It is a quite faithful adaptation of the old masterpiece, Master of Magic. The game that I grew up on, basically, when it comes to 4X games in general.

The biggest change is using hexes instead of squares, otherwise all the base mechanics are there. Races, schools of magic, spells, are almost completely copied from old Master of Magic, with small changes (like Lionheart spell finally affecting non-magical ranged attacks, a change which I enormously liked). The only unit that changed a lot from what I've seen was the Hydra, as they replaced its unique head mechanics with bigger lump of hp and three breath attacks. There are things missing, like bigger map, and some quality of life things, like not being able to rename heroes (!!!), spells in the spellbook are only sorted by schools of magic and not their category (Summon, City, Enchantment etc.), or overland spells needing to be actually clicked from the turn queue which is tedious. Still, it plays quite well.

I think the AI is updated, though this is uneven. I have seen AI wizards expand like ants, building cities left and right, summoning magical creatures, dispelling like crazy, but on the other side, all units that can teleport (Unicorns, Djini or the Great Wyrm), don't attack the first turn as in old Master of Magic, but they still move a couple of hexes. I can't say I miss the Great Wyrms eating my favorite heroes on turn one, but it is still a bit of a downgrade.

Now some words about the actual gameplay. You are a wizard. You can choose a plethora of options at the beginning, from spell picks out of 5 schools of magic (can be freely combined except for Death and Life being mutually exclusive), traits, starting race (don't worry, you can get units from other races later).

You can explore, including dungeons, take over magic nodes, build up cities, hire powerful heroes that can use artifacts. You can use spells to summon powerful creatures, enchant your units on the battlefield and overland map, cast spells affecting the whole world, travel between two worlds. Schools of magic can be very distinct. Want to start a zombie apocalypse with Death Magic? Turn your mundane troops to champions with Life Magic? Desolate the world with Chaos Magic? Green it with Nature? It has also tactical combat, where up to 9 units from each side can take part, with additional summons.

I had a blast playing it, but beware there are some bugs, and an update once invalidated my saves. Overall it's a very faithful remake of my favorite fantasy game. Recommended.