Magic and Mayhem: Art of Magic Review

There are a lot of different monsters to be summoned in this game: from the simple and weak creatures like skeletons or goblins, the somewhat stronger demons, minotaurs, dryads and harpys, to the powerful dragons and giants. Picking the right creature to summon for solving a certain problem is one of the main challenges of the game. The weaker creatures are cheap to summon, and the stronger ones are extremely expensive.

Each creature has three levels to advance through. Creatures advance through levels when they prove themselves in combat. They all start from the basic level when summoned, and can then advance to "Chief" and finally "Lord" level. Now, what does this mean: if you have a stupid skeleton who is simply barging towards the enemy, and he survives several battles and kills a lot of creatures, he would become a chief skeleton, capable of using a shield and a special attack. If he manages to advance further, he becomes lord skeleton, with the ability to cast frenzy on skeletons around him, increasing their bloodlust. Lord skeleton also wields a great big sword, and that always helps in a sticky situation.

Besides the summoning spells, the game features offensive and support spells for modifying your creatures' abilities; they range from lightning and fireball to meteor shower, wind elemental, disintegrate and dragon's breath.

Practically all creatures can have their abilities and characteristics improved by casting spells. These spells are nothing we haven't seen time and time again in various fantasy games; speed, strength, etc. I would just like to mention a spell I personally found interesting: Excalibur summons a hand wielding a giant sword which chops down anyone who tries to get near the creature it is protecting, and lasts until the creature dies or is dispelled.

The thing you will have to decide is whether you want to summon a huge number of weak units, or a small number of powerful units. Art of Magic has a strong FRP element, as there are many towns, magic items and NPCs. Some NPCs will join Aurax, which will partially put them under your control, so that you can directly control them in certain missions, while in other mission, they might just give you passive support.

The simplicity with which you get to choose spells and cast them is really amazing, which is really useful as the scenarios represent combat arenas where two or more wizards try to destroy their opponents with spells. Fights take place both in open (forests, meadows, craters, mountain tops, battlements, towns, villages, ship-decks) and indoors (caverns, sewage, castles and taverns),

One of the most obvious improvements are the 3D graphics. Art of Magic is rendered in full 3D with the possibility to rotate the camera and zoom in and out. The characters are a bit blocky when zoomed in to full extent, so I used the default view through the entire game. You will have to use camera rotation a lot, as you might otherwise miss an object crucial for finishing a mission.

Skirmish and multyplayer modes have similar options. Before you start playing, you can grant your wizards a certain number of points which can be used for buying mana, health, strength and some spells, as well as sorting out your spell book and accessing better spells.

The multyplayer mod supports up to eight players over LAN or Internet. You can join a game as a part of a group and then share the inventory, and spells in-game. Wizards can advance in experience in multyplayer mode, too.