Magic and Mayhem: Art of Magic Review

After a lot of announcements, Art of Magic, the sequel to the famous fantasy blockbuster Magic and Mayhem appeared on the market. Bethesda Softworks managed to publish the game in spite of the chaotic situation with Charybdis designers who were, in the meantime bought by Climax.

Art of Magic takes place half a century before Magic and Mayhem. The world was less civilized and the magic was stronger. The story begins with the death of the great wizard Magistrator who kept the world in balance for an entire century. Many inhabitants of the magical world soon grow unsatisfied and as the chaotic Necromagus wants to conquer all continents, great wars are obviously on the way. The single-player campaign develops through a series of scripted scenarios.

You assume the role of Aurax, a young druid, in search of his abducted sister and of revenge for his father's death. As time passes, Aurax will learn new spells and influence political situations in countries he visits, by helping the locals and fighting chaotic mages. The plot will develop through conversation with NPCs, some of which may even decide to join you. The story is not linear, but revealing anything more would be a spoiler.

The campaign is full of logical puzzles and problems which will require you to think before you act; things like stealing an artifact from a well secured troll castle, saving prisoners, avoiding enemy patrols, and fighting superior magic creatures on terrains with low mana sources.

This goes for all three modes of play: campaign, multyplayer and skirmish battles.

The AI controlled wizards will carefully follow your strategy and style and will do their best to thwart your plans. What's more, they will even communicate and cooperate in doing so.

The game also contains important strategic decision-making, which is not directly tied to combat - choosing and combining spells. The main character will gather a lot of talismans in the course of the game and can use them to devise spells of all three basic alignments: Neutral, Chaos and Law. The talismans are only used as "blueprints" for spells, but will never be sufficient for spell-casting on their own. To create spells, you will need a certain number of altogether eighteen different ingredients that exist in this game (their combinations allow sixty different spells). The ingredients are varied and include various minerals, herbs and jewels. Apart from them, there are also magical items which can give you an extra boost or save you from a sticky situation. For instance, it would be impossible to infiltrate a well-guarded troll castle and steal the brimstone needed for spells without the cloak of invisibility. Most magical items can only be used once.

When choosing spells from the talismans you gathered, you won't be able to choose more than three spells per ingredient. This will be a hard decision to make, and will determine your strategy after you make it.

You will get a number of quests over the levels, but to actually achieve anything, your main goal will be to conquer as many Places of Power as possible. People discovered that magical energy channels itself through certain places, and this is where the wizards built their altars. These stone altars are ancient sources of the magical energy, and the more of them a wizard possesses, the faster his mana regenerates, and the more spells he can cast (TA: Kingdoms, anybody?). In fact, you'll spend most of the time in the game worrying about those stones. In order to drain the energy of the stones, you either have to stand on them or summon a creature that would stand on them and channel the energy towards you.

Controlling more stones will thus give you a tactical advantage over your enemies. You will, however have to summon large numbers of various creatures to hold and protect your places of power.