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REVIEW: Blood & Magic
When I first heard about Interplay's Blood & Magic, I worried that somebody had stolen a game idea of mine. I want to create a game based on the lives of Penn and Teller, where the player chooses one of the comedian/magicians and fights the other in bloody 3-D combat. I was glad to learn that Blood & Magic is actually a real-time strategy game set in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' Forgotten Realms. What a relief!
Blood & Magic is very similar in style to Blizzard's two Warcraft games; the object is to make the best use of magical creatures, called Basal Golems, which are just like regular Golems, only tastier, to defeat the opponent's army of Basal Golems. The Golems are amazing creatures because they collect magical energy (mana), which lets the player cast spells and create new Golems. What makes them even more interesting is their ability to transform into any other creature (given enough mana and experience) from Banshee to Zombie. The key to success is carefully balancing the Basal Golems so they provide a formidable army while still producing enough mana to keep it going.
Visually, Blood & Magic is as well drawn as a VGA game can get --
which, unfortunately, can't compare with the SVGA competition out there.
Of course, a strategy game -- even a real-time strategy game -- doesn't
need to look good to be successful. Two keys to any good strategy game are
its variety and its intelligence. Blood and Magic does have a nice variety
of monsters (about 30) to battle....
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