Blood & Magic
| Blood & Magic | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | Tachyon Studios | ||
| Publisher |
 Interplay
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| Erstveröffent- lichung |
November 26, 1996 | ||
| platform | DOS , Windows | ||
| genre | Real time strategy game | ||
| Subject | Dungeons and Dragons | ||
| Game mode | Single player , multiplayer | ||
| control | Keyboard , mouse | ||
| medium | CD-ROM | ||
| language | English | ||
| Age rating |
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Blood & Magic is a real-time strategy game from the developer Tachyon Studios based on the role-playing game rules Dungeons & Dragons , published by Interplay in 1996 for MS-DOS and Windows . It is the first AD&D computer game to be published by Interplay and licensed to it from TSR in 1995 .
action
The game is set in the Forgotten Realms , in a region called Utter East. The single player mode is divided into five campaigns for three missions of increasing difficulty. In all campaigns the player can freely choose one of the two conflicting parties. The actions of the campaign correspond to common fantasy patterns and have no direct reference to the rules. They are presented as a loose narration between the missions by a speaker and highlighted with static graphics. To unlock the next campaign, the previous one must be completed at least once. After completing all campaigns, the player can once again tackle all 15 cards from the previous missions in a free game, for which he receives a rating at the end.
- Campaign overview
- 1. Howl of Vengeance
- The plot begins with the barbarian lord Rathgar the Raider conquering the kingdom of Doegan. With his last breath, the rightful king curses the barbarian. Meanwhile, his daughter escapes and seeks support from a young necromancer named Aelric the Avenger. The player has the choice between the conqueror or the avenger, and depending on the choice either tries to avert or enforce the king's curse.
- 2. Matchmaker Mayhem
- When Roxana, Princess of the Kingdom of Edenvale, reaches the appropriate age, she announces a challenge. Any man who wants to successfully ask for her hand must first defeat her. The player can now either help Roxana to fend off her admirers or, in the role of Bryan the Bold, win the fight for the hand of the princess.
- 3. Tartyron Unbound
- Tartyron, Lord of Chaos, has escaped his underground prison and is now trying to throw the inhabitants of the surface into chaos. His opponents are two lords and a lady of the Circle of Order, who has already captured Tartyron once and therefore now hopes to be able to do this again.
- 4. Nuts and Bolts
- A campaign with a humorous touch. The two brothers Garrulos the Occasionally Good and Wormskull the Artificier have found a pearl with great magical power. Unfortunately, however, the pearl is cursed and therefore causes an argument between the two brothers. Wormskull wants to use the power of the pearl for his work as an inventor, while Garrulos tries to stop his brother's crazy plans and win the king's favor. The highlight of the campaign is the fight against the Juggernaut, the most powerful unit in the game.
- 5. Harvest of Horrors
- The inhabitants of a village in the shadow of a forbidden plateau fear the harvest season, when evil creatures descend from the plateau in search of human food and hunt the inhabitants. This year, however, this cruel tradition should come to an end, the magician Heradan the Hermit rises against the dark hordes of the kingdom of Nix under the leadership of Redfang the Reaper. This campaign introduces new units on the part of Nix (goblins, harpies and enchanters), as well as a magical cauldron that can convert existing units back into mana. The new units are of above-average strength and represent a great threat to Heradan, which is why the solution to the campaign on the part of the creatures is easier.
Gameplay
Blood & Magic is a real-time strategy game in which the player can take on the role of a magician who uses blood magic to create monsters.
The central unit of the game are the so-called Basal Golems , which are the linchpin of resource extraction, base construction and unit recruitment. They will be created in an indestructible central building called Bloodforge. When inactive, they generate mana points; if there are enough mana points, golems can be converted into buildings or units. To convert into a building, four of them must be placed on the foundation of a so-called mystical place. If a Basal Golem is placed in the vicinity of its own mystical location, it can be converted into a unit, depending on the characteristics of the mystical location. There are several options, but initially the player can only use the weakest form of transformation, others can only be unlocked after research. Research requires experience points that are gained by creating basal golems, building or destroying buildings, casting spells and killing opponents.
The flow of the game is comparable to that of the earliest real-time strategy games like Dune 2 and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans . Compared to Warcraft 2 , which appeared about a year before Blood & Magic , the gameplay is slow. Extreme micromanagement is necessary for the collection of the game resource mana. The golems charge mana individually, but collecting means for the player a constantly repeated cycle of calling up the individual golems and clicking a transfer button. Golems only transfer their mana independently when they have reached their maximum capacity and have not been controlled for a long period of time, which, however, significantly affects their efficiency. Although this form of resource extraction was new compared to the widespread system from Dune 2 , the principle already contained a basic problem. While other strategy games placed value on well thought-out, branched logistics, this was completely omitted in Blood & Magic by reducing it to the universally applicable Basal Golems. There was also no limit to the mana resource. Therefore, mostly only the initial phase was a playful challenge, until the consideration of the use of the golems for generating resources, erecting buildings or converting to a combat unit was overturned by pure unit mass.
Via network, modem or a serial connection it was possible to play the game in pairs against each other.
development
Blood & Magic was Interplay's first licensed product for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons RPG rulebook . In 1995 SSI's exclusive AD&D license expired and TSR had started to license its numerous campaign worlds individually. Interplay acquired the rights to play games in the Forgotten Realms and the Planescape scenario. The game is based on the second set of rules, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons , and the unit design is based on the corresponding Monster Manual .
reception
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Arinn Dembo from the US computer game magazine Computer Gaming World was disappointed and only awarded 1.5 out of 5 points for the game. He described Blood & Magic , which was launched a year after Warcraft 2 , as a playfully outdated and cheap imitation of Blizzard's series debut Warcraft: Orcs & Humans . He described the selection of units as entertaining. In essence, however, he identified three main problems. On the one hand, the game is "primitive" in terms of graphics, sound and animations. Furthermore, the scope of the game is too small. The biggest problem, however, is AI (abbreviation for artificial intelligence ), which he referred to as the " Absence of Intelligence " (German: "lack of intelligence"). These include poor path finding, the potential danger of attacking one's own units and the inability of the opponent to take consistent action against the player. His conclusion:
“Overall I can't recommend this game. Fascinating as some of it's ideas are, there's not enough here to justify the purchase for strategy gamers or role-players - unless you really want the free paperback from J. Robert King that comes in the box. "
“All in all, I can't recommend this game. As fascinating as some of his ideas are, ultimately there isn't enough to justify the purchase for strategy or role-playing players - unless you really want the free paperback by J. Robert King that comes with the box . "
The verdict of Trent Ward for GameSpot was similar, if not quite as harsh . He praised the level and unit design as well as the acoustic design, but also criticized the "annoying" manual collection of mana and the poor way of finding the way. He therefore only recommended the game to outspoken strategy and AD&D fans. In contrast, the daily newspaper The Herald-News published a clearly positive report on Blood & Magic , highlighting the high variance in units and terrain types as the game's strengths and describing the game as "addicting". This test report also identified the hostile AI and the many click paths that are necessary for resource management via the Basal Golems as weak points. The daily newspaper The Buffalo News gave the game a grade C and described the plot as "profound".
In retrospect, according to GameSpy's Allen Rausch , “it wasn't long before players realized that although the genre of real-time strategy exploded commercially, there was nothing in this game to lure them away from Warcraft 2 or Command & Conquer: Red Alert ". In Blood & Magic the decline of've Rather pen - & - paper role-playing games reflected in general and in particular the game publisher TSR, the deprived in a desperate search for fresh money to service its own debt SSI license and split so but only a two-year Phase of "horrific" license implementations. According to Andrew Park and Elliott Chin of Gamespot, "any hope for a renaissance of AD&D games was destroyed by this terrible strategy game". In 1997 TSR was taken over by its competitor Wizards of the Coast , it was not until 1998 that Baldur's Gate , also distributed by Interplay, appeared, which is said to have contributed to the revival of computer role-playing games.
Web links
- Blood & Magic at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Floating Islands and Aggressive Aliens Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Buffalo News . July 22, 1997. Retrieved September 26, 2012.
- ↑ a b c d e f Arinn Dembo: Blood & Magic: Blood Without The Magic . In: Computer Gaming World . No. 153, April 1997, pp. 164-166. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- ↑ a b c d e Trent Ward: Blood & Magic Review ( English ) In: GameSpot . CNET . November 7, 1996. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- ↑ Michael J. Tresca: The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games . McFarland, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7864-5895-0 , pp. 144 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ a b c Taking D&D to the Next Level (English) . In: The Herald-News , April 12, 1997. Archived from the original on August 16, 2016 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved September 26, 2012.
- ↑ a b Allen Rausch: A History of D&D Video Games - Part IV ( English ) In: GameSpy . August 18, 2004. Retrieved November 17, 2012.
- ↑ Allen Rausch: SSI's “Gold Box” series ( English ) In: GameSpy . News Corp . August 16, 2004. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- ↑ Andrew Park, Elliott Chin: Gamespot's History of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Blood & Magic ( English ) In: GameSpot . CNET . Archived from the original on November 11, 1999. Retrieved January 27, 2013.
