A Negative Review of Master of Magic v1.2, 1994

[Tiltowait]

From GameBytes, issue 21. Click to read the whole thing. I'm just going to excerpt some parts I thought were interesting.

Master of Magic (MOM) is an introductory-level strategy game that takes place in a fantasy milieu. The plot is quite familiar: you begin as a humble leader of a small village and, over time, your megalomaniacal aspirations of world-dominance grow as you expand the territory and number of villages under your control. Of course, there are several other like-minded individuals that are involved in this story who will be competing against you for a place in the arcane hall of fame. Brought to you by Simtex, the group responsible for Master of Orion (MOO), MOM bears several similarities with its predecessor. While in some ways this is good, overall the result is a decidedly-deficient product, as will be explained below.

Never heard MoM described as 'introductory' before. He doesn't like the game - hey, even 20 years ago game reviewers were douches.

While there are a large number of spells available to research in MOM, the variety of spells is not that great. Many spells are merely duplicates of spells of another magic type (ie: the Fire and Ice Bolt spells), more powerful versions of easier spells (ie: Iron Skin over Stone Skin, or Herb Mastery over Healing or Mass Healing), or spells that counter the effects of other spells (ie: Healing of course, or Raise Dead). There are also a number of summoning spells that allow the wizard to call forth magical creatures of increasing powers. There are a decent variety of spells, despite the repetition, but it only takes a few games to see the bulk of spells that MOM has to offer.

Decidedly wrong, but whatever. There are still some rare and very rare spells out there that surprise me, even after all these years. Unfortunately, they're usually too expensive to cast, or not worth the upkeep.

One of the problems with MOM is that there really isn't that much to keep you busy. Honest. It sounds like a lot: building cities; researching and casting spells; building units; and engaging in combat. However, for most turns the only thing you'll be doing is clicking the Next Turn button.

Yeah - at the beginning of the game. Typical reviewer.

You do not need to build a large number of cities in MOM - about 6 or so is all you need.

Technically correct. However, if you do not build on land, the computer will. So, you need to expand to fill up all the city sites, even if it means building crappy cities.

Building the various structures in a city is a process you duplicate indentically from city to city. It gets to the point where you don't even stop to think what structure to build next, as they tend to follow a natural order.

MoM micromanagement of city development. The part of the game I HATE HATE HATE. Seriously, I quit playing MoM for years because of this, before I learned to play on small maps.

MOM lacks decent gameplay. It is very linear, with little variety from game to game irrespective of what options you choose at the beginning. This might have been forgivable, were it not for a dormant AI. In the following sections I'll describe how the AI makes a boring game a bad game.

The first two sentences couldn't be more wrong. The last two sentences are spot-on, sadly.

The diplomatic overtures you can undertake in MOM are exactly as were seen in MOO, except that instead of technology you now trade or offer spells. Every other option replicates the options in MOO. This is fine but, as in MOO, the computer does not pursue the options available aggressively enough. I have only seen computer players request that I trade for a particular spell. They never request alliances, attempt to bribe you, or request your aid against their enemies.

As in other aspects of MOM, diplomatic relations exist as a tool used ONLY by the human player. The computer just doesn't use it save to declare war on you.

So far I've harped on the dismal AI as it pertains to combat, but there's more - much more. Keep in mind that the AI in MOM is actually much better in v1.2 than it was in previous versions, but this only indicates what a dismal job was done initially than how challenging the computer opponent is now.

As in MOO, you will find that the computer builds an excessive number of units in MOM. Up to 9 units can be stacked together in one square in MOM, making up a large army. Yet the computer doesn't seem to mind building weak units and leaving them on their own. The AI will often leave a unit or stack of units sitting around unproductively for large periods of time, all the while paying for its upkeep. Another throwback to MOO is that weak units will continue to assault a vastly-superior enemy repeatedly, so that the player is forced to go through needless combat sequences endlessly.

The bad old days.

The AI seems to have a heavy leaning towards the building of vessels. Every computer player has swarms of triremes and galleys hugging the coastline and not serving any purpose whatsoever. How useful is a stack of 9 empty triremes? If the computer player had no ability to cross water and were using these triremes to link landmasses together, that would be fine, but we can only wish the computer was smart enough to do that. Unfortunately, the computer is only smart enough to build them and proceed forget about them.

Hey! I remember this! What happened?

Matters don't improve any if you should happen to bribe a computer player into being your ally, as they will continue to be just as obstinate as always. Even when computer players are at war with each other, it is difficult to determine just what is going on. You never see a stack of computer player A's units marching towards a city of computer player B. You never see destructive spells being targeted by one computer player against another. You as the human player will be doing this all the time, but the computer players seem to march to a different drummer, only attacking each other if their units happen to bump into each other by chance.

Is this true?

Winning a game of MOM is a certainty, irrespective of level of difficulty or number of opponents. All a game of MOM involves is building a handful of cities to generate enough magical power to research the Spell of Mastery in a reasonable number of turns (assuming this is the route you take). You'll build a few units to defend each of your cities with, a few more to use as your conquering army, all the while researching what spells you want until you are able to research the big one. That's it. Game over.

An interesting perspective. I suppose that's what he meant before about just clicking 'next'. Personally, I've never cast the SoM before, I never have the patience to research my entire spell list. I just go out and crush the computers as soon as I have three magicians and a couple of heroes, or whatever killer stack happens this game.

The graphics in MOM are pretty good, for what you'd expect to see nowadays in VGA.

Something people forget these days. 1994, remember this when you bitch and moan.

MOM, like Colonization, attempts to be a successful follow-up to Civilization. Many of the game elements are identical or very similar to elements we first saw in Sid's classic. However, MOM (and Colonization, for that matter) lacks the tension and sense of urgency to achieve that next level of advancement that was so apparent in Civ.

The reviewer's bias shows here. MoM is a copy of Master of Orion, not Civ. He was expecting Civ and didn't get it, so he wrote a negative review. Moreover, how could anyone actually top Civilization? It's a classic for a reason.

[Shadowblade]

That's a really funny review. It's almost irritating in it's stupidity.

MoM can often be click - click - click - click for the first few years as you build things, but by 1460 (I like making huge empires) it can take absolutely ages to complete a turn. This guy must have played for 2 minutes.

And the spells aren't duplicates at all. I made a spreadsheet where I tried to sort the different schools into equivalent groups of spells, and it can't be done except in a very superficial way.

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