mindreader
Novice
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2013
- Messages
- 14
Background: There once was a kickstarter called Worlds of Magic. Years later apparently the game came out and was buggy as hell (more than the original MoM). Then they decided to port the game to mobile for the money (survival). It came out, races and planes were dlc locked. May 30: A rebranded version of the game Planar Conquest is released on steam to little fanfare, but it caught my eye. All races and planes are unlocked on PC by default.
Reviews so far indicate that it is pretty decent, has very few bugs, and is very similar to master of magic. Differences:
* Unlike every other 4x game, apparently the AI is on point. Or it cheats a lot. I can't quite tell from the steam reviews. In any case, it is very aggressive and I've seen it take people out early on a few occasions in let's plays (they were mostly playing blind and greedy).
* The original swords, shields, resistance system has been replaced with dnd style dice rolling, savings throws, AC, criticals, etc.
* The spells are more numerous, rebalanced, and based on earth, wind, water, fire, life, death, but also broken them down by effect (augmentation, summoning, destruction, etc), so you can have, for example, a wizard with only summoning spells, or merely guarantee your wizard has a lot of destruction spells.
* There are more traits you can have, many from MoM, but there are also negative traits allowing you to pick more spellbooks or more positive traits to compensate.
* Instead of having one magical plane, instead it has seven planes, prime material aka planet earth, and one for each of the above, with its own bonuses, tile types, resources, etc. You could start on any of them.
* The UI is a little shitty because it came from mobile (left clicks only), but the let's players I've seen seemed to do okay. There have been multiple unsubstantiated claims that "the devs are working on it".
* Graphics are decent, they are not the same as was in the mobile version, but there is a lack of larger scale animations (like summoning, vanquishing), pictures of cities, and music the original had. Units, however, are in 3d and fully animated.
* Races are high men, orcs, dwarves, dark elves, gray elves, draconians, myrodents (klackon), unhallowed (undead). Undead are special in that every city they take over becomes undead, and also use corrupted tiles as food. Every faction seems to have many more (or are perhaps entirely composed of) unique units.
* A lot of quality of life things. Buildings and units can be queued up. Spells can be cast, and then stored for later. For example, saving up a spell of return, not that you'll ever need it. City UI shows all cities instead of one at a time. You can bookmark favorite spells.
* There is some 10 city soft limit, presumably to decrease late game micromanagement, but I don't know how well it works in practice.
Explorminate overview: https://youtu.be/u-XNa3K_bTs
Dev tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iLCc3wgdno
I'm posting this because this is by far the most promising MoM-alike I have ever seen. The game is not getting much press and I'm extremely curious to see if anyone on the codex has an opinion I would actually rely on.
Reviews so far indicate that it is pretty decent, has very few bugs, and is very similar to master of magic. Differences:
* Unlike every other 4x game, apparently the AI is on point. Or it cheats a lot. I can't quite tell from the steam reviews. In any case, it is very aggressive and I've seen it take people out early on a few occasions in let's plays (they were mostly playing blind and greedy).
* The original swords, shields, resistance system has been replaced with dnd style dice rolling, savings throws, AC, criticals, etc.
* The spells are more numerous, rebalanced, and based on earth, wind, water, fire, life, death, but also broken them down by effect (augmentation, summoning, destruction, etc), so you can have, for example, a wizard with only summoning spells, or merely guarantee your wizard has a lot of destruction spells.
* There are more traits you can have, many from MoM, but there are also negative traits allowing you to pick more spellbooks or more positive traits to compensate.
* Instead of having one magical plane, instead it has seven planes, prime material aka planet earth, and one for each of the above, with its own bonuses, tile types, resources, etc. You could start on any of them.
* The UI is a little shitty because it came from mobile (left clicks only), but the let's players I've seen seemed to do okay. There have been multiple unsubstantiated claims that "the devs are working on it".
* Graphics are decent, they are not the same as was in the mobile version, but there is a lack of larger scale animations (like summoning, vanquishing), pictures of cities, and music the original had. Units, however, are in 3d and fully animated.
* Races are high men, orcs, dwarves, dark elves, gray elves, draconians, myrodents (klackon), unhallowed (undead). Undead are special in that every city they take over becomes undead, and also use corrupted tiles as food. Every faction seems to have many more (or are perhaps entirely composed of) unique units.
* A lot of quality of life things. Buildings and units can be queued up. Spells can be cast, and then stored for later. For example, saving up a spell of return, not that you'll ever need it. City UI shows all cities instead of one at a time. You can bookmark favorite spells.
* There is some 10 city soft limit, presumably to decrease late game micromanagement, but I don't know how well it works in practice.
Explorminate overview: https://youtu.be/u-XNa3K_bTs
Dev tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iLCc3wgdno
I'm posting this because this is by far the most promising MoM-alike I have ever seen. The game is not getting much press and I'm extremely curious to see if anyone on the codex has an opinion I would actually rely on.
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