TITLE: “Warlock: Master of the Arcane”
DEVELOPER: Ino-Co Plus
PUBLISHER: Paradox Interactive
GENRE: Fantasy Turn-Based Strategy
PLATFORM: Microsoft Windows
RATING: Not Yet Rated.
TARGET RELEASE: Q2 2012
Ah, Paradox Interactive – a company that is no stranger to us here at Anjel Syndicate. The company certainly knows how to pump out new titles one after the other, but there are times when the overall quality of the games leaves something to be desired. Paradox is also an interesting beast – while they have created a spot for themselves, for better or for worse, as the creators of several historical strategy games (“Supreme Ruler: Cold War,” “Sengoku,” and the upcoming “Magna Mundi” to name but a few), they have also carved out a spot in other genres, namely with games like “Defenders of Ardania” and “Magicka.” This game falls into the “other” category as well, and is actually related to “Defenders of Ardania.”
When first getting into this title, I wasn’t sure what to expect. “Defenders of Ardania” wasn’t a bad game, per se, but it really didn’t offer anything new to the genre of tower-defense games. So, when I saw that they were making a real-time strategy title in the same world as Defenders, I was skeptical about how it would be. On the other hand, seeing as how Paradox has dropped the ball (at least in my mind) several times in the past with their historical RTS games, I thought perhaps removing the “real-world” element from the game might allow it to be seen in a different light. Perhaps Paradox’s trouble lay in its attempt to recreate history, and if this was the case then perhaps being able to shed that shell and do something different would allow them to grow.
Did it?
In many ways “Warlock: Master of the Arcane” reminds me of a sluggish, poor man’s version of “Age of Empires.” I suppose it’s a good thing that it reminds me of that set of games in the first place, but it certainly isn’t on par with them. The graphics, like most of Paradox’s strategy titles leaves a lot to be desired (even by gaming standards 10 years ago), and unfortunately putting the graphics up to 1920×1080 and the quality on “Best” there isn’t much improvement. On top of this, the game runs painfully slowly, which isn’t quite as big an issue in a game like this as in one that is action-packed, but even still it’s certainly noticeable and annoying. Perhaps this overall sluggish feel of the game is because this is a test version of the title and not fully representative of the release version, but this is something I certainly hope Paradox looks into before the final version goes to market this spring.
The object of the game is essentially to take your starter town, unit, and resources and expand into the wider world founding new towns and defeating all rivals. The game is turn-based (rather than actually being fully real-time), and so during each turn you have the option of building new buildings (in your controlled area), calling on new units to be formed, and using your troops to battle enemy units or perhaps sending settlers to settle new areas. As your borders expand and as you gain new towns under your control, you can build things like mines in order to gather resources from ore deposits or you can build farms on fertile land. Resources are important for unit upkeep, particularly maintaining supplies of mana, food, and gold. Your units also have a maximum number of “spaces” that they can move in a single turn and some units incur penalties when crossing difficult terrain, and once you have moved your units and done what you can in the building department your turn will naturally come to an end. During the enemy’s phase of play, monsters might come and attack your capital or one of your towns, or perhaps nothing at all will happen.
As with most of Paradox’s other games, my main gripe is with how counter-intuitive the user-interface is in places. Sure, in some places it is simple (such as clicking a unit to move it or to select a secondary action), but some basic things in the game aren’t as easy to figure out. Sometimes your capital’s boundaries will expand, but other times you might send units or settlers to a nearby resource and nothing will happen. Even more perplexing is that the game won’t tell you why nothing is happening and what the conditions to take over these resources should be. Granted, the game is a bit easier to figure out than, say, “Sengoku,” but this is simply because the game, by design, isn’t nearly as complex. Most all of the political intrigue and other systems that you see in their historical titles are gone (probably for the best, though) and the game is rather bare-bones in the end.
If I were looking for a strategy title, I would pick “Age of Empires II” (released in 1999) long before I would worry about this game. Yet, the game does have time to improve and get better. Perhaps Paradox can clean up the issues with the game’s slow performance in places and maybe they can do something to set it apart from other games in the genre. Yet, if the game hardly stacks up to a title that is 13 years old, perhaps that’s saying something.
In the end, this game is an improvement over “Magna Mundi,” but not by too much…
PRE-RELEASE OUTLOOK: “Hmmmmmm…”
This post was written by
Jessica "Allahweh" Brown – who has written 126 posts on Anjel Syndicate.
Anjel Syndicate's Review Editor, Allahweh has been an avid female gamer, role-player, and game collector for many, many years. More information about her can be found at her blog, Allahweh's Domain: http://allahweh.wordpress.com. You may also follow her on Twitter if you wish at: @Allahweh.
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