Master of Magic

The Good
First off, I grew up with this game. I have played this game probably more times than I care to admit, and I still find it infinitely entertaining. The fact that I also love Civ games probably didn't help matters either.

But really, that's what this game comes down to. It's a Civilization game but with magic. There are very few turn based games out there that allows you to play an empire building game with this level of freedom.

One of my personal favorite parts of this game though? The exploration and the heroes. Sure, fighting other wizards is fun and all, but sending your heroes to go around and exploring dungeons and what not? For some strange reason, it made the game for me.

I especially like the fact that you can have your multiple heroes, and deck them out from head to toe in full battle gear that you crafted yourself.

The addition of spells also means that your tactical choices are not as simple as you would with most Civ games. Civ games have you discover techs to unlock units. In MoM, your spells unlock not units, but tactical options.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the game is not without it's flaws.

For starters, there are a staggering number of bugs in this game that render a large number of powers and abilities simply useless.

second, there was little in the way of game balancing and proper AI control. The AI will know how to overwhelm you with forces (by basically cheating like crazy just like any Civ-like game), but they won't know how to combine them to make them more effective. (Or rather, how to undo some tricks that you might employ.)

The end result is that you'll have situations where a single nightstalker (the night elf unique unit) defending the city is more than enough to hold off a 9 stack unit, as the AI does not know how to handle an invisible unit that is intrinsically invisible. So it will sit around until the clock runs out and end the battle in a stalemate.

It is also the reason why late in the game while you're running with storm giants and the like, your foe could still be sitting around with spearmen.

And then we have the game balance issue. Races are not created equal, so god help you if you picked the kracken or the lizard folk as your starting race, you'll be spending the rest of the game trying to get another race that doesn't suck quite as much.

But even more infuriating is the diplomacy model. Or rather, the lack of it. Sure, you can try to create treaties with other wizards. but quite honestly, their personalities are so volatile that said union will probably dissolve in a matter of rounds in a orgy of schizophrenic messages. There is no point to it. And really, the only effective purpose of diplomacy in this game is to just make a treaty so that they don't attack you for now. Can't say how long that will last though, as these computer wizards seem to have a wild mood swings that makes a bipolar clown look sane by comparison.

The Bottom Line
Civilization in a fantasy setting