Master of Magic

aka: Civizard: Majutsu no Keifu, MOM, Master of Magic Classic, Maître de la Magie
Moby ID: 200
DOS Specs
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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)

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Credits (DOS version)

48 People (46 developers, 2 thanks) · View all

Design
Programming
Art
Composer
Music Producer
Sound Effects
  • Midian
Marketing - Product Manager
Marketing - Packaging
Producer
Art Director
Quality Assurance Lead
Manuals - Writer
Manuals - Editor
Manuals - Design & Layout
[ 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)

Boundless yet sorely limited. Bursting with awesome variety and damnable tedium. An imaginative triumph that's an unbalanced mess.

The Good
Master of Magic is a great game. Its environmental depth, the thrilling malleability of its heroes and creatures, its gloriously overpowered spells--what a mountain of effort they represent! A truly remarkable achievement on the part of SimTex.

MoM is often described as a synthesis of Civilization and Master of Orion, and that's pretty close to the mark. A more or less standard 4x empire builder is the core of the experience--the player starts from a single hamlet and seeks to conquer the randomly generated gameworld, settling/capturing new cities, mastering obstacles, controlling resources and researching technology (spells!) to achieve supremacy

The biggest change from your standard Civ clone is the world map. Dotted all around the world are not just opposing civilizations but monster lairs, magic nodes, neutral cities, temples, towers, and wandering critters spawned from all of the above. Scattered on two whole planes of existence (Arcanus and the magical Myrror), this local menagerie encourages exploration and defense in ways that faceless Civilization-style barbarians never have, and moreover they provide the player with a near endless list of varied obstacles to surmount. Long after dealing with the various enemy wizards scattered about becomes a bore, the "neutral" foes of the map will still pose a challenge (fear the great worms!) to even your finest stack of units.

And your units are wonderfully fleshed out. All gain experience and levels, and the boosts to their abilities are critical to beating the game. A complex system of mechanics controls all characters in the world. Grounded by routine combat statistics and elevated by supremely imaginative special abilities, this allows almost limitless possibilities, richly rewarding creative spellcasting from the player. Want to create a flying fleet of invisible fire-shooting warships? Want to eschew ships entirely and have your armies just walk on water? Do it! The degree to which player creativity is encouraged by these unique combinations of units and enchantments is one of the best features of the game.

Heroes in particular have some very satisfying and useful special skills. Worried your army is going to get wiped out? Just bring along a hero with High Prayer and your attacks and defense will be 30% more effective. Have lots of green, inexperienced units scattered about? Stack them with an Armsmaster and they'll be elite in no time. Falling asleep while your armies trudge one slow square at a time towards their goal? Add in a Pathfinder hero and a Forester/Mountaineer and they'll have their arrival time cut more than in half.

The magic system is also beautifully detailed and in-depth. Based on each magic book your wizard has of a certain discipline, you receive a certain number of common, uncommon and rare spells. The spell pool for each discipline of magic is varied and vast enough to allow for meaningfully different experiences based on which spells you happen to get, and what sort of race you've chosen, and what sort of opponents and obstacles exist in your worlds. Magic comes from a wizard's "power base," which is gained from city buildings like temples and magical nodes scattered about the map. The latter can be defended by some awe-inspiring monsters, especially on Myrror.

The overwhelming power of some of the rarer spells is immensely satisfying when casted by the player, and supremely terrifying when casted -at- the player. This is all to the good--if you're making a game about all-powerful wizards waging war, you can't be skittish about putting some devastatingly potent spells in the game. Bland, weak, or limited magic has ruined many a similar title.

The robust, flexible units and powerful magic make combat a real joy. Combat takes place not by one tile squashing another (or a whole stack!) a la Civ, but in an isometric perspective, where each of up to nine units on either side move and attack individually. Hit points, statistics and tactics all therefore become serious considerations. Battles in fact require some serious tactical acumen early on, as the choice of which spell to cast or whether or not to move or attack, etc. can actually make or break the battle. For this reason it's often worth saving before an encounter, because the outcome is never certain if the forces are relatively balanced. While doing so in other similar games often feels like a repetitive chore of gaming the random number generator, in MoM there really is a world of creative possibilities for the player to try out in each encounter, and smart choices actually -will- affect the outcome.

Adding to this variety (somewhat) is a wide variety of playable races. More importantly, each of the magical disciplines has a distinct character and playstyle. Since one's starting wizard can be made from a preset character or wholly customized, the many possible combinations of magic books allow for even more diversity. There are also over a dozen available wizard attributes (with varying degrees of usefulness) that provide bonuses to the player's avatar, such as Alchemy which allows for cheaper creation of magic artifacts, or Warlord, which allows for Ultra-Elite military units. One's choice of wizard therefore greatly increases the longevity of the game, as there will always be a new combination of magic, abilities and race to try.

This makes MoM a -huge- game. Far bigger than its older brother Master of Orion. I've played this game for years off and on and still haven't fully explored all the possibilities.

All this works together (given the latest patch!) for an extremely long-lived experience. It will take you an unbelievably long time to explore all of MoM's ins and outs. It also remains extremely addictive to this day, despite its flaws.

The Bad
And there are many.

What could go so terribly wrong with such a vast, deep and malleable game containing so many possibilities? What could undercut such a marvelous focus on creativity and tactical/strategic knowhow? Well, those very qualities result in a few familiar failures, and the usual suspects are to be found here--balance, pacing, AI, and diplomacy.

As for balance, the races, the wizards and the magic disciplines are horribly imbalanced. Many of the wizard attributes are fairly worthless (Charismatic!), and combining a few of the right ones in a custom wizard will render the player almost unstoppable. Moreover, Life and Nature magic in particular are far too powerful against all other magics. A simple combination of Web/Cracks Call can bring down almost any creature in the game. Playing as certain races (Dark Elves) represents almost a guarantee of victory, while others (Klackons, Gnolls) create challenge in the most tedious ways (lots of unrest in captured cities, lack of available units/buildings). A lack of balance can be seen as creating challenge, wherein race/wizard selection becomes a sort of difficulty selector, but the challenge shouldn't be arbitrary and ultimately boring. It often is in MoM.

Speaking of tedium, the Civ-style "the player must click to build each and every building" falls down into dullness -hard- in MoM. City micromanagment eats up a -huge- portion of each game turn. As in too many Civ-style games, there is no customizable general build list for all cities--the player has the ugly choice of guiding every single new city through the same tedious production path building by building, or using the inept AI "Vizier," which is worse than useless. Waltzing down the same path of buildings every turn for every city in a large, growing empire absolutely kills the pacing of the game.

The AI is hopelessly inept. The AI's units march about aimlessly, throwing away their lives to no clear purpose. Worse, an enemy army can flee several times a turn from combat, so vagrant squatter armies will gather about your territory, and there's no wiping them out until they attack (since the defender always moves first). Two consecutive attacks on such an enemy army might go like this: "fireball->flee, fireball->flee" with the player never getting a chance to do serious damage or even move her units. Not a thrilling experience.

The AI can, however, do a relatively solid job of garrisoning their cities and building their military/power base. They can also ably cast some terrifying spells. Yet the opposing wizards -still- never represent an honest challenge. Even the strongest AI foe on the hardest difficulty cannot stand against a mediocre player with one great stack of units and decent magic--all one needs to do is simply march to the enemy fortress, destroy the defenders and seal up the wizard. Why? Because any mediocre player can use those wonderful unit mechanics -far- better than the AI, which is a bad thing. Just gather a mob of slingers with enchantments and a few heroes, and you've won. Winning this game on any difficulty is thus never a question of "can I?" but rather a question of "should I?"

And why should you? Because diplomacy is broken. Despite a similar system to Master of Orion, your options for mollifying or threatening your enemies are sadly degraded from MoO's very workable standard. The penalty for growing too strong happens almost immediately in MoM. Lacking trade to win friends and being faced with the insta-Alliances AI opponents frequently make with one another, the player is almost always embroiled in constant war against multiple opponents. Gone are the fun probing raids and cold wars of Master of Orion, and likewise the Machiavellian spying, framing, backstabbing, etc. We're back to Civ-style "your tile has touched mine, it's war!" So almost everyone hates you, their enchantments or wandering hobo armies annoy you very quickly, and the only long-term solution is sealing up the offending wizard, which is trivially easy to do. That's a bad situation for pacing. There's no buildup to a storm, just a long uneventful drizzle dotted by frustrated wizard-sealing. The most fun you will have once you learn the game is in building up your heroes.

The other pacing problem is endemic to Civ-style games that rely on exploring the world and lots of combat. Moving. Is. Very. Slow. This wouldn't be a huge issue if every turn didn't start off with five minutes of "built granary, build smithy; built smithy, build marketplace..." times twelve. As it is, it ruins the pace. Long turns of emptiness with a few flashes of brilliance is not a good recipe for a 4x game.

The Bottom Line
But those flashes are truly brilliant! I only describe the flaws so exhaustively because the core greatness of this game makes them stand out all the uglier. MoM is truly a monumental achievement and a must-play game. If you are expecting the sort of elegant, well-paced and situational experience of MoO, however, you will be disappointed. Running around Heroes of Might and Magic style and slaying ultra-mighty monsters through creativity and skill is an absolute joy. Unfortunately, most of the city-building and opponent wizard interaction will feel like a bothersome distraction from this.

DOS · by J. P. Gray (115) · 2008

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

Great, in-depth game

The Good
The number of things that you have to do to win the game, such as building your cities, raising your armies, and learning spells.

The Bad
In a word, GRAPHICS

The Bottom Line
Great game, worth playing.

DOS · by Laey'zur Tiberius Hawke (9) · 2000

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

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 +

  • 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 +

  • MobyGames ID: 200
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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.