14 DAY TRIAL // Any player worth his salt when it comes to turn-based strategy titles will take one solid look at the recently launched Warlock – Master of the Arcane from publisher Paradox Interactive and developer Ino-Co Plus and will ask himself: are the similarities to Civilization V only skin deep or do they extend to the actual gameplay of the game?
After spending a few hours with the game, I can safely answer: It depends.
Warlock – Master of the Arcane certainly looks like a clone of Civilization V, with hexes creating the playing board, units moving around the map (with two being unable to share the same space), cities expanding their borders and turns used to measure time.
The differences start with the focus on the character of the overall Warlock and his ability to research and then deploy magic attacks against his enemies.
There’s no tech advance in Warlock and mana and food are the elements limiting expansion, at least for the human faction I have tried out so far (there are also options to choose the monsters and the undead).
As turns pass I created some units, pretty low level, opened up some new buildings to create in my kingdom and discovered quite a bit of the map, including a generous helping of unique resources and a few abandoned caravans that can easily be substituted with the villages of the Civilization series.
The game has style to spare, easily seen in the design of the units and the cities and in the cute little ways that the various characters respond to commands.
The big question for a game like this is how well the Artificial Intelligence of Warlock – Master of the Arcade can cope with the strategic and tactical mechanics in order to put up a fight and give the player an interesting puzzle to solve.
Is it worth a full Softpedia review? Yes.