Any Magic & Mayhem fans here?

[Jinksy]

Sadly I've lost my copy. But it should've scraped into my top 10 RPG list. Very customisable, very replayable, and not too bad a story.

[Corwin]

Sorry, never even heard of the game!!

[Jinksy]

I didn't write a very descriptive post, did I? Sighs. M&M was made (I think) by Julian Gollop, the guy behind the original XCOM games. It was as much RTS as RPG, but the blend was handled much better than say Warlords Battlecry (I only played the third) or Warcraft three.

The RPGness was mostly limited to the solo mode, where each mission would give you experience and often items to develop your character. 'Customisable' was a bad choice of word; it offered a lot of options for preparing your character for battle, though there wasn't much in the way of developing a distinctive character.

The spellcasting system was great, though - part of your character development involved buying talismans, of which there were three types: order, chaos and neutral. The most important items in the game were magic ingredients which, before battle, you could place into any free talisman spot (and swap them at will in subsequent missions). Each item would have a different, but somewhat related effect in each talisman type.

About half the items were summoning focused, giving you an increasingly powerful menagerie of (mostly typical fantasy) creatures, running through the spectrum from lowly zombies and brownies to fire(ball) breathing dragons.

The other half were spells. Although you needed creatures to control mana sources, this meant that a fully juiced up wizard was never likely to be overwhelmed by creatures alone, as in some RPG/strat hybrids - he might have a spell that would instantly obliterate two thirds of any enemy force, or one that would force them all to attack one of their friends ignoring all else.

The main problem with the gameplay was that some spells (eg. order/brimstone = cure) were so essential to survival that you never got to use some entertaining alternatives (eg. chaos/brimstone = raise dead). It's a shame the game wasn't more successful, since a patch or two could easily have sorted this out. But even with that problem, there was a lot of scope for experimenting with combinations. One of my favourites was to summon a plague totem (a fixture which inflicts slow damage on anything living near it) and a few lowly undead critters (who could carry and spread plague, but not suffer from it), and walk them into the middle of an enemy army - the plague would jump straight to all the creatures that swarmed in to kill them, and as soon as one of them recovered from it, his neighbours would afflict him with it again.

I never got to play multiplayer, sadly. I suspect it would've required using some of the less obviously useful spells to counter the specific tactics you expect your opponent to use. For example, by far the most powerful (and expensive) creature was the (inspiringly named) Champion of Chaos. Being undead it got a hefty combat bonus vs its order counterpart (the Champion of Order, duh :)) despite having less life. But being undead made it almost worthless if the enemy wizard had the Bury Dead spell and was willing to use it - he could dispel the CC for about a fifth of the mana needed to summon it.

Anyway, it's left surprisingly small an impression on the web - it doesn't even have a Wikipedia article, which is a shame. It deserved a cult following at least. And I've always wondered whether the spell combinations I developed were ubiquitous or whether or players would have gone down completely different paths...

[VPeric]

Never heard of it! Any links, for download or such maybe?

(Also, I'm gonna put a request on Wikipedia for an article ;))

[mute]

Magic and Mayhem. This was a gift from my brother on a christmas. And also one of few game i had to return and exchange for a working CD.

I had lots of fun with this game during the holidays. Beeing a XCOM fanatic i was thrilled that my brother, without knowing it, bought me the one game I really wanted but never got around to buy.

I did never finish it though. It got a little bit repetitive and i don't actually remember why i stopped. I think i felt it wasn't either a rpg or a strategic game. And i never ever have felt that warcraft 3 is a good game either. Perhaps that genre is to mixed to be able to please me.

But, i agree with you Jinksy. It got to little notice for beeing a great game. D.W Bradley got tons more attention for his latest mediocre offering.

[Jinksy]

Never heard of it! Any links, for download or such maybe?

(Also, I'm gonna put a request on Wikipedia for an article ;))

It gets a brief Wiki mention in the Julian Gollop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Gollop) entry, just as a red link in his gameography.

A cursory search turned up nothing at all on the net for it, which surprised me. It's got an entry on Gamefaqs (it's just standalone M&M, with no subtitle), but both FAQs are pathetic and only 1/3 finished.

It's not on Torrentspy, which is about the extent of my bittorrent awareness (some killjoy took the list of bittorrent sites off wikipedia). It's got a favourable mention on Underdogs (http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=1968) though, which links to a site where you can buy it, if you want to shell out $15 on an unknown quantity.

I did never finish it though. It got a little bit repetitive and i don't actually remember why i stopped.

The missions do get slightly old, but I think they're better handled than in most RTSes. And I think the game is ultimately RTS (I'd say it's about as much RPG as Jagged Alliance 2, for anyone curious), just not one from the C&C or WC mould. The last mission might have put you off, though - the overlord is ridiculously tough to beat.

Actually, I was talking nonsense about my fave combination - that was to cast a lorelei (which attracts creatures) and plague totem next to a mana spot, so that every time the enemy tries to put a creature on it he wanders off in a lusty haze and dies 30 seconds later :)



I would've loved to play it online a few times, because a lot of the seemingly poor spells (very few actually seemed useless) would have worked as counters to strategies I liked to use but which the computer never bothered
with.

For the record, I'm not really a fan of any Blizzard RTS, though I think Warcraft 3 benefits slightly from the RPG aspects. But M&M is a better example of either genre :)

[Arma]

I remember giving this game a try or two years ago, but never found it entertaining enough. It probably was either too difficult for me at the time, or possibly too awkward. Or both, possibly.

But one thing you are wrong about. Warlords Battlecry series are the only games that offer and adequate mix of RPG and RTS. All the goods parts of a classic RTS minus the resource gathering with some good RPG elements. They got sorta streamlined for the general public and the graphics were nothing spectacular even at the time of the originals release, but still the games itself were pretty good.

[Scorpion ZS 256]

Guys, anyone have this game? I need only soundtracks from it, it is very good imho... Please help!

[narpet]

It was published by Bethesda... There are actually two games... one from 1998 and one from 2001 (I think). I have both. The first is just called Magic & Mayhem. The second is called Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic.

<edit> I've never actually played them. They are just sitting on my shelf in protective baggies. I'm not sure but I think that the second one isn't really a sequel of the first, but instead is a (kind of) rewritten version with updates. Don't quote me on that though. I'll have to look tonight when I get home. <edit>

[txa1265]

I had never heard of them either ... I added it to my Goozex request list since it is 'cheap' and I can just wait for a full package version :)

[Dark Savant]

Great games, published by late Virgin Interactive here in Europe

[Smorri]

I played te first one right after having played Nox. I really liked it, but I liked Nox even more. I got the second one right away, but have yet to take off the shrink wrap... because I know after I play it, I won't have a M&M3 to look forward to. :-/

[Dark Savant]

I saw a used copy of Magic & Mayhem 2 (The Art of Magic) for a couple of euros at the local shop. It is an UK version in dvd style case but without the printed manual. Does this UK version of game includes any printed material at all? I do own the first game in the series. It is a UK big box version, originally without the manual but I can` find any information about the part 2 and the printed manual. Thanks.

[deadplayer]

Sorry, never even heard of the game!!

Me, too.
Could give some more detail about the game?

[murlock]

Dark Savant, I own Art of Magic but the manual is only in french (in pdf), don't know if you are interested :)
From memories, game itself is not very good (but I can be wrong)