Introduction:

Once upon a time back in 1995, a company by the name of SimTex in conjunction with the strategy giant Microprose put out a little game known as Master of Magic. The game received glowing reviews back in the day, and was challenging enough to be a worthy addition to any strategy gaming collection. It was one of the first games of the genre that didn't give the computer an inherent advantage (i.e. 'cheating'), could be won by conquest or research, and had randomly generated maps with every new game.

By the name, it should be evident that the game is fantasy based. You are a sorcerer, controlling exploration, building and maintaining of cities, magical research/development, and an army for those annoying other sorcerers or random critters that seem to want to put a damper on your plans for global conquest. You can practice isolationist tendencies, put entire continents to the sword, or negotiate with those other wizards to learn what they know. All this to achieve the ultimate goal of winning the game by either a) eliminating the other wizards by military might, or b) to research and cast the 'Spell of Mastery' which effectively wins the game by automatically banishing the other wizards to the void.

Masters of Magic Vital Stats:

System Requirements:

386 DX-33 MHz or better,
Min 4 MB memory (with 2.7 Mb EMS free),
MS-DOS 5.0 or later,
Hard drive required,
Single speed CD-ROM drive or faster (for CD version),
VGA 256 color graphic card and monitor,
Microsoft Mouse or 100% compatible,
Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum, Adlib, Roland MT-32 and CM32L, General Midi sound cards supported.

Game Original Release Date: October 1994

Developer: SimTex Software

Publisher: MicroProse Inc & MicroProse UK Ltd.

File Information: Masters of Magic is now a free download

Setup:

Initially the game came on a single cd, the entire program is less than 25mb. Installation is extremely straightforward, type in the directory that you want it installed in and choose 'install now'. For those who choose to play the game thru dosbox, just download the game zip, unpack everything into one folder, and point your mount command to the folder. Also, since if your computer is faster than 333 mhz, the game is best played thru dosbox, which imitates the original dos environment - along with the slowness that comes with playing through an emulator. If you know enough to customize the emulator, you can speed it up to the original speeds, but it is turn based, and a full game can take several hours to complete.

Graphics and Sound:

Graphics are typical for the time, 256 colors but amazing detail for the time it was produced. The combat view is isometric, so the illusion of three dimensions are a nice touch.



There isn't really a soundtrack per se, just some localized music for city scenes and movement/combat sounds for encounters. When playing the game through Dosbox, none of the original game sounds are reproduced at all, but honestly it doesn't take away from the game.

Gameplay and Controls:

The mouse is your friend, there are limited keyboard commands and no alternate controllers. On the main screens, right click will give you information, left click selects. Everything on the screen will give the player information, whether the mouse hovers over or right clicks on an object.



Starting a new game first involves choosing: how many opponents (1-4), difficulty (5 levels, easy to impossible), land size (S/M/L), and magic (puny, normal, powerful). You then choose your sorcerer and his/her power base, either one of the 14 pre-generated sorcerers, or you can customize your sorcerer's powerbase (as long as you are playing difficulty of Normal or higher), even with customizing you still have to choose one of the stock pictures.

Let's talk options...

Each sorcerer starts with eleven picks that they can divide between the five fields of magic (life, death, chaos, nature, and sorcery) and eighteen different skills. Some skills are not unlocked until a certain number of picks are chosen in a field of magic. For example, nature mastery cannot be chosen until you put 4 picks in nature.



Once you've tweaked out your sorcerer, then choose the race that populates his/her initial city. You guessed it, you have fourteen different races to choose from, each with it's own racial strengths, weaknesses, and special units.

Once you're satisfied, on to the map and your first city. You start with two units, no one around you, and a city that is in its infancy. From here, you build up your city, build up your armies (maximum of 9 units in each stack), recruit heroes as they come by (you can eventually magically summon heroes/champions), send out settlers to create new cities, and basically either conquer the world, or have your butt handed to you on a silver platter.



Single player/Multiplayer:

This is a single player game, there is no multiplayer option. This lack is a crying shame, because the game is so good that a head to head multiplayer option would be the only way in my opinion to improve it.

Conclusion:

This is one game that I would love to see either remade with modern graphics and a multiplayer option, or a Master of Magic 2 where there are multiple worlds to conquer and you play versus several series of competing sorcerers. In writing up my review and playing this again to get it back fresh in my mind, a coworker came thru and said, 'man, I loved that game, I had completely forgotten about it. Where did you find it?" To which I replied, "abandonia.com". For those who like strategy and fantasy bundled into one, this is one game that has great replay value, and strong staying power. I highly recommend it as a definate Do Over!


In the GameApex World of Do Over or No Do Over, I say Master of Magic is classic and a Do Over!