Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
In September of 1994 I bought a new computer game (at a comic book convention of all places) simply because it looked like Civilization and it had a cool looking box. Little did I know it would be a game I'd fall dearly in love with and keep on playing even twenty years down the road. The game was called Master of Magic, MoM for short, created by Simtex and published by a favorite company of mine called Microprose. The first computer game I ever bought was by Microprose, the original Gunship for my C64, but I'd still be playing MoM long after I'd put Gunship to rest.
The Game
Master of Magic is a fantasy turn-based strategy 4X game very similar to the original Civilization but with a few key differences. The player is a wizard attempting to dominate two linked worlds, both randomly generated for each game. From a small starting town the player manages resources, builds cities and armies, and researches spells, growing an empire and fighting the other wizards. The game has fourteen races to choose from and six schools of magic (life, death, chaos, nature, arcane, and sorcery), and the awesome replayability of the game comes from the various combinations you can get from choosing any array of them. You can design your wizard to have lots of spells from just one school of magic or a smathering of several of them but fewer spell choices. You can also choose character traits to aid in war, magic, or governing.
The gameplay starts as units explore surroundings, pushing back the strategic map's fog of war. Among the exploration goals are defeating monsters guarding treasure, finding the best locations for new cities, discovering the Towers of Wizardry that link the worlds Arcanus and Myrror, and locating the cities of enemy wizards. Cities are established by settlers, then upgraded by adding buildings improving the economy. Cities produce food, gold and mana. Military units require food and gold upkeep; spellcasters consume mana in combat. At the same time as colonizing territory, new magical spells are researched. Spells are either used in or out of combat.
Battles for squares in the strategic map are resolved in an isometric turn-based view that shows unit positions and the effect of magical spells. These strategic battles are one of the key ways the game is different from Civilization.
There are 86 unit types in the game ranging from generic swordsmen and archers to the more fantastic dragons, griffons, and hydras. Many units have abilities or racial traits like regeneration or even flying. And casting spells on units can make even the most normal of units something fearsome and powerful. The combinations are many and varied and add a ton of replay value to the game. You can make invisible flying war galleons, nature druidic dwarfs, chaos fire loving elfs, flying halflings with adamantium stone slings, evil undead nomads, or even an entire army of purely summoned creatures.
MoM has hero units too, and this is another important way the game was changed from Civ. There are in total 35 heroes to choose from, who can either be hired or summoned by spell to fight for you. Each has special abilities that can help you in battle or at a more strategic level. Each hero can use equipment too that can either be found by raiding lairs or created by enchanting. Heroes are a key part of any army and can single handily turn the tide of war if used correctly.
Why can't anyone make a game today that is better than Master of Magic?
Master of Magic is twenty years old as of September 2014, it's last official patch was released in March of 1995, and yet to this day there has not been a game made that "dethrones" it as the King of fantasy 4X games. Many have taken inspiration from MoM. Both Age of Wonders and Heroes of Might and Magic owe much of their success to MoM, Fallen Enchantress from Stardock was going to be MoM2 until they failed to get the rights to the game from Atari. Yet neither game in any of their iterations is a complete step up from MoM.
The game's appeal is in it's immensely customizable gameplay. Each new game is a different adventure filled with surprises. Twenty years of tech improvements have dated the graphics quite a bit. The menus and UI are functional but clunky by today's standards. The AI is flawed and very susceptible to super strategies. It is an MS-DOS game so getting it to run properly on modern systems often requires DosBox. Yet despite these negatives the game is still held by many to be the epitome of fantasy 4X, and many new games today aspire to mimic or surpass MoM. Yet none have completely done so. Master of Magic has an essence to it that has just simply not been re-captured even twenty years later.
For myself personally, I still even today play the occasional game of Master of Magic. I own Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, I have a few Heroes of Might and Magic games, I've played a lot of Fallen Enchantress, I even bought Warlock Master of the Arcane in hopes of finally finding a worthy heir. I like all of these games, yet I still come back to Master of Magic inevitably. And every time I do I wonder why no modern game can capture the same spirit that MoM has, the same randomness and adventurous atmosphere? I would literally pay over $100 for a modernized version of MoM. Simply give it an HD remake that runs on a modern OS with a nicer UI and improve the AI some, and I'd plunk down $100 without hesitation.
One day a game will come along that will take the crown from MoM. A game that will surpass it in every way and undeniably allow thousands of fans to put away MoM for good. But it has not happened yet. Hopefully "soon", before I die from old age!
Happy 20th Birthday to the Master of Magic.
