As a game, Shadow Magic is fantastic - it runs on the same system as AOW2, but with vastly improved mechanics and design. The main problem is that, as a program, it's broken on a modern system. On a new computer running i7 and a Geforce 1050 Ti, here are the main issues: 1. You MUST turn off Direct3D, or the frame rate is unplayable. The problem is that you don't just lose the eyecandies - you also lose all the overlay effects, such as visual display of attack range and area of effect, and the ability to zoom. 2. You must use Regedit to enable 1920x1080 (and potentiall other resolutions higher than 1600x900). Some people say you can do it by enabling compatibility mode - it doesn't work. 3. Oh, and opening the settings program resets it to Windowed Mode, so you'll need to go into regedit again if there was a setting you needed to change through that program. These problems are Shadow Magic exclusive - I had no technical issues with AOW2, so I don't know why they should appear here. The game does run, I suppose, and since I know how the system works I can do without the range/AOE overlay. But it's just sad that a fundamentally excellent game has such crippling technical issues.
