"Addicting, Excellent, but BUGGY"

Everyone (Well, a lot of people...) knows of the game "Civilization." This particular game was incredibly deep, and spawned many sequels and attempted clones. No clone has been more successful than "Master of Orion," made by the same company, Microprose, now part of Atari. Microprose and Simtex Software had teamed for this particular project. Seeing the success of MoO, they paired up again and created another Civilization clone, Master of Magic. While this particular game has been left in the dust as far as knowledge and popularity is concerned, there's one thing to be certain of; it is a cult classic. Although there are a few annoying bugs.

GRAPHICS: 10/10

The graphics were hailed as being "life-like" at the time, but it's clear how much we've advanced. However, the graphics are INCREDIBLE. The normal world of Arcanus seems much like ours, with lush green grasslands and stone-gray mountains. On the alien world of Myrror, though, things are quite different. The grasslands are a chocolate brown, and the deserts look more moist than its Arcanus counterpart, making it very clear that it's an alien world.

It's also relatively easy to distinguish between units and terrain. The biggest issue comes with a few units that weren't intended to appear. After installing the patch, I haven't seen any Draconian Engineers, but it did get rid of the Nomad Magicians, which were NOT supposed to exist. In any case, the graphics are superb, and are incredible to this day.

SOUND AND MUSIC: 8/10

The music is definitely fitting to this game. It has a medieval feel to it. When talking to a rival, s/he has their own special music. You'll very quickly know when you've upset them when the music picks up. When in battle, there's a generic battle music reserved for neutral powers, and everyone else gets their own battle music, although they all have the same basic music.

The battle sound effects WILL get on your nerves in a hurry, however. Some of the sound effects are rather freaky-sounding, too. The Great Wyrms have some really odd sound clip for when they attack, and the Death spell Lycanthropy also sounds really weird. When it comes to Hydras, Drakes, and Hell Hounds, they all have some kind of growling noise. To be frank, I leave the sound off, minus the music. To sum up, the sound could've used work, but the music, although the battle tunes are rather identical, are classic.

GAMEPLAY: 12/10

Ah, now we're at the good part! The gameplay is exactly what you'd expect from a Civilization clone, almost identical. However, there's one added resource (Mana) and instead of harvesting resources from a city's territory, it is made internally, so you don't end up having no food to feed yourself with because you end up being stuck in a mountain range. Instead, you've got farmers and workers. Instead of having a possible revolt on your hands in a city, every unhappy person (usually because you're being overzealous with the tax rate) just flat-out refuses to work. If there is one gripe that everyone seems to have, it's that you have to micromanage a LOT. Then again, they tried to do away with the micromanaging problem in MoO3 and it blew up in their faces.

Each race has different strengths and weaknesses. However, the balance of power is severely out of whack. You can basically play the game with any race, but you'll quickly learn that some races are better than others. Lizardmen are incredibly production-poor, the Gnolls have no uber-strong end unit (although it's fast), and Dark Elves, while powerful as all-get-out, inspire a HUGE amount of unrest in conquered races. Orcs, in particular, are pathetic. Sure, they build everything, but their Cavalry and Halbardiers don't have the skills that High Men have, even though the only difference between the two are a building. Each race is unique, and thusly, everyone has a favorite race. Halflings, Dracodians, Barbarians, Dwarves, and High Men are very popular. Meanwhile, Klackons, Lizardmen, and Gnolls are very unpopular due to their massive limitations. Some better tweaking is needed, like maybe giving Gnolls a bit of a better high-end unit and taming the Klackons a bit.

The enemies deserve a section all their own. My first game after the patch, I made the mistake of sending one of my units out to explore the surrounding terrain. I only had one other unit, them staying home to protect the capitol. Well, a small group of raiders show up and promptly kill my guards, thus eliminating me from the game. I got four points for my humiliation. I try again, this time incorporating strategies from the guide by Prima Publishing, and promptly flourish. I ended my game accidentally by killing off the last wizard and get about 700 points. I'm now trying to max out my score as best I can.

That's avoiding the main point, though. The battle AI is PATHETIC. If you have a roughly equivilant force, you can often eke out a victory simply by using your brains and the terrain. Also, the AI sticks to using alchemy to pay for the upkeep of spells, so they rarely have any mana to use for spells. I can often march into the enemy fortress with my eight Dwarven units and pull them back to wait out the barrage of enemy bowmen. Here, I'll have to wander off to explain the fault of the AI. The game simulates accuracy very well with a "To Hit" rating. Each unit has an innate accuracy of 30%. At a high enough level, it begins to improve to a maximum of 60%, for most units. For normal ranged units, unless they have a Long Range ability, their accuracy drops by 10% for every three squares. As a result, I can often charge forward with only about three hit points lost. The AI, for some reason, REFUSES to wait until you are close enough to hit very accurately. As far as capturing cities, it's rather easy. Walls don't play a huge factor late in the game (But every little bit helps.) as most people, including me, focus instead on battling at the always-open city gate. Really, the only time you should be concerned about your battle odds are when you march into a blue node and it's guarded by four Sky Drakes.

As stated in the tagline, this game is BUGGY. Personal favorite story? One Spearman unit knocks out four Sky Drakes and five Phantom Warrior units. Of course, it was the "Strategic Combat" function of the game, but something's not right... Although, you can't forget the hero who ended up getting EVERY ABILITY in the game. From Summon Demon (???) and Cloak of Fear (both black abilities) to Healing and Dispel Evil (both white abilities) and even Meld with Node and Build Outpost (Both use the same button. Uh-oh.) this was apparently caused by using the Raise Dead spell. There are also reports of lost spells after casting Animate Dead, and Cloak of Fear is broken, as the roll works AGAINST you. You can pound on a unit for twenty combat rounds and do no damage because of the Cloak of Fear. I could go on, but then this review would have 20,000 lines.

This game also likes to crash. If you use DOSBox and port the game to your XP from an older computer, the game will freeze after about 150 turns on Impossible. Annoyed, my dad and I had to spend $50 on a copy from Amazon.com that I installed onto the XP. Now the game works perfectly. One of the reported crashes is by pressing F11. Interestingly, it hasn't crashed on me because of that yet.

All in all, though, the bugs are part of what makes the game so enjoyable. And with how difficult the game is on Impossible, you'll need all the help you can get. The gameplay, even with the poor AI and excessive bugs, is still far better than most games I've seen today.

BUY?

By all means! This game is apparently either so popular that people don't want to part with their copies, or this game is incredibly rare. The lowest price I've seen (and got) was $44.94, and that was for a complete copy, with advertisements and all. The guy even sent the patch along with it! Was it worth it? Oh yeah. I'm hooked again. However, I don't think anyone has the money to spend on such an old game. Until the owners of the rights to this game either re-release it or make a sequel, we're stuck with either downloading it or buying a copy at a rather outrageous price.

Simply put, this game is probably even better than Civilization itself. I highly recommend it. The issue isn't if it's good. It's if you can find it at an affordable price.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/07