Master of Magic

It's good. I was a huge fan of the original back in the day, and this is exactly what it should start as: a faithful replication of the original. Everything from the original is there, plus a hex grid instead of a square one, which is nice. The interface took a bit to get used to, due to some differences between how this game plays and how many other 4x games play (the biggest to get used to was the fact that new units don't start out activated, which initially lead me to not realize units were done building. But it wasn't that hard an adjustment. There are a few changes I wish had been made. More than five wizards per map would be nice. Without it, the larger maps are just a massive empty field, which ends up being nothing but endless micromanagement. But it's good for what it is, and if you just play it as what it is, it's a fun game.

I finally got around to playing this. I see it has had multiple patches. I'm exploring the map (about 115 minutes it reports) - the game crashed on me. Was it the game, my video driver, something else? IDK. I just know I have played the game Valheim for over 800 hours and never had a single crash. Sigh - had hopes for the game, but life is too short for games that crash.

I never played original MoM. However I played the hell out of its spiritual successors which are Age Of Wonders 1 and 2. That basically is the same game but better: more spells, more units, more races, more tactical combats, even the UI is the same. What change is in AoW you do not have to build 10000 towns across the map, nor to capture 10000 towns when fighting an opponent. This version is basically the original game with modern graphics. It is pretty, no doubt, but the gameplay is from another time. Do yourself a favor and grab Age of Wonders 2, it is cheaper and wayyyyy better... and not ugly at all even by today standards

Purtroppo non mi ha entusiasmato, troppi turni per fare una qualsiasi cosa, meccanismi poco chiari... Il prezzo pieno è eccessivo per questo gioco

旧PS1『CIVIZARD（MoM）』を2026年までプレイしていた私に、ようやく乗り継ぎ先が見つかりました。 意外にプレイフィールが違うので、その点を箇条書きにします。 あえて旧作のワードを使って、PS1の『CIVIZARD』、旧作ファンのために書きます。 １　まず、世界が狭く感じます。まずヘックスになったこと、 移動力がデフォルトで2マスになったことで、相対的にそう感じるのかな？ グラフィック的にも、少し手狭な世界観になっています。旧作のドット絵の広大な雰囲気は失われました。 ただ、プレイ上は問題ないです。あくまで雰囲気の話です。 ゲームプレイ的にはヘックスは改善になってます。 縦や横に伸びる都市づくりが密集するようになりました。 これにより防衛線がやりやすく、戦略が増えました。 旧作は首都以外、防衛無視で敵都市を落としまくって 大味に帳尻を合わせる感じだったので改善ですね ただ少し絵がバタ臭いかな。MoM基準なので、CIVIZARD勢には違和感あり。 ２　敵に街を占領された場合の、食料不足による自軍部隊の即時解散がなくなりました。 1ターン猶予が与えられ、街を奪い返すなり、食料生産の見直しでカバー可能になっています。 意外にこれが一番大きいです。 攻めに偏り過ぎて自軍の街を攻略されても、まだ粘って戦う気になります。 後述の首都の魔術師タワータレットの防衛強化と含め、 至難でのギリギリの戦いでの明確な詰みが減りました。 戦略でのリカバリー出来る場面が増えてます。 ３　過去作のコンボが通用しないものがあります。 ワンドにチャージでの神器創造が、一部できなくなっています。 条件変更なのか、廃止なのかは不明です。 生命力の吸収×4などの、マナ入れ放題のマジックワンドは残してほしかった……。 ただ、細かい変更によって新規のシナジーも生まれているので、そこはプラスマイナスゼロかな……。 ４　英雄周りは使いやすいように全般的に調整されています。 レベルごとに、スキルに掛け算されるものが増えています。 高貴もレベルごとに収入が増えます！ 育ち切った高貴持ちの英雄（プシャン）は、産業都市並みの収入です！！ 高貴は当りスキルになりました。 スキルの見直しにより、序盤の英雄育成の楽しみと重さが増しました。 バグトゥルーなどの一線を張れない能力の英雄がゴミにならず、 前線一歩手前の後衛英雄みたいな扱いができるのが楽しいです。 あと、マジックアイテムを相手魔術師から購入・交換できます。 これは便利です。アイテム製造にPICを振らなくても、そこそこの英雄を作れます。 英雄プレイ以外のPIC振りでも、英雄の活躍が現実的になっています。 （購入がゴールドよりマナで買った方が僅かに効率いいのも好印象、 　マナ系スキルや錬金術とのシナジーが生まれます。） 総じて言うと、おおむね全ての面にわたり改善されています。 世界と移動力のスケールが合い、過去作であまり使わなかったユニットが生きています。 旧作の至難では、ホースボウマンなんて使ったことがありませんでしたが、後衛英雄とスタックさせて都市防衛の遊撃隊にすると、十分に機能を果たせています！ CIVIZARDでは、都市防衛などが移動力の関係であまりしにくかったのですが、今作では普通のストラテジーゲームのように、道路整備＋騎乗ユニット系で防衛線を構築するのも楽しいです。 しかも都市が落とされても、食料不足解散の猶予があるので詰みにくい！ 攻守の戦略要素が見直され、優等生な普通のストラテジーゲームになっています。 あと、ダメージ表記が非常にありがたいです！ 今まで雰囲気でプレイしていたんだなと……。 より『CIVIZARD』、MoMへの見識が深まります。 ただ、最高難易度にした場合、旧作より少し難易度は落ちているかもしれません。 全てのシナジーが見直された関係上、弱いPIC振りでも戦えるようになりました。 初手で魔術書を減らしたり、色々できますので、 そこらへんでバランスを取れば、同程度の難易度になる感じかな。 難易度バランスも絶妙です。 旧作の開始時に選ぶ「大陸の大きさ」はなくなってしまいましたが、世界の広さ、中立都市の多さなどを選べるようになったので、「至難」と「難しい」の間ができた感じで遊べます。 旧作は、至難が「速攻で攻略しながら、空いた隙間で趣味のプレイを少し行う」みたいな歪さでした。 今作は、至難でも割と弱い趣味のPIC振りで、手ごたえを感じながら趣味プレイも可能です。 中立都市の多さを選べるので、エンジニア不足による道路建設不可も起こりにくいです。 「世界広い」「中立都市多い」「敵の強さ至難」のプレイが楽しいです。 ちなみに開幕のPICの多さも選べますし、14PICくらいまでだったかな？ スキルもデフォルトで増えています。 英雄特化みたいなスキルと召喚系スキルを取って、初手英雄召喚200マナ以下みたいなこともできます。 PIC数は錬金術が2PICになったり、ミラーンが2PICになったり……。 差異が気になったら、自分でPICを増やしてバランスを取っています。 細かいところで言うと、色々と変更があります。 種族のバランス調整。 ハイエルフ、ハーフリングなど、強種族のユニット製造コスト150％などのバランス取りがあり、おおむねいい感じです。 中立都市で手に入れたハズレ種族も、生産して使う場面が増えました。 遺跡は、二段階侵入のものが増えました。 連続2戦を行い、途中撤退すると1戦目の報酬のみで遺跡は消滅します。 首都には、魔法タレットのようなタワーが出現します。 首都防衛に足の速い英雄を置いておけば、逃げ回ることである程度防衛できます。 逆に攻める側は、ギリギリの戦力では勝ちにくくなりました。 変更はあれど、基本的には全て理にかなった満足な出来です。 失われたのは、PS1『CIVIZARD』独特の、MoMとも違うドット絵の美麗さぐらいです。 何よりバグが少ない！ 製材所バグやら、神の加護バグやら……。PS1独特のずっとポートレートの顔サウロンから解放されますよ… ちなみにフォントも日本語フォントを使用可能なので、自作翻訳XMLで日本語プレイしています。 チャッピー任せの、スクリプト壊れまくりの翻訳ですが、遺跡やイベントの文章以外は全部翻訳できました。 ユニットや魔法効果などは非常に高精度です。 素人ながら、これをベースに日本語翻訳を進めていきたいです。 そもそもスクリプトをよく理解していないので、5年ぐらいかかりそうですが……。 何はともあれ、CIVIZARD難民は、ようやく代替案を見つけ出すことができたのではないでしょうか？ As someone who kept playing the old PS1 version, CIVIZARD (Master of Magic), all the way until 2026, I finally feel like I have found a proper successor. The play feel is surprisingly different, so I will list the differences below. I am intentionally using old-school terminology here, for PS1 CIVIZARD players and fans of the original. 1. First, the world feels smaller. Maybe it feels that way because the map is now hex-based, and default movement has become 2 tiles. Visually, the world also feels a bit more compact. The vast atmosphere of the old pixel-art world has been lost. That said, it is not a gameplay problem. This is mostly about atmosphere. In terms of gameplay, the hex system is an improvement. City placement, which used to stretch vertically or horizontally, now becomes more compact and concentrated. This makes defensive lines easier to build and adds more strategic options. In the old game, aside from the capital, it often felt like you ignored defense and just kept capturing enemy cities to balance things out in a rough way. So this is an improvement. Still, the art style feels a little Western and heavy. Since my standard is the PS1 CIVIZARD look, it may feel strange to other CIVIZARD players too. 2. When an enemy captures one of your cities, your own units no longer disband immediately due to food shortage. You are given a one-turn grace period, so you can either retake the city or adjust your food production to recover. Surprisingly, this may be the biggest change. Even if you focus too much on offense and one of your cities gets captured, you still feel like you can keep fighting. Combined with the capital’s defensive wizard tower turret, which I will mention later, there are fewer obvious checkmate situations during close battles on Very Hard. There are now more situations where you can recover through strategy. 3. Some old combos no longer work. Some charge-based wand combos using items made with Create Artifact no longer seem to work. I am not sure whether the conditions were changed or whether they were removed entirely. I wish they had kept things like magic wands with four Life Steal charges that could generate huge amounts of mana. That said, the smaller system changes have also created new synergies, so this may balance out overall. 4. Heroes have been adjusted overall to make them easier and more rewarding to use. More skills now scale by hero level. Noble also increases income by level. A fully developed Noble hero, such as Pshann, can generate income comparable to an industrial city. Noble has become a genuinely strong skill. Because of the skill adjustments, early hero development is more enjoyable and more meaningful. Heroes who could not really stand on the front line, such as Baghtru, no longer feel like garbage. It is fun to use them as rear-line heroes just behind the main front. You can also buy or trade magic items from rival wizards. This is very convenient. Even without spending picks on item creation, you can still build decent heroes. This makes hero usage realistic even when you are not specifically building around heroes. I also like that buying items with mana is slightly more efficient than buying them with gold. It creates synergy with mana-related skills and Alchemy. Overall, I would say almost every part has been improved. The scale of the world and unit movement now fit together better, and units I rarely used in the old game are now useful. In the old Very Hard, I never used Horsebowmen. But in this version, when stacked with rear-line heroes and used as mobile city defenders, they work perfectly well. In CIVIZARD, city defense was not very practical because of movement limitations. In this version, building defensive lines with roads and mounted units feels fun, like in a more standard strategy game. And even if a city falls, you now have a grace period before food shortage causes disbanding, so it is harder to fall into an instant-loss situation. The offensive and defensive strategic elements have been reworked, making this a very solid, orthodox strategy game. Also, the damage display is extremely helpful. It made me realize that I had been playing mostly by feel until now. It actually deepens my understanding of both CIVIZARD and Master of Magic. However, at the highest difficulty, the game may be slightly easier than the old version. Because the synergies have been reworked overall, even weaker pick setups can now fight properly. You can reduce your starting spellbooks and adjust various settings, so if you balance things that way, it can probably reach a similar level of difficulty. The difficulty balance is also excellent. The old option for choosing continent size at the start is gone, but now you can choose things like world size and the number of neutral cities. Because of that, it feels like you can create a balance somewhere between Very Hard and Hard. In the old game, Very Hard had a distorted feel where you had to rush efficiently, then use whatever small openings you had for your personal fun builds. In this version, even on Very Hard, you can use relatively weak hobby pick setups and still enjoy a mean 　

I loved the original. This is a very good Windows adaption.

Uhhh, on one hand I give it that this is somewhat of a faithtful remake. But the thing is... This is also the bad part of it? The attempts to balance the game failed, the OP strategies (summoning) are the same as they were, the AI is just as braindead and a cheater as it was in the original, the early game continues to be very slow and dull as it was. And the additions didn't really add to the game at all. The gameplay loop is just bad and outdated. It is extremely boring to pass days early on to be able to have enough production to be able to pump a decent army to clear out lairs. The low level lairs have terrible rewards that almost always aren't even worth the time investment to reach it, which means exploring isn't rewarding at all. I don't know guys, But playing this reminded me of why eventually I got bored of the original MoM. Got it on a very deep discount and I still think it wasn't worth it. There are better alternatives with better and more polished gameplay. I would recommend going for this only if you still enjoy playing the original and even then I don't feel like this game did anything to justify being played over the original.

도전과제 완료후 리뷰입니다. 90년대 4X게임의 선두주자였던 마스터 오브 매직의 리마스터판입니다. 리마스터판이라지만 실제로 오리지날과 99퍼 동일한 시스템인데 AI하는 꼬라지(유저 도시 사이에 알박하고 자기땅 침범한다고 꼬장부리고, 지들은 유저 땅 멋대로 들락날락하면서 유저 유닛이 조금만 가까이 가도 자기 위협한다고 전쟁걸어버림)를 볼때, 소스코드까지 똑같은 걸로 보임. 다른건 그래픽뿐으로 오리지널 경험자라면 아무 문제없이 적응합니다. 그래서 오리지널과 비교하면 깔끔한 그래픽이나 모드 적용가능외에는 장점이 없고 오히려 세세한 점에선 오리지널보다 못합니다. 대표적으로 오리지널은 종족별로 도트그림이 따로 있어서 마을 화면으로 들어가면 농사꾼, 일꾼, 불만분자가 그래픽으로 표시되고 유저는 마우스로 비율을 직관적으로 조절하는데, 리메는 딸랑 숫자로 표시해서 이넘들이 대충 만들었다는걸 알 수 있습니다. 전투 애니도 오리지널처럼 아기자기한 맛(조그만 도트캐릭이 크아앙우와앙거림...ㅋ)이 없고 그냥 붕쯔붕쯔 모션이라 보는 맛도 떨어집니다. 다른 초기리뷰들은 보면 후반부에 랙으로 플레이 힘들다고 하는데 지금은 그정도까진 아니고 조금 느려지고 유닛이 마우스 가져가면 있다고 뜨는데 화면에는 표시안된다던지, 마을 그래픽이 좌표 어긋나서 바다에 있다던지하는 자잘한 찐빠정도입니다. 다만 오리지널이 그렇듯 재미하나는 보장하는 게임이라 오리지널은 많이 해서 다른 모드나 그런거 해보고싶다는 분들한테 추천합니다. 마스터 오브 매직 해본적은 없는데 관심은 있으신분은 리메 말고 오리지널도 스팀에 있으니 그걸 하세요 훨씬 쌉니다. 그리고 추가로 이게임의 DLC리뷰도 본 리뷰에 적습니다. -도전과제 팁- <Wizard Supreme> 도전과제 설명이 거지같아서 조건이 뭔지 안적혀있는데 난이도200퍼센트이상에서 게임승리가 달성조건입니다. 프리셋의 200퍼는 적 마법사가 4명에다가 AI보정치가 최대수치라 양면전쟁에 물량전으로 가면 못버티기때문에 AI를 마스터가 아닌 스킬드로 낮추고 대신에 초기자금 최소, 마나노드산출 최소같은식(어차피 후반부나 되어야 마나노드 먹을까 말까라 무쓸모임)으로 커스텀한 다음 시작하세요. 추천종족은 드라코니언. 마나생산능력에 날아다녀서 초반 버티기가 다른 종족보다 수월함. 추천 마법은 생명마법. 그래서 마이언에 생명마법사인 쉬라가 좋은데 이때 DLC는 모두 비활성화해야함 안그럼 마이런대륙에 적마법사가 넘쳐나서 안됨(DLC를 적용하면 상대방 마법사에 유저랑 같은 속성을 가진 마법사가 반드시 나옴) <Which Wizard> 오리지널 마법사말고도 DLC추가마법사, 유저커스텀마법사도 카운트됨.. 각기 다른 마법사로 5번 이기면 획득 -이하 DLC리뷰- <소울트랩DLC> 스타트랙 보그같은 기계생명체종족이 추가되는데, 기존 종족과 비교해서 강하지만 뭔가 조금씩 나사가 빠진느낌으로(원거리유닛이 발사탄수가 모자란다던가..) 제대로 운용할려면 역시 새로 추가된 테크매직으로 보조해 줘야함.. 이 DLC의 가장 큰 문제는 태크던젼이라는 중반부이후 등장하는 위기이벤트(커스텀 설정으로 온오프가능)인데, 난이도가 어이가 없을정도로 높아서 다른 리뷰들도 악평임.. 랜덤으로 각 도시 근처에 테크던젼이라는 일반던젼같은게 막 생기는데 여기서 소울트랩종족 최종티어 부대가 막 나옴.. 필드상 돌아다니는 부대는 일반 소울트랩종족이랑 같아서 어느정도 키운 도시부대라면 막아내는데 문제는 던젼안의 적들이 사기아냐 싶은 버프(생명마법의 각종 버프비슷한 것들에 소서리 투명 마법등등.. 특수 버프라 해제안됨)들 둘둘 바르고 나오는데 무조건 2부대랑 싸우기때문에 각 종족의 최고티어부대를 물량전으로 밀어붙여서 조금씩 체력깍아서 던젼을 없애도록 설계되어있음... 그렇다고 던젼 없애면 좋은거 주냐? 노노 그런거 없음 꼴랑 도시 생산 3퍼늘리는 자원 한칸 주는데 난이도에 비해 보상이 없는셈임... 최소 피해로 없앨려면 성전킨 버프둘둘 팔라딘이나 트롤의 워맘모스7+샤면2부대가 좋음(AI특성으로 트롤 샤면에 먼저 공격이 집중되어서 워맘모스가 최소피해로 승리하면 죽었던 샤먼유닛이 살아돌아옴 연전가능) 이 DLC의 가장 큰 장점은 데몬 여마법사가 일러가 예쁘다는거 단하나...;; <스커지DLC> 스커지라는 신종족에 해적특성마법사 추가. 해적특성은 적이나 중립 마을을 점령하면 명성깍이고 파괴하면 반대로 명성과 각종 마법 및 템을 얻는 것으로 기존 마매플레이랑 다른 좀 신박한 컨셉이긴한데 4X게임의 특성인 운영을 포기한거라 중반이후부터 플레이가 단조로워짐.. 점령을 안하니 지킬 필요도 없고 연구도 필요없고 그냥 다때려부수면 되는지라.. 거기다 크라켄도 뭔가 거대보스같아보이지만 전혀 아니고 그냥 촉수 몇개 잡으면 끝임... 대신 엔드급 템을 줘서 잡을 가치는 있음.. 여러모로 애매한 특성이 있는 DLC. 문명비욘드어스마냥 해양도시 세울수 있는것도 아니고 대부분의 전투가 육지에서 일어나는데 바다전투버프라는게 그닥...(해양던젼이나 크라켄던젼에서나 유용) 상기 DLC들에 추가되는 새로운 영웅유닛은 각자 스토리 설정이 있어서 어느정도 성장하면 기존 영웅중에 정해진 대적자가 나타나서 이기면 스킬 같은걸 줌(예외로 저격총쓰는 다크엘프같은 경우 거절하면 더 좋은 패시브줌)

Very true to the old game, but with updated graphics and justified tweaks to gameplay

This new version of old game is really neat, speed up fights and all. still heroes die too easy even on higher levels and merc keeps selling crap even later on game. balance with units is still high, mages are terminators, paladins weak( old game op). and loads of different enemies have lost their deadly force. High men best option to rule areas. still as its recommendable for old fans and civ fans cause similarity on games is high.