Played the game years ago, probably logged a few hundred hours. Never finished it, wanted to come back and give it another go, found the main menu contained ads with pop-up windows, obnoxious highlighting, purchase buttons in the way of other menu items. Apparently its a PvP feature, which does not interest me at all. I just want the game I played years ago. Actually ruined my experience. Played just past the tutorial until this showed up, haven't touched it since.
I like this game because it in many aspects like MOO2, which I enjoy. There are a few additions and modernizations, which for the most part work well. However in very short order it becomes clear that parts were chopped off to include in DLC. An absolutely pathetic selection of races (only 6!), with 1 portrait each, does not feel complete. The Natural Law DLC offers 2 more. Poor implementation of custom races means it is very likely that you will have multiple races using the same portraits/backgrounds unless you buy the DLC. Same with the leaders - in my first game I was offered the same leader (whom I turned down) about 7 times in a short game. The DLC adds more leaders, surprise. And how do I know this? Because there are advertisements for the DLC in the main menu and the game start menu. Any game that does this deserves to lose a star for it immediately. Advertising to me about how my game is incomplete before I have even tried it is a mind-boggling practice, and (from me anyways) garners instant resentment. No one is buying this from a store in a box - every store page informs buyers about any DLC. Moreover, no one likes being advertised to - that's why there are options to pay to get rid of ads in free software. Ads are bads. I'm not going to buy the DLC. The game plays okay without it, even though I have a hard time believing the annoyance of repeat race portraits and leader offers isn't a design choice. Given the gross implications of the title, I'm clearly expected to buy more DLC later. If you're going to emulate a cool 90s game, sell me a complete product. They used to do that all the time back then.
While many of the additions are welcome (who doesn't want more cool stuff?) a lot of them are quite boring - spells that do damage, spells that heal hp, spells that summon creatures - they are all things that the game had before, but reshuffled to every magic type so everyone has everything. While I appreciate the designers wanted to add stuff, and this was low hanging fruit, it robs the different magic types from being unique. Same goes for changes to wizard customization, which is possibly MoM's greatest feature. You can no longer invest 100% into a magic type. No more elemental mastery vs divine/infernal power, instead there are a number of generic "magic buff" retorts that add bonuses without really changing play style. The changes to Wizard creation unfortunately take away variety of playstyles. Building queue for city development is really nice, but all buildings have had their bonuses reduced and most requirements removed. Instead of growing over time, now towns have almost everything available to them very quickly. I've not had a chance to play through a whole game, so there may be other changes that are good or bad, but I just don't like this game as much as original MoM. Additions are great, changes are clearly made to accomodate the dev's playstyle, as it seems to have streamlined the game into very limited ways of playing. I've played Master of Magic pretty constantly for the past 20 or so years, and its a game that has my heart. So this review is more for old fans than new ones. If you've never played MoM, you might think Caster is better. For the veterans, despite the additions you'll feel there are big parts of the game missing. I doubt I will play it again.
