For crying out loud, they updated this game and added a launcher nobody ever asked for that tries to load you adds every time you open the game.
This kind of behavior is unacceptable and unforgivable in my experience and shows really badly for Slitherine as well as for Gog for allowing stuff like that to go through.
The game itself is a real classic, sort of like first Civilization game, just with magic and monsters. It definitely doesn't have the polishing and hand-holding modern games have, but is fun to play, especially modded.
What is not fun, though, is having developers add adds to their f***ing game.
Off of the bat, this game is wonderful. Master of Magic is genuinely one of my favourite games, and this is unaffected by nostalgia, I first played this game in 2015-ish after over two decades of gaming.
However, the rights to the game were bought up by Slytherine games, who have recently added in a launcher, this is not the company who made or funded the game and their launcher has a single purpose - to advertise their game library, social media and company website.
You can download a 'classic' version of the game from GOG, however this will then be updated automatically via GOG Galaxy immediately to contain the launcher which - again - exists solely to advertise to consumers products with absolutely no relation to the game they are playing or the creative teams or design philosophies.
I hate this, I hate this so much I haven't been able to bring myself to play the game since this update.
For people who don't care about that:
Fantastic 4X game, you can see the blatant DNA of Master of Orion (including straight up featuring the Klackon race).
Fourteen preset wizard avatars (with their own skill/spell book choices already made), plus a custom wizard option.
Custom wizards use any of the fourteen preset wizard avatars (precluding that wizard from being in the game under AI control). You can then spend a number of points to pick a combination of eighteen skills and buying spellbooks of different colours (more books makes you more powerful in that colour).
Spellbooks are
Chaos (Red) - Damage, fire, lightning, mutation.
Nature (Green) - Minor heals, summons, geographic mutation.
Sorcery (Blue) - Manipulation, flight, illusions.
Life (White) - Healing, summoning, buffs.
Death (Black) - Summons, turning your creatures into more powerful creatures.
Skills can effect research speed, how much you can cast per round, item creation.
There are two dimensions, an earthlike and an underdark world you can travel between.
You cast spells all across the world an in battle.
By some back of the napkin math I believe I've spent about 3 months playing this game, that's 90 days or 2160 hours or 129,600 minutes... and before I sound too much like a poorly spoofed version of Rent, let me try to say what I think attracted me to this game.
Simply, the attraction to the game is the grandiose level of customization. It was the first game that i felt let me play exactly how I wanted to play, from the design of my world to the growing of my empire to the way I ran the tactical battles.
Do I want to be a life giving, peaceful wizard? Or today do I feel like playing a zombie loving, ghouly death wizard? Or, and here was my favorite part, do I completely blow off magic and spend my traits on making me a Genghis Kahn like warlord? That last piece was what started my longtime love afair with MoM: I didn't have to play a wizardly wizard, and yet it still made sense in the realm of the game's mythos.
Next I would choose my opponents. Some days I felt megalomaniacal and chose a bunch of opponents but made them dumb as dirt, and some days I felt masochistic and played on the Impossible world, even winning sometimes.
Then I chose my starting race of, shall I call them, worshipers. Here's another area where I believe that MoM shined: the races are, in my humble opinion, NOT balanced, not really meant to be balanced, but they sure are different, AND you can beat the game with any race. Besides, if you get tired of the race you start with? Just take over other cities of other races and pacify them with sword or spells. There's nothing like razing the early world with a bunch of crazed Gnolls, followed by a surprise amphibious assault on your opponents with some Lizard Javelineers and Dragon Turtles, only to march over the final hold outs with some Doom Bolt dropping Dark Elf Warlocks. It's not easy to make all the races play nicely together under your wizardly umbrella, but there are lots of ways to accomplish this problem.
And let's not forget about the heroes. Honestly, most of the heroes are overpowered tanks. But that's half the fun, because they don't start out that way. The early hero's life is precarious, and an accidental trip battle against an invisible Phantom Beast that is helping to guard a wizard tower, this when you only expected some wimpy Phantom Warriors, can be hazardous to the young hero's health. When a hero does survive long enough, or you have the opportunity to summon Torin, which you will if you play a life wizard, they can be dispatched against certain foes and in certain situations mopping up entire armies like some medieval special forces.
And yet, like a few other games that I like, it seems that no incident can't be counter acted. What makes the game so much fun is that there are so MANY different strategies and tactics that what seems, and often is, impossible early on becomes only a challenge later on.
Master of Magic is not wholly perfect. Then again, I don't know of any game that is. It's graphics could really use an update, but they do qualify as retro. The AI could use an upgrade, but they are good enough, especially once I got comfortable enough to play the Hard setting. And even with the 1.31 patch, I have still occasionally found minor glitches, especially in late, large world games against a lot of opponents on hard or impossible difficulty. Save games are your friend.
But where Master of Magic is perfect, it is really, uniquely perfect. No other strategy game ever, and I play a lot of games, has yet to give me the feeling that I'm in another world full of seemingly endless possibilities and things to try. I'm hoping that day will come soon when I can finally put Master of Magic away for good, but I have this sneaky feeling that even when that day comes, once a year around Christmas I will still break the game out, like I have always done, and give it a go for old times sake.
This is one of the most interesting 4X Games I've seen up to now.
You are a wizard, you try to conquer the world. You have a town of one of fourteen races and are skilled in one of five magic schools plus you can sacrifice knowledge in magical schools for traits.
This game has ridiculous depth because of the sheer amount of content.
All the races have access different parts of the - to be honest somehow smallish tech tree - but they produce vastly different units. Every lizardman unit can cross water, every dark elf has a ranged magic attack etc. The best part, no one is stopping you from conquering another race's cities so all that variety is up for you to grab!
The different schools of magic allow for interesting options in the overview and the tactical combat part of the game. The Life school buffs your units and tries to keep them alive, the Death school thrives if your units die bringing them back...
Heroes are strong and a player with alchemy (one of said traits) can craft insane artifacts for them (even Warcraft 3 didn't pull off heroes this well), but a low leveled hero is easily dismantled by regular units.
There is another map to play on, where the more challenging monsters and the stronger loot await that is only accessible by certain points in the overworld.
This game is just amazing in terms of possible strategies and delivers on a nice whimsical feeling.
One word of advice before you get this game: don't underestimate Halfling slingers. If you see veterans and/or buffed Halfling slingers tread very lightly. Halflings field more individual units per tactical square and are notoriously lucky making their slingers the strongest ranged units in the game. Your high-elven archers won't stand a chance, if only Frodo hadn't forgotten his sling in the Shire.
Master of Magic was originally given to me as a gift when I was a 'tween'. I'm still playing it 22 years later and counting in my mid 30s. It's by no means perfect. There's still bugs that can wreck your game (save often), the AI is a cheating SOB relentlessly pursuing a strategy of attrition, while the UI and graphics are admittedly dated.
That said, much like Master of Orion II remains the pinnacle of 4X Space Strategy, Master of Magic remains the pinnacle of 4X Fantasy Strategy. Spells are organized in a way that resembles the popular Magic the Gathering game (5 colours) and city building resembles Civilization, exploration and encounters with monsters / neutral towns seem as though you were playing Dungeons and Dragons at the strategic level commanding men at arms, fantastic creatures and heroes with equipment slots. It's unparalleled. There's no need for a campaign you choose some world parameters and game difficulty, choose or create your wizard including a handful of spells to start with, choose a starting race to populate your initial town and go explore/conquer the world.
The tactical combat is an isometric square grid with some terrain features and strategic fortification (city walls). It can get tedious. With experience the player will know which combats can be resolved with the 'auto' button, leaving it to the AI and which will demand some intervention.
The strategic layer is more about not getting 'shut out' by the enemy wizards, accumulating enough resources to deal with the cheating computer before it starts to put out some nasty world enchantments or send endless waves of creatures and soldiers with a seemingly inexhaustible pool of mana to support them.
The diversity of races, military units, creatures, heroes and spells makes for a rich sandbox to play in. The dual world mechanic kicks it up a notch and opens up some additional strategic considerations.
Look past the graphics, this is the defining game of its genre.
