It’s Civilization with wizards and Santa Clause.
That was enough of a sales pitch to sell me on Warlock – Master of the Arcane.
It’s a very honest pitch.
I love the Civilization games. They do terrible things to me. I can’t get away from one of those time vampires without first investing at least 3 hours in to it. Fortunately, until now there hasn’t been many games that are close enough to the Civ games to really do me harm, until now. Last week, Ino-Co Plus and Paradox Interactive released their own sweet strawberry flavored variant of the Civilization franchise.
Anyone with Civilization experience is going to instantly recognize most of this game, but what is different is substantial enough for the game to stand on its own. When starting a game you choose to play as one of several Great Mages, each with their own perks, ranging from hideous rat people and fancy looking European guys all the way up to Santa Clause. These mages are analogous to the leaders you pick in Civilization, and are thus nothing new. What is different here is that each mage carries with it a different race that you will play as, such as Humans, Undead, or Rat people. The differences between the races are not purely cosmetic, nor are they necessarily balanced, but they do provide a good bit of variation that doesn’t exist in Civilization. The differences between the playable races is most clearly seen in their units, and is far less apparent in their cities. This is where this game and Civilization strongly diverge.
Whereas Civilization is a game centered around building up and managing a civilization, Warlock is a game about killing things.
You will be fighting all the time. You will fight other mages, neutral cities, wild animals, monsters both land and sea, demons and whatever the pantheon of gods decides to challenge you with.
It feels like any time spent not on the offense is time wasted, since there isn’t much to do in your cities besides occasionally set construction and build units.
Your cities will exist to serve two purposes.
Feed your armies.
Feed your magic.
Your magic is very important, and it will save you from absolute disaster often, but only if you’ve managed your cities well enough to generate enough of it to keep you going. There is no research beyond new spells, which fits with the offensive focus of the game.
Spells come in a few basic varieties. Offense, enhancement, healing, summoning, and then a few with varied effects. Offensive spells are going to save your bacon practically every other turn, and make you hate this game every time they get used on you.
For example, I once had Santa Clause’s capitol surrounded and a few turns away from falling. He contacted me requesting peace, which I refused. One more turn and he contacts me again, offering peace and a meager amount of gold, which I refused. One more turn and he unleashed a massive hell storm on the ENTIRETY of my army surrounding his capitol, and literally vaporized it.
I initially felt like the game had just cheated my whole army out of existence, but then I noticed that I had the same spell and started using it all the time. It felt dirty and terribly satisfying.
What’s good about this game?
It’s a Civilization game that isn’t a Civilization game. If you like Civilization you are likely going to have a lot of fun with this. It’s good to have something new every once in a while, and I would like to see more people take a stab at this sort of game.
Greater variance in what you can produce.
Magic is very fun to use, even if you are just going to be shooting fireballs and healing most of the time.
The narrator is incredible. I don’t want to disable the hints just because I love hearing him yell things at me, no matter how annoying the hints are.
What is wrong with the game?
I don’t think the offensive game is as good as the development game we are used to in Civilization. It feels like there is a lot less to do without having broader city development options.
The Diplomacy is lousy. Your only options are to ask for peace, declare ware, demand gold/mana, or offer gold/mana. If the AI ever demands anything from you refusal automatically triggers war. It isn’t like Civ where they just like you less. This feels like a completely unnecessary step since the game is so focused on fighting the other mages. At first I thought the peace treaties might be useful but the AI seems to drop them within a few turns of agreeing to them every time regardless of what you do. Why even have diplomacy when it’s like this?
I think the AI cheats. By this I mean it often appears that the AI has more resources at its disposal than it properly should based on what it should be able to produce. This is a common occurrence in strategy games, so I’m not too surprised to see signs of it here, but I always find it to be a little cheap.
I don’t think the playable races are balanced. Their core units are usually very similar, but some units have wild advantages. Undead seems to be well above the other races. Their basic warriors take far less damage than other races from missile attacks, they get flying ghost ships that so far seem to demolish about 90% of the other units when traveling in any quantity greater than 1, and they have a ghost unit that cannot be harmed except by certain types of abnormal damage. I thought maybe I was missing something about other races, particularly the humans, but the game doesn’t seem to be that deep. It’s very straightforward and the development trees for buildings (enabling units) are very basic. It feels unfair getting these units so early. As soon as I can get them I know I’m about to start wiping out other mages fast.
Offensive magic is king. There is a variety of spells, but most of the time you just need to blow something up.
Magic research needs a better visual representation. You can pick from five available spells to research. They are arranged in a pentagram, and each time you research one it is replaced by another one, but it almost feels like it is replaced at random. I’m not sure it is random, but it certainly doesn’t feel like I control the research, just pick the best available option from an assortment over and over.
Should I buy it?
That’s a tough question. If you really love the development and city management in Civ, no. If you really hate diplomacy and just want to fight in Civ, yes. If you’ve never played Civilization, then you’d be better off starting with Civilization and picking this up during a Steam sale.
They didn’t do a bad job with the game, it’s just that it’s building itself on such a phenomenal game that every shortcoming is going to be amplified. A more developed sequel could be exceptional, but they are going to have to rethink how they combat, cities, and diplomacy. Ino-Co Plus needs to decide whether or not what they actually want to do with the game really needs to stick this close to Civilization, or drift closer to more of what we see in typical RTS games.
- Ryan Vann
