Master of Magic (2022) Review

A Well-Traveled Road

Master of Magic (Steam Link), developed by Muha Games and published by Slitherine, is a wonderful modernization of the well-loved classic fantasy 4X. With the officially sanctioned mod Caster of Magic that utilizes the original graphics and music but adds a few QoL features and a total rebalance of the game now available, Master of Magic’s release comes at an odd time. 

Meanwhile, Muha’s recreation follows the original mechanics as closely as possible, changing things only if they are too difficult to replicate. Some much-appreciated changes include a new hex grid, faster pacing, and lush 3D graphics. Because of the mixture of old-fashioned gameplay with modern polish, Master of Magic ends up in a bizarre place compared to its recent peers, such as Conquest of Eo and Age of Wonders 4.

The original Master of Magic (MoM) is my favorite 4X game; it ranks in my top 3 games of all time. I am a MoM purist, and I never really appreciated the changes that Caster of Magic added. After pouring hundreds of hours into the private beta and then the release version, Muha’s remaster has become my definitive version, leaving me with no reason to boot up the original. It’s exciting to dive back into this game that is the same in all the right ways, and the parts that changed are either improvements or easily overlooked.

A Long Anticipated Remake

Simtex created Master of Magic in 1994 as a fantasy spinoff of the Master of Orion series. It heavily copies the framework laid out by Sid Meier’s Civilization, but adds many fantasy elements like elves, orcs, and dragons. It is much more of a war game than the Civilization series, but also has vital RPG elements which make it stand out. 

Many games have followed in its footsteps, notably the successful Age of Wonders series, Stardock’s Fallen Enchantress, and Warlock: Master of the Arcane. Smaller game studios also made spiritual successors such as Planetary Conquest and Wizard Warfare. Simtex put many features into Master of Magic, but it was released with many bugs and broken features. Even so, the game’s blend of mechanics, despite very little story and world-building, has stood the test of time.

Before the game begins you choose a wizard as your avatar with a unique selection of spellbooks and traits. The game starts with a humble little town in the wilderness, and a squad of swordsmen to guard against the monsters that roam the land. Eventually, you can assemble great armies and recruit powerful heroes to lead them. As you explore the world, you find magic nodes that you can capture and exploit to further your magical prowess. The game ends when you defeat all the enemy wizards or you research and cast the Spell of Mastery.

You assemble up to six heroes and equip them with magic items as well as cast powerful spells to buff them up. You will need to use every tool in the toolkit to defeat some of the dangerous encounters with neutral monsters and enemy factions. These encounters are resolved using a separate tactical combat mode that, while simple in execution, adds a huge amount of depth and immersion to the game. Today, tactical combat is its own subgenre with games like Firaxis’ XCOM paving the way, but when MoM was originally released, including tactical combat in a 4X game was quite novel. The battlefield is small, limited to nine units on each side, and has basic terrain features that create choke points. The battles are generally simple and fast, with just enough tactics available to make the key battles feel like you pried victory from the jaws of defeat.

The real charm of the game is difficult to convey in words. The game mechanics are simple, but Master of Magic manages to be more than the sum of its parts. It’s the vastness of an explorable world. It’s the sheer variety of creatures you encounter, each lovingly detailed with unique artwork and sound effects. The almost overwhelming amount of spells you will face off against, and unlike modern game design, many of these spells are unique, requiring real effort to implement and test.

MoM has all the elements needed to make the game enjoyable, whether it’s the first playthrough or the hundredth. There are many unique strategies and tactics to learn and master. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t include multiplayer, but the AI, while flawed, puts up enough of a fight to keep things interesting. 

So What’s New in 2022?

Muha’s take on Master of Magic deliberately copies the original exactly, when possible. They are a small team and it’s understandable that not everything could be replicated. Thankfully, the changes are usually not noticeable. Some changes have already been patched to more closely match the original game. Muha has released several free and paid DLC in the year since the game launched in addition to regular updates and patches.

The biggest changes are a much-improved UI, switching from squares to a hex grid, and roughly doubling the movement speed of all units. There are new options when setting up a new game to get started more quickly, including starting with a free settler to get your second city started much earlier. You can even start the game with a hero, which makes things more fun and easier for new players. These changes are important to bring the game more in line with the pacing modern gamers have come to expect.

Master of Magic is a slow game. Where modern 4X games like Age of Wonders 4 or Planetfall can end in as little as 50 turns, MoM tends to take five times that number. The economy starts out being very punishing and restrictive unless you get really lucky with the random world generation and have key resources near your starting city. Even then, your cities need time to grow and the neutral cities you can conquer usually have little existing infrastructure. Early in the game, you will be hitting the end turn button over and over, sometimes not making a single decision or taking a single action on a turn. 

This slowly changes as your empire develops and you muster armies, sending them to explore and conquer the world. At that point, you have dozens of decisions to make on each turn and it can be 10-20 minutes before you are ready to advance. This is where some of the modern features really help out. The new version released with a much-needed build queue that lets you plan out 5 buildings or units in advance. This reduces the amount of babysitting your cities require without having to resort to the AI Advisor taking over. The Advisor is not useless, but it tends to invest heavily in military buildings and create large garrisons, both of which hinder your economy.

In addition to the Advisor, your “familiar” gives you the option to automate every battle. The game simulates ten battles and gives you the spread of results. If you choose not to manually control the battle, then the game will simply roll a one-sided die to determine which of the simulated outcomes to use. This system lets you skip past the boring battles where you are guaranteed to win or lose, and only devote time to the battles where your input can make a big difference.

The developers are responsive to community feedback and added in more customization options to game set up. Now you can choose how many cities there are, the minimum distance between cities, and even population growth modifiers. I have settled into my own custom set of preferences, which are saved each time you start a new game. 

Options to note for beginners include the ability to start with more gold, buildings, and an extra settler. These options can easily shave 50 turns off your game and get you into the midgame much faster. You can even start with a beginner-friendly hero, B’Shan the noble, whose deep pockets will help solve your economic issues by providing gold each turn.

Modernizations like these keep the core gameplay fun and engaging while polishing the experience. These improvements make this the definitive version of MoM for me and many other hardcore fans.

Keeping it Classic

Muha’s MoM is quite addictive because it remains true to the original. When you start a new game, you are confronted with a fairly large selection of options. You have fifteen unique wizards to play as, each with different magical specializations. You can have up to four AI opponents, each of which will also play as one of these wizards. You can even build your own wizard, using a point system to mix and match the various spellbooks and wizard traits. 

Then you get to choose from a whopping fourteen different races to lead as you rise to your rightful place as master of magic. While there are basic units and buildings common across all the races, each race has one or two unique units that are extra strong and usually form the core of your armies. Each race also has unique economic or military bonuses, ranging from barbarians throwing axes before they engage in battle to trolls coming back to life after dying in combat. 

Finally, you are introduced to the two mirror worlds, dubbed Arcanus and Myrror. While not an exact copy in geography, these two worlds are linked by magical portals. The Myrror world is filled with more dangerous monsters and powerful races. Only one AI wizard appears on Myrror, so it also provides a bigger sandbox to play in before confronting other wizards and has powerful and abundant resources to improve your cities.. If you start on Arcanus, then breaking into Myrror becomes the final obstacle for you to overcome.

Each of the five “realms” of magic is quite distinct in the types of spells they offer. Life magic focuses on healing and buffing your standard troops, while also giving some nice economic bonuses. Death magic is the opposite of Life and lets you forgo mortal minions in favor of creating an army of undead while cursing those who stand against you. Chaos magic has random effects, but is mostly focused on fire and destruction. Sorcery magic is illusory and manipulative, letting you turn your foes against each other and disrupt enemy magic to level the playing field. Finally, Nature magic lets you create armies of magical creatures and tap into the power of the land to improve your economy and buff your units.

Factoring in all of the possible combinations in setting up a new game, there is a huge amount of replayability. This key feature, combined with the subtlety of the game mechanics, makes it easy to learn but hard to master and makes the game worth returning to over and over again.. There is a detailed wiki that explains all the unique interactions and mechanics in the game in intricate detail. At its heart, however, Master of Magic is just a fantasy war game that lets you focus on conquering cities and sending your armies into battle. You don’t need to understand all the numbers to have fun, but if it interests you then there is much depth to be found there. 

One of the recurring themes in Master of Magic is diversity. Not just in the sheer number of spells and units in the game, but also in unique game mechanics. The developers sometimes create a mechanic used only for one spell or unit. For example, Cockatrices have a stoning touch ability, which works differently from the Gorgon, which has a stoning gaze attack. There is a spell that burns up ammunition for archers and catapults, and there is a spell to transmute coal into diamonds. Master of Magic still has the more generic spells like healing, fire bolt, and fireball. Those staples have been carried through the genre, but no other game replicates all the oddball spells that are very situational but usually very powerful in those specific moments.

Ultimately, that is the essence of the game: magic. Recent games have handled tactical combat and the strategic layer better, making combat more engaging and cities more exciting to manage. The one area where MoM excels is its weaving of magic into all elements of the game. You can create custom artifacts to equip your heroes, and you can use spells to summon heroes as well. You can quell rebellions or trigger them with magic. You can even terraform the surrounding land, though in a very limited fashion. Where other games might add magic as an extra layer on top of the game, every problem you face in this game has one clear answer: magic. You won’t always have the appropriate spell in your repertoire, and that’s when you might turn to your neighbors and try to trade with them.

Wizards Make the Worst Neighbors

The diplomacy in the game needs to be improved. You can form basic relationships such as peace treaties and alliances, but with harder difficulties, the AI tends to team up against you in a way that can feel artificial. As soon as you provoke an AI by wandering into its territory or expanding too close to their empire, they will declare war. Once you are at war with an AI, they will not accept a peace treaty. It is a zero-sum game, after all. There is no option for an allied victory in the game, so eventually it becomes every wizard for themselves.

On lower difficulties, it is possible to have peaceful relationships with the AI but it depends largely on their random personalities. The personalities fall into basic archetypes such as pacifist, aggressive, and lawful. If you share spellbooks with a wizard, they are more likely to be friendly. 

You can trade with AI players, and they will often ask you to donate excess mana to their cause, which will give a small bump of approval if you do. You can buy and sell magic items as well, though it seems like the magical items for sale act like a randomly generated vending machine rather than correlate to what AI players naturally find from adventuring. If you share spellbooks with an opponent, you can trade spells with them. However, if you have nothing in common, then you can only trade the generic arcane spells. 

You won’t spend much time in the diplomacy screens, though you can click on enemy wizards to get detailed information like who they are at war with, what types of traits or spell books they have, and how much mana they stockpiled. 

Muha has improved the diplomacy UI, making it a bit easier to navigate and added in a new trade screen which will feel very familiar to modern gamers and much less restrictive than the original version. The developers deserve some praise for the small but much-needed improvement in this area.

Magic is the Heart of the Game

The main appeal of the game lies in the deep combat mechanics. Though the combat takes place at a relatively small scale, the game models each individual soldier in a unit. This means that as units take damage, their combat effectiveness drops. Normally, a single giant will best a unit of eight spearmen because each individual spear will bounce off its tough skin, and having eight of them makes little difference. But if you buff those spearmen by leveling them up and giving them holy armor, flaming blades, and mithril weapons, they can go toe-to-toe with a giant. 

Your heroes follow a similar path. They start out very weak, but if you shepherd them until they level up and find a few magic items, they become powerhouses and the backbone of your army. Depending on your type of magic, you can layer buffs on your units and heroes or simply have them stand behind the magical monsters you summon. It is possible to summon every fantastic unit you encounter in the game. It is very satisfying to struggle against a powerful unit like a Great Wyrm and then eventually command an army of them to lay siege to your foes.

Though you can start out with very few spell books and focus mostly on the military aspect of the game, the true fun lies in the magic system. Besides summoning heroes and creating fully customized gear for them, you will find hours of endless fun experimenting with all the different magical toys available to you. You can use powerful magic to level enemy cities with volcanoes, earthquakes, or a rain of fire. Alternatively, you can summon hordes of undead to overwhelm your opponents’ forces. If the enemy sends dragons to attack you, you can respond by webbing them to the ground and opening the earth to swallow them whole.

Though many of these powerful spells and abilities are game-breaking, there is always a way to use magic to find a workaround or solution. This is where the game shines – learning to find those weaknesses in even the most powerful foes you face off against. Sky Drakes are the most deadly beasts you can fight because they are powerful and immune to all magic. One solution is to get a crack team of elven archers that can shoot them down before losing more than a couple of your frontline units. Alternatively, you can invest in some Dwarven Hammerhands which can simply wait on the ground and beat the drakes to death when they attack. 

The victory conditions are quite limited. You can temporarily banish the enemy wizards by taking over their wizard fortress, but they usually have enough resources to come back pretty quickly. This triggers a race to capture or destroy every last city they own to deny your enemy a place to return and recover. Typically, you will need to banish them two or three times each before vanquishing them permanently. If you are stuck in a stalemate or just don’t have the patience for conquest, you can research and cast the very costly Spell of Mastery, which appears at the end of your magical tech tree.

Muha did an excellent job of preserving the game mechanics and making them a little more accessible with a basic combat log. If the combat log had more detail it could really highlight how things work. Even veteran players like myself often need to have the wiki for reference. For those who like sinking their teeth into a deep and complex game, there is plenty to feast on here.

When Life Gives You Bugbears

Thankfully, the game is relatively bug-free. There are occasional minor issues, such as a rare crash to the desktop or sound issues where the background music stops. However, the game is very stable and performs well if you have the recommended hardware. 

However, there are some design issues that really detract from the enjoyment of the game. The main step backward MoM has taken is in the world generation algorithm. The procedurally generated landmass is very similar to the original at first appearance. It has polar caps on the top and bottom. It has continents and small islands for you to explore. It even has settings for world size which were not available in the original game.

The issue is that the original game had a land-shape setting, which let you choose one giant continent to reduce water gameplay, lots of little islands, or a balanced map that had a mix of both. Muha left this option out, and thus, every map is overly water-heavy, which exacerbates the issue of AI opponents not handling water very well.

Overall, the landmass on generated worlds is bigger than before, despite the excess of water and islands. The smallest world size will end up slightly smaller than the classic MoM map. The larger landmass means lots more neutral monster lairs to explore and pillage. This sounds like a good thing, right? The problem is that the loot you find there causes ripple effects.

The original game has a very slow process of researching magic spells, which requires building a large amount of research buildings across your empire and devoting your precious magical power to research. Now that there are so many monster lairs, you can farm them for random spells. There is no limit to the level of spells you can learn this way either. In classic MoM you can only research powerful spells if you devote most of your spellbooks to a single realm of magic. The game then randomly decides which of the many spells you can possibly learn. In order to guarantee that you can research a key late game spell for your strategy, you have to invest in a large number of books when selecting your wizard. 

In Muha’s MoM this is completely changed now that you can just get a single book in every magical category, go conquer all the monster lairs you can find, and eventually learn every spell in the game. You can also get new spell books from monster lairs as well, upgrading your abilities in that magical school. This used to be very rare in the original game but, with so many opportunities for treasure on the new game’s world maps, it is now quite common. So even if you start with no spell books at all, you can become a powerful spellcaster by the end of the game with this exploit.

The gold and mana economy of the game is similarly disrupted. There was a patch that added a new feature to adjust the frequency of monster lairs and neutral cities on world generation, but it doesn’t solve the core issue.

As you explore the many dozens of monster lairs looking for treasure, fans of the original game will notice that battles tend to be a bit easier than they used to be. Specifically, the algorithm to decide which monsters defend a neutral location has been completely rewritten despite the formula being available in the wiki. As a result, while there is a good mix of easy, medium, and difficult encounters, the most difficult encounters are much less deadly than in the original game. It used to be that you could randomly get eight top tier monsters in one battle, but now you never find more than two or three in one location. Those super deadly battles were a testing ground of your understanding of the mechanics and they could challenge even the most optimized armies in the game. It is sad that those challenges don’t randomly appear anymore, but most people won’t even notice their absence.

Once you play the game for a while, you will notice that enemy heroes tend to stockpile really powerful magic items very quickly. I have a suspicion that the AI is not playing by the same rules as the player here, but the end result is that you will occasionally run up against a hero that is almost impossible to defeat. The key issue being that magic immunity, a very potent defense in a game that centers on magic, is much too commonly found on items that the AI heroes end up with. Veteran players who deeply understand the mechanics will be prepared to counter this but most newer players find themselves bashing their armies against a wall. 

Quality of Life Issues

I want to be very clear that the original MoM had major quality-of-life issues. However, modern audiences expect much more from games when remaking a classic title. Muha has done an adequate job in many areas to improve the general UI and game pacing. But there are some areas where more could have been done.

First, here is a quick summary of added quality-of-life features:

• Simply selecting a settler unit gives a heat map depicting valid and optimal places to construct a city.
• Controls for unit animation speed inside and outside combat
• You can preview battle odds before deciding to auto-resolve
• After scouting a monster lair, the UI remembers what you found there
• Improved trade UI with other Wizards
• Added new customization options to game setup/world generation
• Loading a save game warns if there are incompatibilities with mods and patches
• You now get two choices instead of one when a hero offers to join
• Ability to toggle on/off each DLC inside the game
• Built in mod manager and WIP steam workshop support

Deity Empires, a game heavily inspired by MoM, includes one key feature that, sadly, Muha did not implement – the ability to customize the shape of the landmass and even preview it before starting in the game. Stardock added a hotkey to one of their games to keep all your settings but just regenerate the map, which is another clever solution to the same issue. But in Muha’s MoM, if you don’t like the random start you got, you have to go through the whole process of exiting to the main menu, starting a new game, and choosing all the customization options for your wizard. If it takes you four or five attempts to get a good start, the process gets very tedious.

There is a modern notification system that has clickable icons representing when a unit is built, when a city is idle, or when your research is completed. Unfortunately, the notification doesn’t clear on its own if you take action before clicking the button. To clear the queue, you have to click on the notification and watch as it takes you to the city screen or research screen where you see there is nothing to be done. Ideally, these notifications would clear automatically.

One of the bigger issues MoM launched with was pathfinding through friendly armies. This issue was recently fixed in a patch. Previously, your armies would not cross over an occupied hex on the map and awkwardly take a longer route instead. They also added a brand new feature that allows units to move past one another in combat. This compensates for the fact that you can’t choose starting positions for your units in battle.

There is a city management screen, similar to the original game, where you can sort your cities by different criteria. It is a pain to find individual cities once you have a few dozen of them. You will get prompted by random events that your city “Newhaven” suffered a plague, but there is no easy way to find that city later to take action. Similarly, the spellbook can get quite cluttered, and it is very tedious to flip through its pages to find that spell you just acquired. A search function would have been an amazing addition. 

Every 4X game struggles with quality-of-life issues, especially with late-game micromanagement of cities and armies. Muha did a decent job of fixing some basic issues but a lot more could have been done. There needs to be a more elegant way to manage a 4X empire in the late game.

The Age of Artificial Wizards 

The AI in the Muha version is much improved over the original Master of Magic. It is capable of moving through the tech tree and producing formidable armies of end-game units. It actively clears out monster lairs to claim the various treasures within. This means its units and heroes can level up, and the AI makes claiming nodes a priority, especially those of an opponent. When given a strong economy, especially under the hardest difficulty setting, it can overwhelm a player with powerful armies of early-game units. 

The AI is not flawless, however, and it tends to cast the same selection of spells over and over again. AI players also seem to struggle to understand overland spells, and it is a bit of a disappointment that Chaos and Death magic wizards aren’t going to bombard your cities with harmful spells. Despite these shortcomings, I find this AI much more fun to play against than the original game, as they are able to form good army compositions rather than flood you with groups of only one or two units.

Overall, the AI is the element of the game that has seen the most change compared to the original. In many ways, it understands and plays the game better but it is a bit more obvious where it falls short. It has issues common to other 4X games, such as not handling boats and naval warfare very well, though access to flying and swimming units (Lizardmen and Draconians) sidesteps the issue. The AI can make strong stacks of units and send them to attack you, but its target prioritization is a bit faulty, targeting your weakest cities and armies instead of your most valuable. It also lacks the economic stability to keep cranking out armies during a prolonged war. 

Single-player games rely heavily on how much pressure the AI opponents can put on you. Fortunately, this game does an excellent job in that area, and combined with the monster lairs and the occasional raiders that spawn from them, you will find plenty of conflict as you play. The extra resources the AI gets on the harder difficulties will make the early and mid-game quite challenging.

What Happens When a Wizard Loses Their Charm?

Muha’s art team did an amazing job with the Thea games and the new Master of Magic is filled with wonderfully reimagined artwork that looks good on 4k monitors. You can still recognize the old characters, but it’s a new style that feels like a mix of high fantasy and a darker art style that has become quite common in the last ten years of PC gaming. Each of the hundreds of unique units and monsters in the game has a detailed portrait that really brings them to life. 

The game was originally released with a brand new soundtrack, but after fans complained, the studio has slowly added in new renditions of the original midi music. Hearing the old songs again is a nice touch for those of us filled with nostalgia for the original game. The music is moddable, so you can import the old songs if you want to but I think most people will be fine with the mix of brand new songs and the familiar, classic melodies.

There are a few areas that feel a bit disappointing to me as a super fan. Like the 2D portraits, a vast number of 3D unit models are used in combat and while moving armies around on the strategic map view. These models and their animations are pretty basic and don’t look amazing if you zoom in closer. The sound effects are also bland at times and can get repetitive. Compared to Conquest of Eo, which has a much smaller unit roster, you can see that the 3D graphics just aren’t that great for 2022 much less 2024. The units and spell effects are not memorable, but they function well enough to let you read the battlefield and focus on the gameplay.

The original game had some very memorable moments such as the musical score and animated cut scene whenever you summoned a creature, researched a spell, or had a hero level up. Depending on what type of magic you chose, you would have a special animal familiar in many of these moments. Those sequences are gone now and replaced with a very simple and straightforward UI interaction prompting you to place a summoned creature on the map or open your research list to choose a new spell. It speeds up the game, and I am sure some people won’t miss having to click through the same cutscene for the thousandth time. Yet little touches like this gave the original game its own quirky character and without those elements it blends in more with all the other fantasy 4X games in recent years.

If you look at the Steam page (Steam Link), there is an old marketing trailer that is a 1:1 remake of the original opening cut scene of MoM:

While that cinematic sequence was a bit cheesy, even back in 1994 and doesn’t hold up that well today, it highlights what could have been if there was more focus on recapturing the charm of the original game.

Overall Muha’s Master of Magic stands on its own in the art and music department, but it doesn’t stand out in a crowd. Unfortunately, I think many newcomers will gravitate to the more polished and eye-catching strategy games that exist today.

Patches, DLC, & Mods

The publisher, Slitherine Software, has committed to lots of post-launch support. Numerous patches have been released, usually culminating in either a free or paid DLC on a roughly quarterly basis. The roadmap that was released specifically addressed complaints from the player base but also included fun and imaginative new content, such as two new races and many new wizards. Muha has done a really great job creating new content that doesn’t feel out of place.

The most controversial addition was the Rise of the Soultrapped paid DLC, which adds a steampunk themed race to the game. This faction has a mix of robotic and cyborg units which are heavily armored and shoot “tech magic” guns at their foes. While the new content is fun to play, the new race is a bit overpowered and difficult to fight against in the early game. 

The biggest complaint with this DLC is that it doesn’t match the high fantasy theme of the main game and some of the artwork feels out of place. If you can look past that, the new mechanics really shake up the game. The main draw is the new invasion mechanic, which adds a powerful neutral force that will add monster spawner locations with powerful guards. This acts as an end-game threat that puts heavy pressure on you and seems inspired by Stellaris. I wouldn’t play with it enabled all the time, but it’s great if you want an extra challenge. The new wizard choices and their unique traits really change things up, including a playstyle that focuses on less magic and more on using basic units.

I am a bit biased when it comes to mods because I have made a few for the game. I also enjoy using mods when I play most games and MoM has a great foundation for modding though, admittedly, there aren’t a huge number available. The most notable mod is Mythical Realms, which adds five new races, doubles the amount of heroes, and also rebalances various parts of the game. While it’s not as comprehensive a mod as Caster of Magic, it highlights just how accessible the game is to modding. Even after Muha stops updating the game, the mod tools open the door for content updates for years to come.

When the Dust Settles

It may seem like I am being very harsh on a game that is my favorite game of 2022. My criticism comes from a place of love. Just like a parent wants to see their child grow up and reach their full potential, I share a similar sentiment for this modern marvel. It is such a wonderful surprise to get such a thoughtful and well-made remake of an old, classic game. Compared to the remake of Master of Orion, which was overly simplified in my opinion, I am really impressed with how well Muha was able to carry forward the torch for Master of Magic.

With so many fantasy 4X games in the last ten years, from Fallen Enchantress to Endless Legend, did we really need this old-school remake? I say yes, a thousand times, yes! There are elements of this game that have never been done since the original was released and Muha showed it can be done again if given enough time and determination. Seeing a small team like Muha pour their heart and soul into the game with a rewritten manual, extensive modding support, lovingly crafted artwork and music, combined with brand new DLC that (sometimes) fits in perfectly with the existing content, I am filled with awe and joy.

Master of Magic is not perfect, but it’s perhaps the perfect fantasy 4X game for me. It doesn’t have multiplayer; it’s not balanced, but it’s fun. It has that one-more-turn feeling for me. Even thirty years after its release, I can still feel that impulse, that twitch in my arm to move the cursor to that end-turn button and see what wonders lurk around the corner and not notice the hours pass by. Thankfully, there is no clock in the UI to remind me that it’s way past my bedtime. It’s just me and my halfling slingers, ready to fell titans and bring peace and a “second breakfast” to the world.