Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Ino-Co
System requirements: Windows Vista/Win 7, dual-core CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce GT240 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 4 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RTS
ESRB rating: Everyone 10+
Release date: Available now

Warlock: Master of the Arcane is a turn-based strategy game that asks a simple question: if the King of Ardania disappeared and multiple powerful wizards were left behind to rule, what would happen? The answer is lots of warfare, spellcasting, and the triumph of one warlock to rule them all. Set in the same universe as Majesty 2 and featuring fantasy 4X gameplay, Warlock strives to give players a strategy-gaming experience with the kind of flavor you’d expect from the Majesty franchise, and all the fantasy elements you could possibly want.

The ultimate goal of Warlock is to beat the other Great Mages via four possible routes. You can eliminate them through conquest, you can own all of the holy ground in the world, you can research and cast the Unity spell (making you more or less a god), or you can kill the avatar of a god. In attaining these goals, you must manage a simple economy of gold, food, mana and research. Each city also has an auxiliary resource: population. A city can only support so many buildings at each level of population, so grooming cities to grow quickly and managing the production of food ensures that your people breed like rabbits, making it possible to outpace your enemies economically and achieve victory. And like various iterations of Civilization, you can found new cities and conquer existing ones, covering the map with your empire.

There are three races you can command in Warlock: humans, undead and monsters. Your own Great Mage must pick a race to favor, but through conquest you end up with populations of all three at some point. They each have unique (but comparable) units and utilize resources in various ways. Most undead units require mana to support, while humans need food, even though both need gold to construct new units. But it’s not all about race; Warlock also has several deities available for worship. Building temples to different gods grants you new units and the favor of that deity, enabling special spells. You also incur the anger of certain other gods when you build temples, possibly even making them angry enough to send an avatar to your realm to fight your forces (which might’ve been your plan all along). The good news is that these deity and race combinations ensure that even two warlocks with the same race at their command can end up playing differently in a long game.

Your warlock doesn’t appear on the hex-based map itself, but is instead a vague spellcasting force. Through research and the favor of certain deities, you can use spells to benefit your people or harm others. Your avatar is also customizable in terms of abilities; you can pick starting spells, the initial favor of certain gods, and special abilities that improve your performance in a variety of ways. There’s just enough customization available to make the opening choice of warlock abilities an important strategic decision in and of itself. And while you personally never appear on the map, your minions certainly do. There’s plenty of terrain through which to fight and move, from mountains to lava. There are even mystic portals to other dimensions, where greater challenges and even more real estate are available for conquest and colonization. And you have some real control over how your world is set up at the beginning of the game; I was satisfied that I could dictate the amount of space dedicated to oceans, whether the world was flat or cylindrical, and even the number of realms available through a mystic portal. All of this ensures some measure of replayability.

If I don’t sound too excited about the gameplay in Warlock, it’s because I have some problems with the way the game plays. First of all, the AI doesn’t seem to understand how certain units and attacks work. An example: the undead can create ghosts as a moderately powerful combat unit. Ghosts have the usual advantages of undead units in the game (immunity to death magic and poisons) in addition to being bodiless (they are immune to melee and missile attacks because their bodies are not physically present). They are extremely vulnerable to other kinds of magic. If I employ ghosts against the AI, I see the AI deliberately move units like trolls into combat with ghosts. This is insane because trolls only have melee attacks, which are completely ineffective against my ghosts. And it’s not like there aren’t other units for the trolls to attack. So the trolls wander up to the ghosts, do no damage, and the ghosts injure and then kill them. This is inexcusable because the AI should know better, and it has other ways of dealing with these kinds of enemies. The AI also never uses counterspells to prevent you from casting your own incantations. It doesn’t matter how many times I cast absurdly powerful magic against his capital, or how much mana the AI has stored; he won’t ever even try to stop me. Aside from that, I found the mystic portals to other realms largely pointless. The realms outside Ardania are populated by so many high-end and powerful creatures that if you can actually beat them and establish a foothold in that realm, you have the military strength to take out the other Great Mages with relative impunity. Gameplay could be made much more interesting by either varying the strength of enemies in these realms or doing something else to make them more attractive for conquest. As a final complaint, the game has no multiplayer at the moment, a decision that mystifies me considering the kind of gameplay involved. If nothing else, Warlock is crying out for multiplayer.

But for all its warts, Warlock: Master of the Arcane is still kind of fun to play for those looking for less involved strategy gaming. I wouldn’t recommend it for any hardcore strategy gamer, but priced at $19.99, if you want to play a fantasy strategy game on par with Civilization’s level of difficulty (but without the extensive content), then pick it up. There’s even a demo to get your feet wet before you make a purchase.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation: