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Right from the start of playing, I knew this was going to be an un-inspirational game. I gave it a fair chance anyway. When I read the manual and it looked like a fifth grade Dungeons and Dragons Game Master wrote it. I put up with the crappy storyline told in a monotonous tone. When I saw the crappy graphics only made better by the handmade environments I was appalled. When I heard the sound and thought someone was banging a baking sheet with a wrench behind my head when a sword hit a shield I cringed. But when I went through nearly three hours of tedious turn-based gameplay and found that the AI controlled “allies” of mine were all situated in such a way as to leave me no way to complete the final objective I had to draw the line.

Many games have been created recently which combine two or more genres. Empire of Magic is one of these type of games. Reminiscent of Heroes of Might and Magic, Empire of Magic blends role-playing and strategy together in a less than exceptional way. Role-playing where race, class, and even equipment is unable to be chosen by the player and strategy which slows the game down to such a slow pace that it feels more like your ‘stuck’ playing the game.

The manual reads like it was written by someone with a grade school equivalent knowledge of the English language. While that’s not a crime in most states, I do feel that an English fluent editor (such as almost any student in an English speaking High School) should have been paid the $50 to fix the simple spelling, grammar and paragraph forming errors found on nearly every page. The manual was simply a warning of the level of mediocrity evidenced by this game.

The story is barely average. Six principalities have been ruled by high mages for generations. During the reign of the 23rd mage, the balance of power in the region begins to change. On the outskirts of the empire, entire garrisons of soldiers disappear and huge armies of the undead rise from their graves to spread death and destruction across the land. Your teacher at the School of Adu has sent you, Artemian, to the outskirts of the empire in order to solve the mystery of who or what is behind all this mischief. Artemian is a sorcerer of great potential power who will encounter many non-player characters, both good and evil, some of whom may join him for a time on his quest to find the source of the evil.

Empire of Magic will likely disappoint both those looking for a turn-based strategy game and those looking for an enjoyable role-playing game. The turn-based movement eats up precious time and the game’s AI terribly hinders the quests. The action point pool, a common factor in turn-based games, is unfortunately shared by the movement and combat systems. This leads to a never ending dilemma of, “Should I go forward another space and only have enough action points for one attack each or should I stay here and wait for them to come to me?” The first time you feel like crossing a map quickly and end up with Artemian’s party defenseless against several groups of skeletons.

The sound elements are repetitive and fairly boring, the only exclusion being the moving orchestral score. The clash of weapon on shield, reminiscent of a baking sheet getting hit with a wrench, is always the same no matter the type of weapon. The narration, while read to us by a pleasantly exotic voice, is delivered in a cold, emotionless tone. The graphics are bland and nondescript with units on the map being little more than colored blotches with a few distinguishing marks. The only redeemable aspect of the visuals in the game being the environments which were painstakingly drawn by hand instead of made with simple tile sets.

Battle is yet another downfall of this game. Battles take place in a scoped view of the two groups when one group attacks another. Unfortunately the scoped view provides only an interface to determine which units in each group do what to whom. There are no obstacles to use to your advantage or disadvantage and movement in the mini map does not take action points. During battle, each side determines its actions simultaneously although actions of the attacker are actually performed first. Magic is cast first, then movement of both sides simultaneously, then attacks are made.

Empire of Magic is a fairly lengthy game with twelve levels in the single-player campaign. Although as I said before, nearly half of your time in the game will be used getting your units from one side of the map to the other through the completely turn-based movement. Empire of Magic does support play over a LAN, although there are currently only two maps from.

Overall, I would not recommend this game to anyone unless they are desperate for a new RPG/strategy game and are willing to sacrifice hours upon hours of tedious movement in order to enjoy a few moments of large scale battle.