About World Of Magic:
Typos, formatting errors, and placeholders abound in the text in this game. The UI from the stone age makes the game feel like you’re actually playing Masters of Magic while you’re trying to move and manage your units. The sound effects in the game are comically unimpressive, especially when everything that gets hit makes the same manly grunt whether they be man, woman, beast, or being of pure magic. Worlds of Magic might eventually become a fun game, but playing the 1.0 version, I can say it is laughably unready for release. Which is a shame really, because underneath all of these superficial yet aggressively apparent flaws is a game with mechanics that do not suck. Each of the game’s factions play relatively differently. There is a large enough pool of worlds, spells, monsters, resources, and special events to give you a feeling of exploration after multiple playthroughs. Six hours into the game, I have also found it delightful to explore the strategic and tactical options the game allows you to play with. This game is unfinished by a grat deal. Even leaving out features annotated in the manual. While some bugs have been fixed and it is possible to complete a game after dealing with many crashes, the developers have abondened the game. They do not post to forums nor have they updated this work in months. I would recommend strongly against buying this game. You have been warned. It should also be noted, MY GAME TIME IS NOT ACCURATE. While I have likely played over a hundred hours in total and have played enough to confidently review the game, I often neglect to close the game when walking away from my keyboard, indeed keeping it on overnite at some points. I would not mention this, but it has come up in comments. Updated Review (13 July 2015): At the release of version 1.2.0, the game remains unplayable. In fact, to date I have not been able to complete a single game I’ve begun due to catastrophic failure of the game. Some bugs can be recovered from by reloading the game, either saving/reloading or loading a prior save. In the end; however, each of my games crashed and was un-recoverable (the death bug corrupts all saves). This crash generally happens when the game just starts to get interesting (it’s a slow starter), which makes things worse… DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! It will only frusterate you. I had hoped to write a glimmering review of a successor to the great Master of Magic, but I think there is an evil curse associated with the game. Two would-be successors to the legacy have failed. Tis sad, as this game has potential and managed to expand on some of the things that made Master of Magic great; however, it falls short in every manner and is bugged to the degree that the game still feels like a late beta after having been officially relased 16 March. That’s four months! Four months and this reviewer hasn’t been able to complete a game once because of a game-killing bug. Unacceptable. Original Review: Officially released 19 March — as of 10 May, in my experience — the game is yet unplayable. The player is met with minimal tooltips for guidance and no tutorial, though apparently one was planned. Many of the features annotated in the manual are still not implicated. Want to experiment with the many announced negative disciplines? Well, you can’t. There are only half a dozen. Want to build mithril weapons for your armies and heros? Well, you can’t. Selecting mithril in the forge doesn’t change the stats of your weapons. While developers pounded out updates during the first month of the game, fixes are becoming more elusive. If you can get past all of this, there is fun to be had. It does feel like a successor to the 1990’s game Master of Magic, however, after starting several games, I have yet to be able to finish one. Not due to lack of patience, but due to deadly game-crashing bugs. I’ve played to around 500 turns (in some cases having never met an enemy wizard) gathering up power, hunting down nodes, and enjoying myself only to have a fatal impassable error draw the game to an end. After a couple of weeks off to let the developers fix the bugs, I gave it another go. The map navigation stops working around turn 5 (eg. you can’t click and drag on the minimap to move around). This would be okay, but when my army pops up, it wont auto focus on it. Fine… I’ll hunt them down by scrolling on the main map. I found a grey elf village on turn ten. Undefended, except a single garrisoned archer. Defeated. Crash. Main map icons pop up on the battlefield as though it were the world map and FREEZE! I can not recommend this game. DO NOT BUY IT! I know, you hope it’s really good, and it ain’t bad in concept. It just doesn’t work and half of the cool concepts haven’t been implemented. Most disappointing. Check back for reviews over the coming months and see if the game improves, but do not buy until you hear solid reviews. This too is difficult because of general fan-dom and no doubt more difficult because the developer croudfunded, so there are many people who feel positively about the game because of their personal investment. If the game looks interesting, I would suggest going to GoG and purchasing Master of Magic. It shows it’s age, but it does work. You can start and finish a game. I hope this game get’s a serious revamp by developers, because it could be so good, but seeing them back off on updates when the game is so incomplete isn’t a good sign…
