Master of Magic
- Master of Magic (1985 on Commodore 64, 1986 on ZX Spectrum)
- Master of Magic (2022 on Windows)
Description official descriptions
The plot of Master of Magic is to become the dominant wizard on two 'planes' of existence, the normal Earth-like one and the fantasy based plane "Myrror". You can do this by destroying your competing wizards (up to 4 computer players) or by casting the Spell of Mastery.
Game play is carried out in a 2D top down perspective. You move your armies around the board, fighting monsters to get treasure, and more importantly 'nodes'. Once you control a node you can summon a spirit to meld with the node and gain mana from it. You also must build up your cities so you can support and train your army. City management is very much like Civilization. You also must allocate your mana for use, or research. You must research to learn new spells. You can do battle with the enemy in a quasi-isometric perspective or you can have the game simulate the battles.
The game ends when your home tower is destroyed; you banish all the other wizards (by destroying their home tower) or someone casts the Spell of Mastery.
Spellings
- シヴィザード 魔術の系譜 - Japanese PlayStation release (Japanese spelling)
Groups +
- Console Generation Exclusives: PlayStation
- Fantasy creatures: Dwarves
- Fantasy creatures: Elves
- Fantasy creatures: Halflings / Hobbits
- Fantasy creatures: Orcs
- Fantasy creatures: Trolls
- Games with randomly generated environments
- Master of Magic series
- Powerplus releases
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
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Credits (DOS version)
48 People (46 developers, 2 thanks) · View all
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 79% (based on 19 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 119 ratings with 11 reviews)
Empire building game full of game elements to keep you busy
The Good
Like any other SimTex game, Master of Magic just has so much to it. There's exploration, empire building and city management - which by themselves establish it as an above average CIV clone. This non-magic element of the game is so good, I played my first few games of MOM almost completely ignoring the magic aspect. (Don't ask me why I hadn't discovered the spellcasting - It's great, I guess I was too busy building catapults or something) There truly are many ways to play MOM - you can build a completely non-magickal army out of catapults like my dumb ass, or create a completely summoned army consisting of only goofy looking stone giants with big heads and fuzzy bears. A closer examination of the units, though, reveals that each unit has a lot of stats and special abilities - and this gives the game its depth. Add in heroes - superunits that carry artifacts worth 10 times as much as they are, and building armies and attack groups becomes more fun than any other strategy game of this type.
The Magic also adds a lot of depth. A player chooses or creates a wizard when beginning a game of MOM - with proficiencies in one or many of 5 books of magic, and special abilities. Each book of magic requires a different style of playing. Life magic will assist your armies and towns, but won't help you much when you want to be really mean to an opposing wizard, whereas Chaos magic will allow you a lot of spells with direct attack damage to enemy armies.
What to do with all this destructive power? Even at peace your armies will find some heads to bust open. Much of the game consists of the player fighting neutral creatures in nodes - sources of power, and keeps, temples, etc. for gold, artifacts and other goodies (even extra spell books that you hadn't picked at the beginning!)
The best thing about MOM is that even with this high level of detail - you don't have to keep track of everything if you don't wish. You can ignore whether or not your Dragons have firebreath or not and just send them to eat some people. But once you know the special abilities of each unit, it helps to decide what to use in special situations.
The Bad
The only significant problem with MOM is it isn't as much fun as it should be fighting the enemy wizards. The diplomacy seems much weaker than in Master of Orion, as are the enemy wizards personalities. Hatred of the enemy - as could develop in games like Master of Orion and Civilization, never develops. Also, they don't seem to put together attacking forces with any kind of order, hordes of 1 type of unit will often roam about your territory until you get annoyed enough to do something about it. Though they do use magic well (at least in v1.31) and will cast something nasty like Counter Magic at the beginning of a major battle.
The graphics weren't great, even for the time, and I constantly get hounded for playing something so "crappy looking." If that happens to you, just cast a bunch of overland spells. Those have pretty pictures. The sound stinks and the music is awful when you're trying to establish yourself in your mind as an evil wizard of death and chaos. (Turning off the sound will also free up a lot of conventional memory) The interface for moving your armies around is a bit quirky, but the patches have just about fixed the pathfixing and moving units around in groups of nine is a hellofalot less time consuming than moving 1 at a time.
And with any strategy game with so many units and variables it's tough to keep everything balanced, but Master of Magic does a good job nonetheless, adding in unit weaknesses to balance out the strengths, and a way to defeat almost any strategy.
The Bottom Line
So accessible yet so complex, MOM is likely to be 'playable' for a long long time.
DOS · by Nathan Kovner (49) · 2000
Fantastic, fun Civ clone set in a fantasy world.
The Good
It had everything that made the original Civilization so much fun (except that you didn't have settlers to irrigate or mine the terrain), plus it had a lot of neat Fantasy touches, like lairs that could be raided, etc.
The Bad
The AI was a bit simple-minded, and a surefire way to win on any level was to select the Dragonman picture for your character and pick the "Start game in alternate universe" option as one of your skills. Since the Dragonman was the only pre-built wizard to start in the alternate universe, and since the game wouldn't select him if you picked his picture for your wizard, you could be assured that you would have the ability to develop your civilization in peace and quiet for many, many turns.
The Bottom Line
Civilization, with Magic.
DOS · by Afterburner (486) · 2001
The immortal manifestation of perfection (and some bugs :( in computer strategy games!!!
The Good
Everything! From the excellent never-seem-outdated graphics to the moody atmospheric music to the extremely diverse magic and summoning system to the unlimited gameplay and replayability, this game is going to be eternal! The only strategy game that is so close to perfection on itself, except some very nasty bugs... This is the game that really trascended Civ series and mixed RPG and strategy element just right, and I just cannot stop playing it again and again!
The Bad
Some VERY nasty bugs! From the disruption of music to nasty crashes to system lock-ups... And the game can appear to be a little bit too easy when you completed it the 100th time (but then it really doesn't matter alreay :)
The Bottom Line
The must-have for every gamer, the really instant classic from Microprose with extremely fun gameplay and replayability. This game will be eternally remembered for its closeness to perfection and a horde of nasty bugs...
DOS · by DarkTalon (156) · 2000
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Dragonsword has moved to Realms Beyond | Hans Noe | Oct 23, 2010 |
MoM unofficial patch v1.40 | kyr ub (1) | May 16, 2010 |
Active fan site at dragonsword.com | Hans Noe | Apr 24, 2010 |
Trivia
References
One of the merchants may try to sell an item called "idspispopd". This is a cheat for Doom.
Release history
The original game had an onslaught of bugs that almost prevented playing. Microprose released a patch and later a completely new version of the game (which had a different manual and disc). The original disc and manual can be considered a collector's item.
Unofficial patch
There is an fan-made, unofficial patch (v1.40) that focuses on the correction of many bugs still left in the 1.31 version and tries to improve the game's AI performance. The download link can be found in the related links section.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #141 in the "150 Best Games of All Time" list
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #13 Most Rewarding Ending of All Time
- May 1997 (Issue #154) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
Information also contributed by Andrew Grasmeder El-ad Amir, and kyr ub.
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Related Sites +
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Help Site for Master Of Magic
This is an interactive guide on Master of Magic. For those who do not have the manual paper because they download abandonware version of this video game. -
Master of Magic: Hero Page
A site dedicated to everything about heroes in Master of Magic, including cheats, oddities and descriptions. -
Sector 5, Ratai's Realm
Master of Magic Online Guide. Has other things like chat rooms and custom wizard submission.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Tomer Gabel.
Windows added by Picard. PC-98 added by Trypticon. Linux added by Lugamo. PlayStation added by Yanis Lukes.
Additional contributors: Andrew Grasmeder, Kalirion, Laey'zur Tiberius Hawke, Thibault Droulers, 6⅞ of Nine, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Yanis Lukes.
Game added August 10, 1999. Last modified February 13, 2024.