'll be elite in no time. Falling asleep while your armies trudge one slow square at a time towards their goal? Add in a Pathfinder hero and a Forester/Mountaineer and they'll have their arrival time cut more than in half.

The magic system is also beautifully detailed and in-depth. Based on each magic book your wizard has of a certain discipline, you receive a certain number of common, uncommon and rare spells. The spell pool for each discipline of magic is varied and vast enough to allow for meaningfully different experiences based on which spells you happen to get, and what sort of race you've chosen, and what sort of opponents and obstacles exist in your worlds. Magic comes from a wizard's "power base," which is gained from city buildings like temples and magical nodes scattered about the map. The latter can be defended by some awe-inspiring monsters, especially on Myrror.

The overwhelming power of some of the rarer spells is immensely satisfying when casted by the player, and supremely terrifying when casted -at- the player. This is all to the good--if you're making a game about all-powerful wizards waging war, you can't be skittish about putting some devastatingly potent spells in the game. Bland, weak, or limited magic has ruined many a similar title.

The robust, flexible units and powerful magic make combat a real joy. Combat takes place not by one tile squashing another (or a whole stack!) a la Civ, but in an isometric perspective, where each of up to nine units on either side move and attack individually. Hit points, statistics and tactics all therefore become serious considerations. Battles in fact require some serious tactical acumen early on, as the choice of which spell to cast or whether or not to move or attack, etc. can actually make or break the battle. For this reason it's often worth saving before an encounter, because the outcome is never certain if the forces are relatively balanced. While doing so in other similar games often feels like a repetitive chore of gaming the random number generator, in MoM there really is a world of creative possibilities for the player to try out in each encounter, and smart choices actually -will- affect the outcome.

Adding to this variety (somewhat) is a wide variety of playable races. More importantly, each of the magical disciplines has a distinct character and playstyle. Since one's starting wizard can be made from a preset character or wholly customized, the many possible combinations of magic books allow for even more diversity. There are also over a dozen available wizard attributes (with varying degrees of usefulness) that provide bonuses to the player's avatar, such as Alchemy which allows for cheaper creation of magic artifacts, or Warlord, which allows for Ultra-Elite military units. One's choice of wizard therefore greatly increases the longevity of the game, as there will always be a new combination of magic, abilities and race to try.

This makes MoM a -huge- game. Far bigger than its older brother Master of Orion. I've played this game for years off and on and still haven't fully explored all the possibilities.

All this works together (given the latest patch!) for an extremely long-lived experience. It will take you an unbelievably long time to explore all of MoM's ins and outs. It also remains extremely addictive to this day, despite its flaws.

The Bad
And there are many.

What could go so terribly wrong with such a vast, deep and malleable game containing so many possibilities? What could undercut such a marvelous focus on creativity and tactical/strategic knowhow? Well, those very qualities result in a few familiar failures, and the usual suspects are to be found here--balance, pacing, AI, and diplomacy.

As for balance, the races, the wizards and the magic disciplines are horribly imbalanced. Many of the wizard attributes are fairly worthless (Charismatic!), and combining a few of the right ones in a custom wizard will render the player almost unstoppable. Moreover, Life and Nature magic in particular are far too powerful against all other magics. A simple combination of Web/Cracks Call can bring down almost any creature in the game. Playing as certain races (Dark Elves) represents almost a guarantee of victory, while others (Klackons, Gnolls) create challenge in the most tedious ways (lots of unrest in captured cities, lack of available units/buildings). A lack of balance can be seen as creating challenge, wherein race/wizard selection becomes a sort of difficulty selector, but the challenge shouldn't be arbitrary and ultimately boring. It often is in MoM.

Speaking of tedium, the Civ-style "the player must click to build each and every building" falls down into dullness -hard- in MoM. City micromanagment eats up a -huge- portion of each game turn. As in too many Civ-style games, there is no customizable general build list for all cities--the player has the ugly choice of guiding every single new city through the same tedious production path building by building, or using the inept AI "Vizier," which is worse than useless. Waltzing down the same path of buildings every turn for every city in a large, growing empire absolutely kills the pacing of the game.

The AI is hopelessly inept. The AI's units march about aimlessly, throwing away their lives to no clear purpose. Worse, an enemy army can flee several times a turn from combat, so vagrant squatter armies will gather about your territory, and there's no wiping them out until they attack (since the defender always moves first). Two consecutive attacks on such an enemy army might go like this: "fireball->flee, fireball->flee" with the player never getting a chance to do serious damage or even move her units. Not a thrilling experience.

The AI can, however, do a relatively solid job of garrisoning their cities and building their military/power base. They can also ably cast some terrifying spells. Yet the opposing wizards -still- never represent an honest challenge. Even the strongest AI foe on the hardest difficulty cannot stand against a mediocre player with one great stack of units and decent magic--all one needs to do is simply march to the enemy fortress, destroy the defenders and seal up the wizard. Why? Because any mediocre player can use those wonderful unit mechanics -far- better than the AI, which is a bad thing. Just gather a mob of slingers with enchantments and a few heroes, and you've won. Winning this game on any difficulty is thus never a question of "can I?" but rather a question of "should I?"

And why should you? Because diplomacy is broken. Despite a similar system to Master of Orion, your options for mollifying or threatening your enemies are sadly degraded from MoO's very workable standard. The penalty for growing too strong happens almost immediately in MoM. Lacking trade to win friends and being faced with the insta-Alliances AI opponents frequently make with one another, the player is almost always embroiled in constant war against multiple opponents. Gone are the fun probing raids and cold wars of Master of Orion, and likewise the Machiavellian spying, framing, backstabbing, etc. We're back to Civ-style "your tile has touched mine, it's war!" So almost everyone hates you, their enchantments or wandering hobo armies annoy you very quickly, and the only long-term solution is sealing up the offending wizard, which is trivially easy to do. That's a bad situation for pacing. There's no buildup to a storm, just a long uneventful drizzle dotted by frustrated wizard-sealing. The most fun you will have once you learn the game is in building up your heroes.

The other pacing problem is endemic to Civ-style games that rely on exploring the world and lots of combat. Moving. Is. Very. Slow. This wouldn't be a huge issue if every turn didn't start off with five minutes of "built granary, build smithy; built smithy, build marketplace..." times twelve. As it is, it ruins the pace. Long turns of emptiness with a few flashes of brilliance is not a good recipe for a 4x game.

The Bottom Line
But those flashes are truly brilliant! I only describe the flaws so exhaustively because the core greatness of this game makes them stand out all the uglier. MoM is truly a monumental achievement and a must-play game. If you are expecting the sort of elegant, well-paced and situational experience of MoO, however, you will be disappointed. Running around Heroes of Might and Magic style and slaying ultra-mighty monsters through creativity and skill is an absolute joy. Unfortunately, most of the city-building and opponent wizard interaction will feel like a bothersome distraction from this.

The Good
The game has incredible depth of play. The sheer number of inventive and interesting spells that can be researched and used transforms what would otherwise have been a mediocre 4x game into something classic. At the start of each game the player is able to choose what kind of spells they would like to concentrate on (life, death, chaos, nature, sorcery), what special powers they will use (alchemy, warlord etc) and what mythical race they will command (Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and about a dozen others), each with their own units and buildings, abilities and handicaps. For instance the Dark-Elf race can build the special Warlock unit, but have a higher rate of rebellion. The Klackon race is highly productive but cannot build Universities to advance your spell research. The races are much more specialised than they are in the Civ titles, and make a great difference to how you play the game.

This combined with customisable maps and random opponents means that each game is very different from the last. Add to that the traditional Civ-like exploration, war/diplomacy and city building and you have a very addictive game with loads of replayability.

The Bad
The graphics were adequate at the time it came out, and today it's looking badly dated. Really in need of a revamp. The diplomacy is pretty much redundant as every opponent wants to wipe you out. They will stay hostile and defiant even when they have one tiny unit left and are facing your army of dragons. And it can be buggy unless you treat it just right, though that could be a result of running it in a Dos-box environment.

The Bottom Line
Transforming a game like Civilization into a fantasy realm is not as easy as it seems. But MoM managed to get the balance right and retain all the addictiveness. If you like classic 4x games like Civ and Master of Orion etc, then you have to give this a try. Tons of interesting spells, powerful mythical units to fight with, and interesting realms to explore and conquer. Despite being rather old and having poor graphics, it has so much gameplay that it will still keep you hooked in this day and age.

The Good
No game has made me feel like being a cybernetic extension of the mouse as MoM. Play the role of a sorcerer in a fantasy world struggling to conquer your fellow mages, an do so by raising armies of fantastic creatures, expanding your territory, funding and developing cities, recruit heroes to lead your army… and making use of magick, of course. More than 200 spells are your powerful magical weapons: extremely varied, well designed and well fitted in the game. Enhance magically your armies, conjure creatures, throw balls of fire, cover the entire map with titanic enchantments… add to that the possibility of designing your mage through 5 schools of magic and lots of magical abilities, and the sum is a true epic game.

The system will be very familiar to Civ players; in fact, MoM can be called Fantasy Civ. However, there are substantial differences. There is no tech to research: instead there are spells. You can win by conquer, but instead of building a spaceship you can research and cast the Spell of Mastery. And wonders have not a place, although there are heroes (and magical items for them to use). But there’s something, and I don’t understand why Civ2 and SMAC didn’t take the idea. Guess what? Yes! Tactical combat. The combat rules are very well designed: each unit has attack and defense values, like in Civ, but in battle they roll for attack and defense simultaneously (I mean, defenders do not wait hoping their armor will protect them from the attacker’s blows, like in SMAC). Creatures (and heroes) can have also a lot of special abilities for both overland and tactical game. Creature size is also taken in consideration, as in a square cannot be as many skeletons as storm giants, for example. And ranged fire is now true ranged fire. Oh, and spice all this with spells. The variety of strategies to use, combining your armies and heroes with magic, is limitless.

Each game (a random map!) promises an epic fantasy campaign. Not only exploring the world, but discovering ancient ruins, dark dungeons and magic-filled nodes… and fighting their jealous guardians, not so eager to give you their treasures. Oh, you think a world is not enough? Well, how about two? MoM has two planes of existence to explore and conquer. I could go on explaining, but there’s only one way to get an idea: playing it.

The Bad
Bugs.

I can’t remember so painful blow in the stomach like the game crashing when fighting Wraiths or Shadow Demons, or trying to cast a Disjunction. I don’t understand how those bugs weren’t detected. Fortunately, patch 1.31 fixed them.

Apart from bugs, unfortunately MoM was purely a game about war. Even with the AI improvement provided by the patch, was nearly impossible to maintain peaceful relations. Merely meeting another wizard was enough to be at war, and a long-standing one. That was sometimes very frustrating. Also, diplomatic model was even more simplistic than in Civ. Very, very few options, and lack of spies or diplomats.

City management was also simplified, as you cannot place citizens at will to exploit resources, and there weren’t revolts except as random events. Terraforming was also gone, except for roads. And so was government and corruption. Well, this is a Civ fan’s point of view, and comparisons are inevitable in “cousin” games like Civ and MoM. However, MoM has features Civ doesn’t (tactical combat, character customisation and many others…).

Sincerely, I fear an hypothetical MoM2 (which was planned before Microprose went out!). I think a really good, well designed sequel of this game can truly be the ultimate strategy game, but… Hope if anyone ever makes MoM2, does a really good work, in the spirit of the original, full of good and new ideas, and keeping ALL that made MoM the masterpiece it is. MoM doesn’t deserve less.

And the music… well, no comments.

The Bottom Line
Master of Magic is THE classic of all fantasy strategy games, and one of the classics of strategy in general. No other fantasy strategy game has reached its level, even many years later. And that’s one of the points that define a classic. If you’re a strategy fan, don’t wait anymore and get it.

But don’t forget to get the 1.31 patch too!

The Good
Like any other SimTex game, Master of Magic just has so much to it. There's exploration, empire building and city management - which by themselves establish it as an above average CIV clone. This non-magic element of the game is so good, I played my first few games of MOM almost completely ignoring the magic aspect. (Don't ask me why I hadn't discovered the spellcasting - It's great, I guess I was too busy building catapults or something) There truly are many ways to play MOM - you can build a completely non-magickal army out of catapults like my dumb ass, or create a completely summoned army consisting of only goofy looking stone giants with big heads and fuzzy bears. A closer examination of the units, though, reveals that each unit has a lot of stats and special abilities - and this gives the game its depth. Add in heroes - superunits that carry artifacts worth 10 times as much as they are, and building armies and attack groups becomes more fun than any other strategy game of this type.

The Magic also adds a lot of depth. A player chooses or creates a wizard when beginning a game of MOM - with proficiencies in one or many of 5 books of magic, and special abilities. Each book of magic requires a different style of playing. Life magic will assist your armies and towns, but won't help you much when you want to be really mean to an opposing wizard, whereas Chaos magic will allow you a lot of spells with direct attack damage to enemy armies.

What to do with all this destructive power? Even at peace your armies will find some heads to bust open. Much of the game consists of the player fighting neutral creatures in nodes - sources of power, and keeps, temples, etc. for gold, artifacts and other goodies (even extra spell books that you hadn't picked at the beginning!)

The best thing about MOM is that even with this high level of detail - you don't have to keep track of everything if you don't wish. You can ignore whether or not your Dragons have firebreath or not and just send them to eat some people. But once you know the special abilities of each unit, it helps to decide what to use in special situations.

The Bad
The only significant problem with MOM is it isn't as much fun as it should be fighting the enemy wizards. The diplomacy seems much weaker than in Master of Orion, as are the enemy wizards personalities. Hatred of the enemy - as could develop in games like Master of Orion and Civilization, never develops. Also, they don't seem to put together attacking forces with any kind of order, hordes of 1 type of unit will often roam about your territory until you get annoyed enough to do something about it. Though they do use magic well (at least in v1.31) and will cast something nasty like Counter Magic at the beginning of a major battle.

The graphics weren't great, even for the time, and I constantly get hounded for playing something so "crappy looking." If that happens to you, just cast a bunch of overland spells. Those have pretty pictures. The sound stinks and the music is awful when you're trying to establish yourself in your mind as an evil wizard of death and chaos. (Turning off the sound will also free up a lot of conventional memory) The interface for moving your armies around is a bit quirky, but the patches have just about fixed the pathfixing and moving units around in groups of nine is a hellofalot less time consuming than moving 1 at a time.

And with any strategy game with so many units and variables it's tough to keep everything balanced, but Master of Magic does a good job nonetheless, adding in unit weaknesses to balance out the strengths, and a way to defeat almost any strategy.

The Bottom Line
So accessible yet so complex, MOM is likely to be 'playable' for a long long time.

The Good
Everything! From the excellent never-seem-outdated graphics to the moody atmospheric music to the extremely diverse magic and summoning system to the unlimited gameplay and replayability, this game is going to be eternal! The only strategy game that is so close to perfection on itself, except some very nasty bugs... This is the game that really trascended Civ series and mixed RPG and strategy element just right, and I just cannot stop playing it again and again!

The Bad
Some VERY nasty bugs! From the disruption of music to nasty crashes to system lock-ups... And the game can appear to be a little bit too easy when you completed it the 100th time (but then it really doesn't matter alreay :)

The Bottom Line
The must-have for every gamer, the really instant classic from Microprose with extremely fun gameplay and replayability. This game will be eternally remembered for its closeness to perfection and a horde of nasty bugs...

The Good
It had everything that made the original Civilization so much fun (except that you didn't have settlers to irrigate or mine the terrain), plus it had a lot of neat Fantasy touches, like lairs that could be raided, etc.

The Bad
The AI was a bit simple-minded, and a surefire way to win on any level was to select the Dragonman picture for your character and pick the "Start game in alternate universe" option as one of your skills. Since the Dragonman was the only pre-built wizard to start in the alternate universe, and since the game wouldn't select him if you picked his picture for your wizard, you could be assured that you would have the ability to develop your civilization in peace and quiet for many, many turns.

The Bottom Line
Civilization, with Magic.

The Good
The Magic system. It's like in Magic: the Gathering. Very quick to learn, and the summonings are handled similiar to the Wizards of the Coast game too! Town managing system was carbon copied to Master of Orion II, because it was so good. Another easy-to-use interface! The battles are also nice, no complaining in them. And the spells! IMHO researching spells instead of tech as in MOO is more... well, fun because you can use them right away, instead of waiting years to the Stellar Converter ship of yours to construct in Master of Orion 2.

The Bad
It's 21th century. If I had played this game 5 years ago, I would have said that graphics are good and sounds are average. Now I must say that graphics do their job, but sounds are terrible! First time I heard Fire Elemental grunt like bear, I laughed. But after 50th time...or Night Stalker move sound is pounding of horse hoofs? Or.. okay, unit sounds are few. And musics? Terrible. First I tried adlib sounds. Worse than midi. Then SB Pro. A bit better, but still below the line. Star Control 2 was released two years before MOM, and it had better, MOD-style musics. Come on SimTex, you can do better (as in MOO 2). Also, diplomacy has no versatility, as in Orion games. Why? Not even in version 1.31. And AI is stupid diplomat in this one. If SimTex had corrected these flaws, Master of Magic would have been the greatest strategy game of 20th Century!

The Bottom Line
Combine the best sides of Civilization and Magic:the Gathering and you have Master of Magic. Strategy-game, that is based on two planes, Arcanus (near to Earth) and Myrror, chaotic plane. Build up your armies and cities, deal with other wizards, these are the Civ elements. Summon horde of fiendish monsters or noble heroes, cast fireballs and life drains, these are the Magic: the Gathering elements. Absolutely worth of trying, because it's nowadays abandonware. You can get it free.

The Good
While some say it ripped off Magic: the Gathering with its game style (it did), the combination of the spell research and the civ-style play is the best I've ever played (much better then Master of Orion, IMHO). Also, unlike other games that break down when it goes into tactical combat, this one really shines, even when you let the computer fight for you (well, when the odds are in your favor.)

The Bad
The Win98 update/sequel was never completed!

The Bottom Line
Civ meets Magic: the Gathering!

The Good
The number of things that you have to do to win the game, such as building your cities, raising your armies, and learning spells.

The Bad
In a word, GRAPHICS

The Bottom Line
Great game, worth playing.

The Good
Everything, starting with the super addictive gameplay, wonderful graphics and renders, the research tree, the battles, the strategy... everything indeed!

The Bad
It's simply marvellous - what's not to like?

The Bottom Line
One of the best games ever invented.