I know many people will see this and think what the hell!?
I love older/retro games that were hits back in their time. This game is one of my ALL TIME favourites and if you haven't played this gem, you're missing out. Lords of magic is a turn based strategy. When you're out of move points, you must hit the dial to let the other elements move.
You start by picking an element - air, earth water, fire, death, life, order, chaos then picking a hero based off three classes warrior, thief, mage.
Each element has their own town/buildings & their own units. Your goal is to beat the opposite element's hero (Lord).
For eg, fire should destroy water (but is weak against water), life should destroy death etc. The end goal is to beat Balkoth - The lord of death. You can also create alliances and war between elements.
You train your units up each have their own max level and increase their own damage/armour accordingly. You can also increase other statistics such as movement, attack range, range damage, spell power etc.
Your hero unit(s), can aquire artefacts by raiding dungeons, hamlets, caves, castles giving them spells, attack/spell damage, armour etc.
Good:
- Based off Tolkien books with elves, dwarf's, the dead etc
- Wide variety of units available, you can use other element units as well by raiding their villages and recruiting them.
- Combat is excellent, each unit has its own strengths and weaknesses, especially against that of an opposite element. Fire element units have huge damage but extremely weak defence stats.
- $5 USD - I've played 300 hours minimum since I first bought it in 1999 as a young lad.
- Wide range of spells, each class has their own spell classes
- Raiding high level dungeons is fun, especially using magic units to subdue/buff or kill the units.
- A great mod - mantera fixes most issues and adds some artefacts, gameplay elements and increases playability.
- Has it's own inbuilt mapbuilder so you can create your own maps.
- Difficult learning curve due to the wide variety of content.
- Thief has the ability to cloak, spy, steal and kidnap other heroes.
Bad:
- The game is very slow, due to turn based nature.
- Game is very dated, has bugs that were not fixed in the original game.
- Graphics are that of the mid 90's.
- Some elements are overpowered compared to others. For eg, chaos units are the most overpowered and easiest to win with compared to a class such as water with weak attack damage and poor spells.
- Once you're maxed level, game becomes far too easy and you can just auto calculate your battles (if you wish)
- More high level dungeons needed.
- Diplomacy portion of the game is very weak and absolutely pointless.
- Bartering system is also weak and pointless.
I'd personally love a full remake of this game.
Rating: 7.5/10 (10/10 if it was 1997).