Lords Of Magic |
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Wednesday December 23,1998 |
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Lords Of Magic |
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Wednesday December 23,1998 |
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Rushed out or poorly executed.. what could have been an excellent game. |
| At first glance, Lords of
Magic seems to be too good to be true. Combining the
gameplay of Heroes of Might and Magic II with the style
and look of Lords of the Realm II. Add a killer graphics
engine into the mix and you have the ingredients for a
really great, if not one of the best strategy/adventure
games of the year. Unfortunately, it seems, this was
indeed too good to be true. As it is, Lords of Magic just
doesn't live up to its potential. Being unstable, buggy,
and suffering from a number of design flaws. Starting up the game, you'll see the intro movie, telling the story of Balkoth, the Arch-Demon of Death, and his struggles to defeat the mighty nations of Urak. You play the part as Lord of one of eight nations and religious faiths that you may choose from. The leader which you choose, can be be one of three classes. You may choose him to be a Warrior, Mage or Thief. Though the classes are pretty much balanced, they all have unique advantages and disadvantages. For example; If you were planning on fighting mostly using Hand to Hand combat tactics, it'd be best for you to choose your leader to be a Warrior, as he is the strongest of the classes, both defensively and offensively. On the other hand, if you wish to fight your battles using more stand-off attack methods, then you'd be better to choose your leader to be a Thief or a Mage, as they can attack from afar. Though these two classes are quite weak, the idea is not to let the enemy get close enough to harm to, to take them out at longer ranges. Your goal as Lord and acting leader, is to defeat Balkoth, whether alone as a nation, or through an alliance with other nations and faiths. If your an explorer, then this is your type of game. Exploration and resource management takes on a big part in LOM. You'll need to explore and search for mines, villages, towers, and enemies. Also, while your off roaming the distant lands, you'll also have to be developing your cities and armies. Your first and foremost goal of the game to achieve is to find and liberate the Great Temple of your faith. Doing so will give your people new hope, and they will build a stronghold for you. After getting your resources and cities setup and running smoothly, it's time to concentrate on building your invasion force of foot soldiers, cavalry, recon units and so on. Each one of your armies is led by a Champion. This Champion is not only a very capable fighter, and a valuable asset to your cause, but also can act as trainer to give experience to new units. Though this keeps a valuable asset from the battlefields.
Run for your life! |
 Starting out, you don't have much... When you feel your ready to take on the world, or just Balkoth's immense armies, then its time to set off in search of trouble. Trouble is an easy thing to find in LOM, though finding the right enemy can prove difficult. For example, lets say you've got several large armies all ready to fight, so you send them off to battle Balkoth's demonic armies of death. On your way, you can be attacked several times by a force of renegades, weakening your army, and even sometimes killing one or more of your Champions. This can be a real setback for what could have been a perfectly executed engagement. I found that its best to use recon units to scout out the area ahead of the main force to find, or more appropriately, stumble into enemy ambushes that may lie in wait. Combat in LOM is performed in real time, rather than turn-based like the strategy portion of the game. After finding a baddie to put da shmack down on, you can cause him pain using one of two methods. The first method, is the most obvious, which is manual combat.. This is where you manually control your units in combat, using a point and click, isometric view interface much like that of Diablo. The other option is the Auto-Calculate feature, in which the computer calculates the outcome of you battles for you, which is usually much better than humanly possible. Ok, so the fight is on, swords clash, mages cast spells, and that's when you notice something odd.. For some reason or another, some of your superior troops are being mauled by inferior forces. Seemingly stuck in a terrain feature and incapable of functioning, he just sits there waiting to slaughtered. This makes manual combat very frustrating to say the least, so I find myself using the auto-calculate button more often then not. Though this too has a drawback. Each time you enter combat, the game engine must be changed from the main turn based engine to the real time combat engine, even if your not gotta be the one to fight. So you end up waiting to load a combat sequence only to have it flash back out and reload the main game engine.... quite annoying.. Despite the many flaws and bugs, LOM is really a very good game, though it seems it was either rushed to release, or just poorly executed. My advice to anyone interested in this title; Sit back and wait for some patches before you frustrate yourself trying to play a flawed game. Once fixed, LOM is sure be a big hit amongst HOMM and LOR2 players. |
Company: Category: Lords of Magic NOTES: Interest: 85% TOTAL : 76% Requirements: Operating System: Memory: Sound Card: Joshua Westhoven |
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