When we first looked at Impressions' Lords of Magic, we were less than impressed. The game had tons of potential but was marred by numerous flaws, both in the overall design and several specific gameplay elements (you can see our original review here). Lords of Magic Special Edition promises to address the original game's shortcomings - and lo and behold it actually does. The only problem is that the game is still flawed in many ways and is not all that much more compelling than the original.
Without rehashing all of the basic information on story and game flow, we'll stick to addressing the changes in the Special Edition and how they affect the overall gameplay experience. One of the more notable new features is the included Legends of Urak Quest Pack. This expansion set of five scripted campaigns challenges you to complete a series of specific quests, sort of like the scenarios in Civilization II. For example, in one quest you play a Death Mage and must find and recover a sacred scepter for your lord, the King of Darkness. Another quest is based on Arthurian legends.
Another new feature is the lord editor, which basically allows you to modify your character at the beginning of each game. Instead of accepting the game's default settings for starting heroes, you can modify your starting army choosing units from any of the eight faiths. You can also select the spells and artifacts you posses, and the game includes several items in each of those categories. You can even decide to start the game already in possession of your great temple. Using the new map editor, you can also customize the world in which you play.
The Special Edition features a number of new creatures, including one legendary creature for each faith. There are also many new wandering creatures as well as a general increase in "marauding parties" - easily the game's most annoying and infuriating feature. Marauding parties seem to be the rough equivalent to Civilization's barbarian tribes, except that they appear at alarming rates and mete out rather severe beatings in the face of seemingly superior opposition. Many a time I found myself cursing the puny marauding parties of wolves and centaurs who would take out half of my precious units and set me back by several days (that's game time, not real time). In moderation these groups would add much to the depth and challenge of the game. As things stand now, however, most of your combat seems to take place against these roving ruffians - and not against Balkoth, your most lethal enemy.
One point in the Special Edition's favor is the fact that, although you spend far too much time battling marauding parties, you will probably spend far less time quarreling with your neighbors - even Balkoth. This is due to the game's enhanced diplomacy model, which offers more options and seems to have fewer loopholes. No longer will Balkoth fork over a level 5 hero when you plead for him (offering nothing in return). You can still acquire another faith's hero, but you have to put up some serious barter to do so. Also, whenever you put an offering on the bargaining table, the game will tell you whether or not it's a fair deal before you accept or decline it. This can be useful for avoiding ill feelings over unintentionally one-sided trade demands.
As a result of the improved diplomacy model (and presumably of improved AI), the game plays out a bit more like the story would dictate. Individual faiths are not necessarily at each other's throats and, if you play your cards right, you can actually win the game more easily by befriending your neighbors (except that Balkoth character; nobody likes him). I should point out, though, that the Fire faith begins the game in a very deep hole. No other faith has a positive opinion of Fire (except Chaos, which is typically the weakest of the AI-controlled faiths), and most are downright hostile right from the start.
In terms of problems that have been fixed, load times in the Special Edition are generally speedier (a very good thing), and Impressions has added an option to auto-compute battle results before loading the real-time combat engine. There's a trade-off to this, however, as now the auto-compute results are a bit less favorable to your side than they were in the original game.
You can now interact with any of your buildings without actually marching a hero to it - a very big improvement. This both saves time and allows you to manage your campaign without running back and forth to the capital city all of the time.
Though the Special Edition features several improvements, there remain a number of unresolved issues. For starters, it still takes far too long for your troops to recover from battle wounds, especially when they are low-level units. This means that for every minor skirmish you fight, you often have to rest for three or four days just to get your grunts back into fighting trim. While you rest, your AI opponents are building bigger fortunes and bigger, more-powerful armies.
Of course, the computer faiths may just have an advantage because they all seem to begin the game with armies that are at least twice as powerful as yours. They also seem to begin with more gold, more crystals, and more ale - all for no apparent reason.
Catching up to the AI requires that you take over your fair share of mines and breweries, but that is a nearly impossible task in the early going. In general, there seem to be fewer first- and second-level caves near your starting city, regardless of your faith. This means that you have to attack higher-level monsters earlier than you should. As a result, it is very difficult to keep your troops alive, let alone develop them into seasoned veterans.
And even unit advancement seems to have been slowed considerably. Troops often go through numerous battles - against higher-level foes - without gaining enough experience to move up a level. The final result of all these minor issues is that the game is far more difficult now, even on the easiest difficulty setting.
Real-time combat certainly doesn't help matters much. In fact, apart from adding multilevel dungeons and buildings for the combat mode, this aspect of the game doesn't seem to have changed much. It is still difficult to see all of your units clearly when they fight the enemy at close quarters. More to the point, it's extremely difficult to target the enemy units in these situations. This wouldn't be a huge problem except for the fact that your units often stand there doing nothing after they kill off their initial targets - whether or not there happen to be enemy units nearby. Troops still get hung up on the scenery, so real-time battles are still the same old micromanagement madness that they have always been.
Then there's the minor issue of defeating one of the other lords in battle. You might think that by defeating another faith's leader - and thereby eliminating them from the game (at least as far as Balkoth's goals of conquest are concerned) - you would have made your life a bit easier. But no. As soon as you fell your colleague, vast armies of his faith will pour into your lands, hurling themselves against your forces until they eventually overwhelm and destroy you. I wouldn't find this "feature" so odious if not for the fact that the same courtesy is unavailable to you (when your character dies, the game is over).
The Special Edition corrects a number of flaws and adds several new features but somehow ends up being only a tiny bit more appealing than its predecessor. For those players who enjoyed the original game, the many enhancements in the Special Edition probably make it a must-have. But for the rest of us, Heroes of Might & Magic II (and soon III) and Warlords III are simply better options for a fantasy-strategy fix.
