Lords of Magic: Special Edition

Lords of Magic: Special Edition is a re-release of Impressions Games' 1997 fantasy hybrid that never quite got the attention it deserved, sitting in an awkward genre gap between 4X strategy and party-based RPG. You pick one of eight elemental or spiritual faiths - Fire, Air, Earth, Water, Life, Death, Chaos, Order - each with its own units, magic schools, and starting champions, then set out across the shattered land of Urak to grind down the forces of the death lord Balkoth. The core loop is a mix of overworld army management, resource capturing, and real-time battles with pause, wrapped around a light RPG layer where your named heroes level up, equip loot, and learn spells. It is old, it is janky, and if you come in expecting modern UX, you will suffer. What holds up is the faction asymmetry. Each faith genuinely plays differently. A Life faith run leans on healing, sturdy infantry, and resurrection spells. A Chaos run rewards aggressive expansion with unpredictable, high-variance units that can fold or shred depending on positioning. The Death faith is basically a skeleton-army power fantasy, which remains deeply satisfying. The decision to tie your starting hero type - Warrior, Mage, or Thief - to how your early game develops adds a layer of build planning that rewards replaying with different combinations. There is real variety here, and the 92-percent positive Steam rating from an admittedly small sample is not undeserved. The weaknesses are real and you should know them going in. The AI is erratic, oscillating between passive and suicidally aggressive with no apparent logic. The real-time battles look primitive by any modern standard and the camera control is a relic. Quest variety is thin - most objectives are variations of "capture the temple, kill the thing" - and the mid-game can drag when you are consolidating territory without meaningful narrative momentum. The writing exists mainly to justify the map objectives rather than to reward reading, which is fine for a strategy title but worth flagging if you come in expecting CRPG-depth storytelling. Balkoth himself is a functional villain backdrop rather than a character with presence. For who it is for: players with affection for late-90s PC fantasy strategy, fans of Master of Magic or Heroes of Might and Magic II who want something with a direct RPG hero layer, and anyone willing to do a little manual reading before diving in. The Special Edition includes the Legends expansion content, which adds Great Campaigns and extends the late-game meaningfully. It runs on modern Windows without much fuss, which for a title this age is not nothing. Modders have kept a small community active, and the forum resources for faith-specific strategies are genuinely useful. If you are chasing narrative depth, branching dialogue, or character-driven drama, look elsewhere. If you want a crunchy, faith-flavored strategy RPG hybrid that respects your time enough to have real mechanical variety but is honest about its age, Lords of Magic holds up better than it has any right to. Monika, Scout Team