I am very sad not to recommend WoM in its current state (1.2.4). It had a lot of good ideas, sadly the product is crippled with flaws and bugs (and not only myrodants, the insectoid race in the game). UI is very clunky, lists are not exactly presented as list and are scroll fests (what good is an overview that show only 2 cities at a time? no troll in the game, so here they are?).

While artwork is gorgeous, translation to 3D models is very uneven. Music is decent while SFX are pretty awkward (smells like placeholder). Visual feedback when casting spell is present, although sometimes very discreet and as there is no sound to accompany the effect... Isometrical 3D also has counter-intuitive implementations (i.e. to select a unit on a mountain, you need to click at the base of square of the mountain, cities control zone visualisation is also affected by relief and is pretty confusing). Top-down map is present, but nearly no information is there (no armies, no resources) so its like totally useless. While the game seems to be fully in 3D, there is no way to rotate the camera (neither in strategic or tactical views) while this would already solve quite a few "visibility" issues.

There are also several bugs, most of them not game breaking but still ranging from slightly to very annoying.

The game feels so unfiinished and unpolished, yet I could go over it if the features in the game did work properly. Yet they don't. For example you have resources (typically minerals like adamantine or mithril) that are supposed to provide your troops with bonuses in the town owning them if you also have an alchemy guild. Does not work (or if it does, there is absolutely no visual feedback on that, numbers stay the same, unit skills screen don't show any modifier).

For a price tag nearly matching a triple A title, so many flaws, unimplemented or buggy features, this is not acceptable. After checking the forum, the resource bug was reported at least since March 15. At the time of this review (end August 15) such a major feature still hasn't been fixed despite a dev acknowledging the feedback at the time. And that is one of an overly long list of typos, missing text, placeholders, glitches and bugs that was indeed reported. I mean, it seems no one does any QA (except the users) or track and prioritize the bugs. Many of those reported stuff is easy fix - probably as fast as answering "thanks for the report we are working on it" like they do on their steam forum, but is still not done. It feels like the company is badly managed and organized and it shows in their product, despite all the heart artists, designers and some programmers must have put into this game. It already feels like WoM is a lost cause (even if some patches rolled out since official release, most visible and major issues are not fixed) like if the code was not documented either and they are lost into it now, scared to try to fix anything without breaking much more.

It is a shame. I would advice to only buy if you are really getting tired of playing MoM on Dosbox since more than a decade and don't care about money well spent. Even then you may end up frustrated and could consider the excellent Endless Legend or Age of Wonders 3 instead. Too bad, this game really was a promising remake of MoM with nice upgrades.

I reserve the right to edit or delete this negative review if Badlands actually release a patch that drastically and visibly improve WoM.

Updated Review, Brief! (6 December 2015)

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...

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.

"... having conquered both the worlds of Arcanus and Myrror, you are the only true Master of Magic"

Or so it has gone so far, because apparently we finally get to conquer a couple of planes more.

I was looking for a downloadable archive of MoM (I do not even have a pc that can read the floppies it was on when I brought it anymore, how sad is that?) when I noticed this one.
The "pay up thirty bucks, then we show you the beta" thing was not very appealing, but I decided to give it a go anyway. (Hint to the developers: do publish a small demo version)

It was worth it.

The game is... well, it's MoM with modern graphics and without the need for dosbox. There are some gameplay improvements but that's it.
I was hoping it was the case, and I was not disappointed in the least. I don't want a fancy reinterpretation, I want Master of Magic. This is it.


(Assumes knowledge of Master of Magic)

Why is there no ominous wizard tower on the start screen? No matter, let's start a new game.
Four planes available, with both continent style and amount of water on separate settings for each.

A lot of races in already, High Men are pretty much identical to how they were, elves too. (Orcs are more like lizardmen, the undead are a mirrored high men, like orcs were in the first one)... oh, wait, draconians... doom drakes? Ok, race chosen.
They're pretty much the same too. A bit more difficult economically maybe.

The standard archmages are Merlin, Ariel, Freya, Ssra, Jafar and Rjak plus two new additions. sure they are not actually names the same. Wait, Rjak is.

Magic is pretty much the same, sorcery was split into water and air, nature becames earth, chaos becames fire. Death and life are the same.
There are also thematic paths like summoning or protection, but at the moment they appear to be a bit contrived. They use the same spell of the elemental ones, but picking them by theme. I'll stick with elements for now.


The gameplay is the same. And that's exactly what I was looking for. No need for instruction if you know the game already. You just need to spend a bit of time finding stuff you know is there.


flaws that might already be fixed by the time you read this
- no good way to understand where mana is going, the enchantment screen does not cut it (besides there's no way to tell which unit or city has which enchantment).
- very poor strategic world map, after Fallen Enchantress I'm used to way better at max zoom out. A note-taking feature would be appreciated too, or at least the possibility to name a location.
- not enough tooltips. you got some hovering on icons in the city interface, why not on the city list as well?
- poor information inside cities. there's a total produced per building/features/population, but no way to tell, e.g. which feature is giving you a bonus or where is it on the map. Same for research bonuses.
- an internal encyclopedia is sorely needed, at the very least I should know the statistics of the unit I am going to build, without building them first. Something on those lines for enemy armies would be appreciated too.

If you liked Master of Magic, and are willing to try it again with newer graphics and a few changes, then you are really going to want to play this game.

Worlds of Magic is a shameless spiritual successor to Master of Magic; the races are there (High Men, Elves, Dwarves, Dragonkin, Orcs, and Undead, so far, with the possibility of more coming along later); the heroes are there; the artifacts that make your heroes monstrously powerful are there; the spells, spell books (circles in WoM), and Wizard Lord perks are there; town management and research and all the strategic features. WoM is instantly accessible if you know MoM. But there have been some changes, and I think most of them are for the better.

The magic system is different but makes a lot of sense. Spells are now part of two distinct schools, and the sum of your proficiency in those schools unlocks them. So, say you like a particular buffing spell that's part of Biomancy and Life. If you have enough of either, you are able to research the spell - but if you spread out your spell picks and got some of both, then the total you have will allow unlocking the spell for research. It's a nice way to distinguish the spells within their MoM types - not all Life spells are equal, after all, so why should they all require the same prerequisites? The infusion system in Worlds of Magic allows your combat spells to scale in power as you gain greater Spellcraft (like many of the spells in MoM did), so even those starting spells can be of great use throughout the game.

Combat mechanics are handled via the d20 system, which is very easy to understand. The numbers get a good deal bigger than the Master of Magic nimbers did (a basic High Men spearman unit can end up with almost 100 hit points at maximum level, without special buffs, for example), but the damage keeps up so battles don't slog on. Healing feels a little weaker (except for Healing Wind, which at maximum infusion turns enormous fights against the undead into a two-turn rout), but that just means that your tactical choices are a little more important.

Races are much better balanced in Worlds of Magic than in the MoM predecessor. If you've played MoM, you know that Paladins = Instawin. All races have the ability to dominate, in WoM; the Grey Elves, for example, have probably the most powerful starting unit in the game (Archers), but even an army full of levelled archers can be managed. Similarly, an army of Paladins in WoM will be powerful, for sure, but not unstoppable - especially if you have an opposing army of similarly powerful units (orcish Manslayers; Elven Faradrax; Draconian Elders, etc).

The economy in WoM is very familiar to anyone who played MoM - with one notable exception. The undead have been worked to have a different, simplified economy. This is an interesting option, because it completely changes the feel of the game. With undead being unable to invade and keep the cities of the living (they are the enemies of all life, after all), playing as the Unhallowed (WoM name for undead) turns you unto a rolling tide of death, and makes the whole expansion part of the game feel faster and inexorable.

Finally, Worlds of Magic takes the Arcanum/Myrror plane aspect of Master of Magic and makes it much more detailed, and much more meaningful. Now, you have the Prime plane, as well as planes of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Shadow. Each plane offers special strategic benefits in the form of city resources, and thus plays into the strengths of specific races. Unhallowed start in the plane of Shadow and draw strength from the negative energy sources all around; dwarves will become production powerhouses in the plane of earth, cranking out high-cost units every other turn or earning ridiculous amounts of gold when making Trade Goods. Because there are so many planes, it is possible to take shortcuts across the map via planar travel. Can't get across the sea? Maybe there's a gateway to another place on the coast - go through it, and if you can traverse the land of that plane, you can find another gateway back to your starting plane, and cross the sea (by way of one or more planes) without ever getting wet or building a ship! The mutiplane design is quite rewarding, and offers a great deal of replay value, since you can choose how many planes to allow in the game world, their size, how much of each is land, and the general configuration of that land (islands, continents, one giant landmass).

Like Master of Magic, on release there are a few things that still need fixed. There are some bugs, and the on-screen error reporter will tell you exactly what they are, so you can report them in detail and hopefully help get them fixed quickly. This isn't a flawless game, but it's a shot of nostalgia for anyone who loves Master of Magic and wished someone would make a proper sequel. Get it; you won't regret the purchase.

Update May 26: Started a new game with the latest version. Having fun, got a nice little elf empire going. Turn 196, just opened up a gateway to the shadow plane. This must be the plane of doom because the game locks up. Sorry guys, but you're not quite there yet.

Update May 9. I noticed that the game just updated and decided to give it another try almost a month after my first review. Five minutes after starting a new game, I'm in the first battle on the tactical map. I win. The game freezes in a way I have never seen before, with parts of the strategic map on top of the tactical map. I reload the game and fight the battle on auto. A couple of minutes later, I fight my second battle on the tactical map. Same result -- I win, weird freeze.

Why do I come back to this game? Because I really like it when it works. But the crashes still make it basically unplayable and incredibly frustrating. What's discouraging is that the developers don't seem to be able to issue patches without introducing new problems.

Original Post: More than one month after release and the game is still plagued by endless crashes. Maybe you will be able to play a game to the end in about two months without it crashing. Good luck, but I have finally had enough.

I kept thinking this game would eventually work out the bugs, because I desperately wanted to enjoy it. I played MoM more than just about any other game back in the day, and the thought of a real successor was a huge draw. Unfortunately the game has never lived up to MoM, or multiple other current games in the genre for that matter. Every build tends to introduce a new bug requiring a restart, or a new CtD. The devs rarely respond to feedback unless it's completely positive, even going so far as calling owners stupid on the forums. My biggest regret was that I picked it up in EA as soon as it was available and played each update to provide feedback, so I had too many hours played to get a refund when it was "released." Save your money and your time, avoid this title.

World of Magic is intended as a direct successor to the venerable Master of Magic. I'd been looking for a game that made a decent attempt at building on MoM's legacy for a while so I was pretty excited to hear about this one. However this game is less about building on MoM's legacy and more about porting it wholesale.

The good:
- most things that made MoM good are still in there i.e. lots of customisation, reasonably interesting fantasy setting, casting spells.

The bad:
- doesn't support 1280*1024 resolution!
- the map and units quite ugly. The game world in particularly is quite poor at communicating information eg. resources and dungeons are not easy to make out.
- interfaces are neither pretty nor particularly functional
- doesn't let you skip movement animations on the combat map
- maps have 6 subdimensions for no reason, which is unnecessarily confusing. 2 is plenty.
- basically nothing significant has changed since MoM. So city building and expansion are about as bland as you'd expect from a strategy game made in 1994.

When I saw this game, I was hoping that it would retain the features that made Master of Magic a really interesting game and combine them with a solid 4X core that built on the advances of the last couple of decades. At the very least, I'd have expected MoM with a slick interface and nice graphics.
This game delivers none of that. Its interface fails to make any notable improvement on MoM's neanderthal counterpart - and in fact lacks the aesthetic charm of the older game. The underlying problem of Worlds of Magic is that in their quest to preserve every mechanic the developers have not added or changed anything substantial but have still managed to lose plenty. If you run the two games next to one another, you will see they play in the same sort of way - but one lacks charm, and a soul.

I had a hard time deciding between a “Yes I recommend this game, but…” and a “No, I don’t recommend this game, but…” opening to this review. After some reflection, I opted for a “Yes” since the amount of fun I had in 15 hours of play did outweigh if only by a narrow margin the frustration.

On the up side, I’m really glad someone finally made a serious attempt to update Simtex’s wonderful 1994 game, Master of Magic. On the down side, I wish they hadn’t done it so scrupulously as to imitate the bugginess that came with the original MoM release back in ’94. It was a hair-pulling disaster 21 years ago until the version 1.3 patch. A bad game with bugs puts you out of its misery pretty quickly as you move on. A good game with freezes, crashes and aggravations like roll-over pop-ups that only work sometimes is a torment that’s hard to escape.

Other reviewers have already accurately detailed both the good and the bad of this game. Based on the reviews, I held off buying until there was a price reduction. I hoped most of the negative stuff would turn out to be idiosyncratic and related either to the reviewer’s temperament or their rig. Mostly it’s not. But the good stuff is also there. It’s got enough of the MoM ethos to please devotees of the Simtex masterpiece. Even a non-MoM fantasy-based 4X fan will find much to like. I’ve played lots of Age of Wonders III, Fallen Enchantress, Endless Legend and Warlock. World of Magic is in their league albeit dragged to the bottom of the table by its flaws.

If the devs ever debug it, this game will be a first-class fantasy-based 4X game. Even in its current state there’s lots of fun to be had especially for fans of MoM as long as you can handle things like a game freezing just as you win a titanic battle on the tactical map or losing a saved game that you’ve invested considerable time into without needing to down some Xanax.

This game is OK. It is decidedly not worth its full price, however. Its a poor clone of Age of Wonders, with some old Civ thrown in. The UI is clunky, hard to read (am I loosing 3.5 gold or 35?), and leads to unfortunate mistakes like marching all a city's units out, rather than a single one. It is also not without serious bugs, despite being a few years old - I had to quit to desktop because the UI forgot it could be clicked on, and wouldnt advance a turn.

So, you're bored with all your other X4 grand strategy games, and this is on sale for 5 bucks? Sure. Just dont bother any other time - I really wish Steam had a Meh rating.

Oh, and Steam Achievement spam - you get about a dozen achievements doing the tutorial....ehhh, I'm gonna downvote this....