izigame.me

This is a Master of Magic clone (which was the first 4x magic-based game ever, and still probably the best). This game's innovation is that your tower can move, there's a crafting system, you can put some of the things you craft on any unit (not just heroes), but they've significantly nerfed magic. For example, there are no spells that can be hurled in combat (what kind of mage lord can't huck a few fireballs?) There are few other small changes, like buildings you construct and permanent benefits from them, weekly buffs, and how the level-ups offer a few random improvements but no static stat increases (meaning you might get lucky or you might get poor choices, or make poor choices, which in itself adds some luck and strategy to the game), but that's just style...and honestly, it's been 30 YEARS since MoM came out, so shame if they didn't come up with -something- new.
In any case, it's smooth and enjoyable, for the most part. The music fits the ambience. There are different schools of magic, and three different crafting professions. The world is always the same, so the "explore" phase of the four Xs can be somewhat ignored once you know the map. There are also a few glitches. So far, I've experienced:
- When using the "Reputation Increase" spell to get cities to like you, if you then accept their quests, it can freeze the game completely. I've experienced this with three different cities. The only way to side-step it seems to be to get them to like you, accept their building (if they have one), save the game, reload it, and then you can accept the quests.
- Sometimes, for no apparent reason (but usually late in the game, like after week 20 when there's a lot going on) you can freeze; the enemies can still move about their days, but your units lose all movement points, healing, progress on harvesting, and so on. You're given one option every day: "End Turn." A save and reload fixes this as well.
- The battle predictor and battle calculator don't seem to match up. You can have numbers like (yours) 820 (theirs) 350 and the predictor says you'll be annihilated; you play the battle and wipe up with them. Also, you can usually use some simple tactics like tossing your archers/healers in a corner, putting your melee units around them on guard, and then shoot/heal/defend until the opponents die. Any thought at all lets you easily defeat the computer. That being said, you seldom lose a unit that wasn't predicted to be lost, and you often don't lose a unit which was while using auto-complete. Finally, there really should be a "speed up" option in battles.
- Some quests are ignorable, such as the "into the snows" quest trying to get past the gate. Just click the choice to go another way, come back and do it again, and the quest seems to disappear. This is fairly typical.
- A lot of things don't really make sense. Like the Dragon Heart quest which only shows up if Gor is there; otherwise it seems to be a useless building for the whole game. Once he IS there, the quest shows up, which is essentially "walk in and take the thing, despite the region possibly being surrounded by droves of his soldiers".
This game wasn't adequately play-tested before release. That's the kind of lazy thing companies do these days knowing they can patch it later. They also are adding DLC, which is the kind of greedy thing companies do, but again, sign of the times. All in all, the glitches can be worked around, and the game is enjoyable. I got it on sale, which I recommend. I wouldn't pay full price until they get rid of the bugs, and also I'd rather pay one full price for the full game and all DLC than this micro-pay crap.
I give it 3.3 stars out of 5.