Duke Revier's Grand Game Emporium

  Most of this session was spent consolidating, with ghouls converting rampaging monsters into undead. The campaign against Ariel was rather uneventful, because the two cities grabbed from her were poorly defended, and with the empire growing, defending it became a bigger concern. Naturally, then, attention turned to clearing out other, stronger lairs. This one was infested with boars, but thanks to a bit of trickery and a strong hero, they were easily dealt with. That hero, by the way, is a Warrior Mage. As you'd expect, he's a blend of a warrior and a wizard, having several powerful spells, casting skill, and a strong ranged attack, but also good defense and melee attack. His defenses are further boosted by Agility, a skill that grants additional defense per level. His version is a boosted variant of it, which grants 2 defense every other level instead of 1! And to top everything off, he gains mana while engaging in melee. Scary stuff! In the fight above, he helped by casting...

Repost of a review I wrote two years ago, saving it for posterity and better visibility. It holds pretty well even today. I think the game is an interesting and surprisingly heavy story of people stuck between the politics of two warmongering empires. I particularly like the character writing for the two central leads, Lunair and Revier. They start out rough, but over time, solidly build up a complimenting relationship, featuring reckless, well intentioned bravado on one side, and cold, calculated yet oddly humane pragmatism on the other. But that's the rub - it takes so long to truly get going. The first Act is extremely rough, and even when getting to the considerably tighter second Act, there are still multiple rough patches of poorly paced and ill fitting scenes to get past. However, the experience at the end is worth it - there's an intensely tense plot involving high politics and personal stakes, which eventually escalates to a dramatic, sober finish. The third and fourt...

  The interim period was mostly spent summoning ghouls, building up the cities economically, and exploring more of the land. The scouting cavalry eventually came in contact with three wizards, but nothing much came of it...yet. Eventually, I had amassed enough ghouls to attempt assaulting this lair. It consisted of three hell hounds and fire elementals each. Hell Hounds are Chaos realm's Common summon, and are essentially light cavalry, dealing decent damage with their attack and fire breath, and having high speed, but lacking in defenses. Fire Breath works sort of like First Strike, dealing damage before regular melee combat begins. It only works on the attack, much like First Strike. Fire Elementals boast a variety of resistances, but are most notable for their unique attacks, relying heavily on their fire breath and immolating touch. The latter deals damage to all figures in a unit, meaning they're very effective against high figure units, like most regular units trained at ...

For the very first game, I roll this guy. He starts with 2 Sorcery books, 6 Death books and 1 Life book. Books determine how many spells the wizard starts with, as well as the spells they can access through research. As you can see, picking so many Death books also allows choosing which spells to start with, as well as which spells get guaranteed in the next tier. The default selection here is good enough, so I don't mess with it; I'll bring up what the spells do as I (or an enemy wizard/unit) use them. Picking 2 Sorcery books allows choosing exactly one (1) Common spell from the Sorcery realm. While seemingly measly, it can still be fairly powerful. I pick Resist Magic to offset the bad resistance of Death's summons. 1 Life book doesn't offer any choice, but does add some Common Life spells for research. Considering that Life's Common spells are among the strongest Common spells around, this isn't really a bad thing. Finally, let's look at the words on the ...

 It's about time I Let's Played my favorite game of all time - Master of Magic. For most fantasy 4x enthusiasts, this game needs no introduction, but this is considered by many to be the grandfather of the genre, and a timeless classic that largely still holds up today, despite some quirks. The long and short of it is that these games are about ruling over a wizard empire as a heavily customizable wizard emperor, with many traits and spells. And that's not all. Every playthrough is different, because the map, enemy wizards, and lairs all get randomized on every game. This game combines city management, deeply strategic combat, exciting treasure hunts and rpg style hero building all in one! For the purposes of this Let's Play, I'll be using two mods. The first, Caster of Magic for Windows, is actually sold on Steam itself, and can be bought from here:  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557960/Master_of_Magic_Caster_of_Magic_for_Windows/  It's a standalone recre...

 The endgame was imminent. I wasn't really impressed by Revier's Geomancy getup, and wanted to put him in something more satisfying. I flipped him around jobs for a bit, then recalled the advice offered about his Squire class and greatswords. Thus, I discovered his ultimate move - Jumping on his enemies with the Excalibur! This led to predictably amazing results, as you can see here. Not only was his damage output considerably higher, he also got far more jumps, thanks to its auto-haste! He was truly a speed devil now! My only other bits of preparation were to fill up the party's stock of x-potions, and switch the wizards to statistically better robes, reckoning that the white robes were obsolete and most threats wouldn't be tied to the three main elements anymore. The first fight had some decent offense on the enemy's side, thanks to their monks. However, it wasn't very hard to stack up the damage and bring them down, one by one. The next fight was against one ...

 Alright, let's go through the rest of the sidequests. To begin, you need to read this conversation from a bar in and around Zeltennia. This opens up an island off its coast...where, oddly, nothing happens. To progress this further, you need to go back to Goug after clearing Bethla, where Mustadio's father has excavated yet another machine from the depths. This one requires an entirely different stone, and given that Nelveska Temple had mysteriously opened up earlier through a rumor without being actually visitable, the stone could only be placed there. Sure enough, there's a fight there now. It's pretty rude, featuring lots of fast fighters that can easily attack any member of your team within their first turn, and an extremely powerful robot that spams exceptionally powerful lasers! That being said, my samurai was powerful enough to singlehandedly kill half of them, and Revier handled the other half. This fight is also notable for being one of the few places where the...