Duke Revier's Grand Game Emporium

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 ...