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by Kevin Kuphal Published: June 24, 2002
The game opens, as most do, with an optional tutorial. As a true gamer, I ignore the manual and delve right into the play choosing to see what this tutorial has to offer me. It was a simple matter of walking me through some basic gameplay options, how to move my wizard, control my territory, capture objects in the game, control my heroes, and fight a simple battle. From this I learned of many of the major features of the game. The game includes the ability to control 12 different races, specialize in 7 spheres of magic, enlist the aid of 30 champions, control 75 mystical items, command 100 types of units, and play over 20 scenarios. Of course, if you've read anything about this game before, you already knew that. I am a HUGE fan of Civilization, so it didn't take long for the similarities to strike me. The interface is very similar, as most kingdom management turn based games are. Instead of a technology tree, I had a selection of both spells and specialties to choose from. In starting my single player campaign, I was able to choose only the first Sphere of Magic to play in and give a choice of three specialties to pick. Choosing my first gave me different choices of second, and then third. They were things like pacifist, anarchist, etc. and each held it's own reward or penalty. In a game of fantasy, without the benefit of historical civilizations to emulate, this was a decent enough way to give me a choice of "personality" in the game. I also was limited to playing humans in the first scenario. The game dropped me right into the middle of the mess. I was in someone else's fire realm and they were not too happy about it.The game instructed me that I was to capture the tower to the south and make my fortress there. In this game, your towns have can have in them various structures, one of the most important being a Wizard's Tower. As a wizard, you have control over your realm, but only in a limited radius around your person. This is for the ability to cast spells and influence the course of activities of your subjects. If you are in a town with a Wizard's Tower, this radius is significantly increased. As such you are able to cast spells into combat that occur anywhere within your radius. This is a great addition to what otherwise would be a somewhat typical combat system. As you improve your town and your tower, this radius can increase.
Also, the game has heroes who can help your cause. They have a one hex radius about them which you can influence as well allowing you to engage in combat even if they are outside the normal radius of your tower. Heroes are wonderful units that you need to be careful to keep alive. They can often cast spells and always weild magical artifacts that they may find around the world. Your kingdom is run on gold, mana, and casting points. Gold (and time) are required to build things in the game and improve your cities, create armies, etc. Mana is used for casting spells in and out of combat, but in addition to mana, you need to have the available casting points. Now gold and mana are acquired through careful resource control in the game. Mines give you gold and magical nodes give you mana. It is very important to maintain control of your resources, as you would expect, as the computer AI is fairly aggressive about taking them. Your basic campaign goal is to destroy the opposing wizard who is controlling the realm. With only your original captured city, you must do so by encountering neutral units, building your own armies, and combating the wizard on their own turf. There are many aspects of the game that I found perfectly enjoyable. Capturing enemy cities allows you to build their units as is appropriate for their race. The ability to cast spells both in and out of combat as a wizard is a very cool feature. The combat mechanism in the game is great as well. Whenever combat occurs you can choose between letting the computer determine the outcome (as Civilization would have you do), or you can take an active role and command each unit in combat. This is the cool way. Here you can cast your spells, move your units, attack with ranged attackers, knock down enemy walls, use your siege engines, invoke the special abilities of your races units and heroes. It is a lot of fun and the engine is well balanced. There are a few minor quirks in the engine that get very annoying. The biggest is probably in the movement of units. More often then not I found myself sending units all in the wrong places because the game did not take focus off of the unit after it had finished moving so I end up directing it to move the next turn to some weird location. Otherwise the game was relatively smooth in its execution. It is interesting that the game includes a play by email option. This is quite unusual in today's offerings of online play. But probably the single most important feature in the game is the variety it provides. With the 12 races and 7 Spheres in 20 scenarios in addition to the single player campaign and multiplayer play, this is one game that is not likely to bore you anytime soon. I did have some issues with the game operating on my hardware (Voodoo 5500) and had to run the game in windowed mode. To the game's credit, though, the windowed mode was quite playable, unlike many other games that I have encountered. The sounds were excellent and the music enjoyable to play. The game even has a neat feature to allow you to play just about any MP3 file as the background music of the game. There are some great ambient sounds in the game based on the scenery you are looking at. This is a great game for people that love fantasy role playing AND games like Civilization. Other than a few quirks that could possibly be corrected in later patches, this is a solid game that will provide a great deal of enjoyment. |
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