So I was holding out for Eador: MOTBW (it just looks gorgeous!) and I know it's just a reskin of Eador: Genesis. But from reading reviews here it sounds like I might just be better off with Genesis as it plays better and might be less buggy - is this true? Any thoughts from people who have played them both? Should I continue to wait for MOTBW or am I just better off with the original (again, I say original knowing they're the same game, one just looks prettier).

(this is a repeat of a post I made in the "Supreme Sale" thread but I thought I'd toss it up here as well - if it's a bit redundantly redundant mods feel free to delete it!)

I would say it depends on your computer. If you have a very high end less than a year old machine Masters would probably run better for you. Not saying it's better, just that Genesis seems to have some problems with power settings, seeming to take up a lot of processing power for some strange reason unless you throttle back in power settings every time you play it.

Not sure if gog can even do anything on their end to fix it's problems with newer computers either. Sadly this is probably beyond their scope/abilities if they have not done anything at this point.

Otherwise quite frankly I object to the very concept of what they did by making Masters. They remade a less than 5 year old game that DIDN'T need it and then proceeded to release a severely buggy product that they had the nerve to ask 4 times the price of the original. Badly done 3D does not make it better graphically to me. Especially not when the original had such well done 2D graphics.

If you want to remake games I think you should stick to classics older than at least 10 years. Master of Magic btw is 20 Years old and ppl still play it so obviously graphics to mean so much to everyone.

I've played both and while Genesis feels a bit more retro and unpolished (not surprisingly considering it was a one man effort) it does play well and doesn't need patching. The only bit I miss as a not overly competent player is the save game facility but you can get around that.

MOTBW should have been a bit improvement - new graphics, extra features etc but it isn't. I'm sure there's a good game in there to be had but it's buggy and each patch seems to introduce new problems. While this was ok for a relatively new game we must be nearly a year after the original release and it still has big issues. I'm also not sure that I found the 3D look better for accessing information and probably expected more than just a graphical overhaul.

Having said that I do want to encourage this type of game by buying it (Realms of Arkania anyone?) and the developers are still working away at it presumably in the hope of flogging some DLC.

I would want to encourage the individual who made Genesis NOT the scam artists that tried to capitalize on him and his work by making Masters.

I mean come on they didn't have to have ANY original and/or creative ideas, work out balancing issues and concept design which when you really think of it is quite a big chunk of the work that goes into this type of game. The only damn thing they had to do was design the 3D graphics and interface and crap and they couldn't do a decent job of that.

So PLEASE lets all give the credit where it's due and not to companies that come along after all the hard work is done and try to make money off it. If they had actually done a sequel I wouldn't be so pissed at them but as it stands they did nothing to earn the money they are charging for MotBW .

To be fair, Broken World was apparently recoded from scratch and while not all the interface changes are for the better, not all are worse either. The wholesale copying of interface graphics and music (by not means bad, but couldn't they have at least expanded the repertoire?) is harder to justify though.

However Genesis is part of GOG's Supremacy Special Promo and can therefore be picked up for just $2.39 until Tuesday 29th April, compared to $19.99 for Broken World.

Even WITHOUT SALES Genesis is only $5.99, which is a GREAT price, compared to the $19.99 for Broken World. Even when you can find it on sale it's never really going to be cheaper then Genesis. I would only have considered this being a fair reason if there was an actual reason for them to do this other than just because they could. There is not really one SOLID reason (badly done 3D is not a solid reason to me) to get Masters over Genesis imho. The only slightly ok reason is it apparently runs better on ultra high end/modern machines without having to tweak anything.

I like the Genesis graphics better than the 3D graphics in the newer iteration. Style is what makes good graphics, not technology.

100% agree.

I purchased Masters back in November during that Insomnia sale for $6 and just today finally got around to trying it out. I regret wasting the money now so much. Almost as much as the $10 I shelled out for Master of Orion 3 so long ago, but hey at least then I got some coasters for the money lol.

Here are some solid issues I had with it, had to force myself to play it for an hour:

1 - It took the game 5 min from launch to finally reach the Title screen.
2 - It took another 5 min for the game to load up a Tiny 2 player Single Scenario.
3 - Takes about 5-10 seconds to open up the build screen. This may seem like nothing but since you are going to do this every turn it adds up. Also that 5 second delay seems to happen with most actions and my computer is pretty decent but not outstanding, about 3 years old. This was with graphics set to very low rates to try to help.

4 - Graphics, it's very hard to say what I would have thought of these graphics without Genesis to compare it to. However I think even then I would have become frustrated with how annoying it was to differentiate the terrain but this could primarily be because I am so used to the crispness of Genesis. However I found that the graphics were quite a bit tinier and harder to see as well.


I have now uninstalled and deleted Masters from my computer and will have to go play Genesis to wash the bad tasted out of my mouth. This is one of the few times that the pessimistic thoughts I had about something were outweighed by the reality of how bad it was. My opinion now is Genesis or nothing.