I played Magic Carpet 1 in my youth. Playing Drova recently (a great pixel-art CRPG from 2024) sparked my interest in playing some old games I missed back then. With fond memories of Magic Carpet 1 I decided on Magic Carpet 2 ... and I'm having an absolute blast! Initially I had a problem with constant crashing, but switching to Dosbox Staging (portable version 0.82.0 just replacing the original Dosbox folder in the game installation directory) and playing around with CPU cycles a bit, the game runs smooth with only occasional crashes. Magic Carpet 2 offer just the right amount of challenge and variety for me (currently in level 15 of 25).
I bought this game because I read so much about it being like Gothic, one of my all-time favorites. A few hours in and I can absolutely confirm this! The game has exactly the right balance between exploration, fighting, collecting items, talking and solving quests. With a fun, active fighting system, interesting character development, good ambient music and sound, and very nice pixel art graphics, the game is everything I have been wishing for. For me, it belongs to the list of personal favorites in PC RPG gaming, beside Gothic I and II, Albion, Enderal and Archolos.
