Lords of Magic: Special Edition

2 things to start off: 1) I REALLY wanted to love this game. 2) I still recommend it based on price, concept, and amount of game alone. I watched a Sseth video, wanted to try it for myself, and while promising at the start, the frustrating and clunky aspects of the game really started to wear down on me. Once again, the price point on this game is awesome, as well as the amount of potential gameplay. I also love the concept of this game, kind of like a proto-fantasy-themed total war. You get some story missions, as well as the meat of the game, which is a campaign mode with 8 distinct races that all play differently, as well as three "hero" options (do you want to use magic, stealth, or raw power as an early game crutch?) to play around with. However, there are gamebreaking bugs that do make at least one of the 8 races unplayable (the Chaos Barbarians), which you WILL need to hunt down an unofficial patch for if you want to fix. That's kind of ridiculous, to be fair. Then there's the grueling pace mixed with the overbearing penalties for losing units or battles in the early game, making an absolute need to reload battles until you get near perfection (in the clunky combat with insanely bad pathfinding) which feeds back into the grueling pace where you need to grind early on and burn through turns to amass followers. That's just the beginning, since all of that^ feeds into my main gripe which is the control. This is insanely counterintuitive. The right and left mouse buttons just feel like they should be reversed, and everything just kind of "sticks". It's hard to deselect units, it's hard to select just one or multiple units when you want to, you have to keep re-giving commands, and you keep having to fix commands given to the wrong units. This feeds back into the "overbearing penalty" problem, since the smallest mistake will wreck you, making you need to reload which drags the game out even further MAN this game has so much potential though. Really frustrating

I played this for a couple of hours when I was super young and was really impressed. Now i'm playing it properly for the first time and because of the nostalgia i find its age charming. The music is very nice, graphics are a little rough around the edges, obviously. The gameplay reminds me of 'Heroes of Might & Magic' or 'Lords of the Realm 2' crossed with 'Baldurs Gate'? Which I loved as a kid. I'm enjoying this. They just don't make modern games like they used to which is why i mostly play older stuff.

Artifacts are crucial to the game and combat and unfortunately my game has a bug that makes it so artifacts have no effect and can't be passed from champion to champion. Please fix this ASAP

I started playing this game in 1997 when i was 15 yrs old. Now 38 years old and I still play it. I play it more than any other game I own on GOG. Multiplayer works over a VPN and on Game Ranger (yea man game ranger still alive and kicking for all the good old games) If anyone wants to play multiplayer, I will play with anyone of any skill level and I do not mind offering bits of in game support where i can. Just msg me here,

Only one thing missing, but it's a big one. The researched magic never becomes available to the mages. Puts a considerable damper on the game. All other facets work fine. I've enjoyed the nostalgia of the game considerably, but couldn't really beat the game since the past mid-game is considerably less fun when all I have is the starting spells.