So, this vs Planar Conquest?

[gungadin22000]

I played PC when it came out and was lauded as a spiritual successor/remake of MoM, but the modding scene unfortunately never took off and it was subsequently largely forgotten.

Does anyone who's played both PC and this version of MoM have any comments on how they compare and whether this is a worthwhile improvement on the formula?

[zordok2]

For Planar, I was hooked as a spiritual heir. But after a couple of hours of gameplay, I didn’t see anything familiar, and I was too lazy to understand a completely new system (with a low rating). Here at least a completely familiar system. So for me this implementation is better. I have faint hopes that the developers will release a system of mods, and the community will finish here both the completely classic version of the game (1.5 patch) and CoM.

[jlutes]

Planar Conquest is pretty bad, imo. This version of MoM may have its issues, but it is far superior.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by jlutes:

Planar Conquest is pretty bad, imo. This version of MoM may have its issues, but it is far superior.

I agree.

[gungadin22000]

Originally posted by jlutes:

Planar Conquest is pretty bad, imo. This version of MoM may have its issues, but it is far superior.

Why? They're both pretty similar.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

Originally posted by jlutes:

Planar Conquest is pretty bad, imo. This version of MoM may have its issues, but it is far superior.

Why? They're both pretty similar.

It's buggy as ♥♥♥♥ to begin with. This one doesn't seem to be. I've encountered no bugs the first 10 hours or so. I probably would've encountered 20 at the release of Planar Conquest.

[mhaeric]

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

I played PC when it came out and was lauded as a spiritual successor/remake of MoM, but the modding scene unfortunately never took off and it was subsequently largely forgotten.

Does anyone who's played both PC and this version of MoM have any comments on how they compare and whether this is a worthwhile improvement on the formula?

My very general overview of the major differences.

Master of Magic remaster:
- Far more faithful to the original. This can be good or bad depending on your viewpoint. It faithfully recreates an almost 30 year old game so a lot of the gameplay doesn't feel modern.
- UI is generally pretty good without any major clunkiness. There's enough similarity with the original here to make it familiar, but it's different enough to feel a bit more modern.
- Very little in the way of new features and some features of the original are missing or toned down. (e.g. town maps, animations for global/summoning spells.) The main feature additions are greater custom difficulty levels and a more robust editor.
- The graphics are beautiful for the most part although subdued, especially in comparison to the original which was bright and colourful. Certain areas like menus and spell casting cutscenes do look a bit "mobile gamey."

Planar Conquest:
- More of a re-imagining of the original than a remaster. The core gameplay still feels like the original MoM but it's more like it's a second game in a series. I definitely get the impression that the devs were fans of the original and implemented things they personally felt would be cool. Which leads to...
- Lots of new features and ways to play the game. E.g. spell books can be selected by spell type as well as by element leading to lots more variety and customization, multiple planes with different environmental features, feats/traits pretty significantly reworked, etc.
- UI is very clunky and buggy in places. There are a lot of odd decisions that were made, particularly with unit selection and commands.
- The graphics are inconsistent. Sometimes it's beautiful, other times it's blocky. It does mostly capture the bright colourful nature of the original, though.

My overall verdict:
I prefer the MoM remaster to Planar Conquest, but I'm one of those players who as put literally 1000's of hours into the original game all the way back from when it released in 1994. It definitely scratches that nostalgic but modernized itch for me. As for Planar Conquest, I wanted to like it but I always ended up getting too frustrated by the clunkiness to play it for long. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it more times than I'm willing to admit as a result.

[UmbralAngel]

I put a good amount of time (60 hours) into Planar Conquest but eventually got bored of it and no reason to go back. I have hundreds of hours in Mom (both old and new) and still eager to go back and play more. I think most people would agree that the new MoM is the better game all around.

[PengoPaddy]

AI in PC is terrible. Its fun to try out the different spells and units you can get but not a game I played for overly long. I enjoyed the time I spent with it but don't see anyone liking it more than this MoM remake.

[RatsoRizzo]

I have PC and it is crap compared to this game.