Furthermore, about a third of the races actually began on a secondary map, another planet called the Mirror World. Most of the usual fantasy suspects are included: Orcs, Elves, Halflings, etc., but there were also some unique ones such as the Draconians, who could fly, and the Klackons, a froglike race who weren't good for much except rebelling against your just and rightful reign.Įach race provided a slew of different units and bonuses to work with, so by conquering towns with other races, you could gain access to their special units, albeit at a higher revolt risk. That was the other important pre-game decision you'd have to make - which starting race you'd choose. You could also take points out of spell ranks and put them into special abilities such as Artificer or Conjuror, which would give you bonuses in different other areas of the games.Īll this was a very interesting way of putting a little roleplaying game character-building into the front end of a strategy game, and it magnified the replay factor of the game tenfold, because you'd always want to go back and try again with a different combination of spell books, special abilities, and races. You'd choose ability levels ("spell books") in one or more fields of magic (Death, Life, Fire, Chaos, Nature or Sorcery), and this would limit what spells you could research later in the game - and the kind of spells a nasty old Death wizard have were very, very different from the healing balms of the Forces of Niceness. You'd begin each game by creating your wizard, and unlike the leader characters in other games, where giving yourself a name and a portrait is fairly cosmetic, here your characteristics actually mattered. There was also a lot of Master of Orion in there too, which shouldn't be too surprising, since the development team was the same - Steve Barcia and the lads over at SimTex, working under that same magical MicroProse name. As with Civ, you began the game with one little town and a couple soldiers, and set out to build a globe-spanning empire on a fantasy world. There was a lot of Sid Meier's Civilization in Master of Magic, which shouldn't be too surprising, considering it was released during the Golden Age of MicroProse, and by the same company. First released in the dark old days of 1994 or thereabouts (it's hard for us old-timers to be specific about the years sometimes), it was a crafty blend of numerous strategy game elements so tightly woven together and neatly balanced, and adorned with so many nifty little features, that it still holds up today as a paragon of how to make a game not suck. For my money, the best fantasy strategy game ever made was Master of Magic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |