Paradox Interactive was so friendly to supply us with a copy of Warlock: Master of the Arcane to review and this is the result. Warlock: Master of The Arcane is a strategy game developed by Ino-Co Plus that has a big similarity to the Civilization series and the Catan board games, only Warlock is a fantasy game filled with ogres, dwarves, magicians and goblins. Just like Catan, the game features hexes on which units might move
The king of Ardania has fallen and three factions fight to decide who will be the new king. This is merely an excuse to rain fireballs on spiders, however, and the latter is quite satisfying. I started a new game (a multitude of difficulty options!) and instantly spotted a range of buttons to tell me what was going on in my “kingdom” and what I needed to pay attention too. So as I was told I constructed a building for recruiting rangers and recruited a bunch of those jolly fellows to help me conquer new land. I moved them over a couple of hexes (limited amount per round) and discovered some monsteres which I killed. In my next turn I spawned some warriors which I send further down the road, I kept the hunters close to me. And soon my help was requested in the form of a quest, I needed to root out a bunch of goblins. Luckily enough, my warriors took quick care of them.
And on and on I conquered and fought and completed requests. I even conquered a fortress or two while being chased by a mad ogre. The spiders were taken care of very quickly but I made the mistake of sending my warrior squad against the ogre and SQUASH! Warriors gone. These are mean creatures and I was lucky it didn’t attack my fortress some hexes nearby. Which is either a failing AI, or perhaps the ogre wasn’t as aggressive as it seemed.
Leaving the dead behind on I progressed to conquer more land and kill more enemies and I noticed my army squads could raise in rank and be assigned perks (e.g. +10% damage) and I could research spells for my Magician. This was all efficiently explained every turn at the sidebar buttons and I couldn’t thank them more for helping me with my turns every time. I even captured a fortress near the sea and build a harbor with some ships. On I ventured into the wild sea but where I thought would be a quiet sea with dolphins racing near my ships, there was a massive beast and monsters near the coast almost anywhere. I wouldn’t go there just yet. But the land I had conquered for quite a bit was still filled with enemies so I fought and fought and used my spells.
At one point I even encountered a ratlike unknown magician and I offered him a peace of arms (Civilization, anyone?), later in the game I decided to honor his request of a parley and I had one less faction to worry about. Great!
Final verdict: combining Catan with Civilization seems to have worked quite very well for Warlock: Master of The Arcane. It has fine graphics, addiciting gameplay, enough dept for a game of this sort. Hell, I can even summon imps and unleash them on my enemies! One of the finest hex-based strategy games out there.
Related articles
- Warlock: Master of the Arcane – Preview (sparkileptic.com)
- Warlock: Master of the Arcane – Gameplay trailer PdxCon 2012 (pathtoataraxia.wordpress.com)
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