Master of Magic

When the remake of MoM was announced I was so happy. It was something that I had waited to happen for a long time. I played the original for so many hours. Now I regret that I bought the game before waiting to see what it becomes after bug fixes. It doesn't crash anymore but it is so SLOW that all the joy is lost completely. It is visually nice looking but the devs have ruined it by making everything slow and clunky. Stay away from this remake and play the original. It is still far better than this.

Okay, am a big fan of MoM since it was on floppy... I have played oh so many hours of the Original and I crank it up from time to time as well. This one is a mostly faithful remake. Like the good old days I actually read through the manual for the nostalgia. The remake manual is not a good as the Original but it does do a good job as a manual. It's MoM, it's updated and for better or worse, I like this version just fine and think most hardcore fans should be able to enjoy it plenty. Now... why only 4 Stars? Well, there are various issues that nag at me with the game. City Scape is not your default view while in city and as far as I know you can't make it default. Game seems to run only 1 or 2 threads... I have 16 cores so bummer there I guess. There are some other Quality of Life items like after creating a settler your entire army gets auto selected even if they are 'garrisoned' and some 1 movement unit will drag your settler down if they go with them. The other is the camera dragging. I really hate the auto focusing that keeping yoinking the camera everywhere. Would prefer it to be a little more controllable. Otherwise... a mostly faithful remake and I am not sad at all that I busted $40 smacks on this game!

The gameplay is the same as the original but the new version runs much slower and the units are harder to tell apart. Given that the new version running slow is the biggest difference between the two games, you're better off buying the original.

When you have to wait for the animation to finish before you can click on a highlighted button in a modern game, that's not "retro" or "oldschool", it's just bad design. This game feels just old, without any nostalgia and I don't understand why I should play it. There's no QoL or modern convenience added here, so unless you want slightly better graphics, you could just as well play the original. This game, unfortunately completely misses the point for me. I'm worried about Muha, because Thea 1 was a classic, and Thea 2 similary missed some of the points of what made the original good. I don't think they, as a developer, are heading down the right path, but at least I hope they got paid a lot from Slitherine.

At 120 hours in, I feel ready to give some thoughts on this game. The graphic upgrades are great. Disclaimer: I am probably the target demographic - 90's kid who played the original with the CD versionin '96. I got the dosbox version over a decade ago, then caster of magic more recently. Played Civ 1 through 4 over 20 years, found 5 and 6 too weird. Loved Alpha Centauri for over a decade. Tried Age of Wonders 2, found it ok, but not that great. Would like to try AoW4 just to see what it's like. Pros: 1. Faithful recreation of an old game. 2. Neat updates - looking at the editor, I can see some really neat possibilities for future DLCs or mods 3. Graphics are a welcome change 4. Updated music based on the original is pretty cool 5. Plays like the original, and just as addictive as ever. Cons: These to me are annoyances, but nothing worth losing a star over 1. WASD instead of being able to use the mouse to move the screen around the map 2. The city building queue needs updated to handle future construction given current construction 3. Occaisional crashes. 4. Would love to see some new features based on new tech, i.e. customisable hotkeys for casting multiple spells in a row, i.e. Change terrain (personal favorite) or a common unit enchantment like Eldritch Weapon. 5. The game probably needs some optimization for faster loading. I have a 4790k and 32 gb ram on a SSD, and it still chugs to load things.