I grew up in the late 90's/2000's, so I missed Master of Magic when it was being sold in stores. I did however get Age of Wonders, as well as Age of Wonders 2 and it's stand alone expansion Shadow Magic. One would think I'd like Age of Wonders more than Master of Magic, it's how these things usually go when you grow up with something or other.

However, I find Master of Magic better in every way. I have been playing for a while now, and this game really is the best of it's kind. Age of Wonders does have good music in it I must say, so Master of Magic doesn't fully win me over in music, even though I do like it's tracks a lot(simple, but good and catchy).

In gameplay though, Master of Magic rules. Even the graphics I find more appealing. I know, I know... in today's world, something that's more shiny means better(quite literally apparently, see the sweaty skin on people in NBA 2K12? wow... I'm glad I like 2D graphics better...). Quite seriously, I like the portraits better, and the maps better. The wizards look quite awesome and truly are unique.

I also like the combat, having it on a smaller battlefield is something I like better. Having multiple units make up a company, instead of single units running around is so much funner. I also like how my wizard gets shown when learning a spell, banishing another wizard, or summoning a creature. When I first saw the unicorn pop out of the floor, float in mid-air and give my wizard this look, I cracked up laughing.

I'll admit I'm not an expert at game mechanics, nor do I want to be. Min and maxing everything isn't for me at all. Being the best isn't what I want to be. From someone that just enjoys to play for the fun of the game, I just wanted to say, it's really the best of it's kind out there :).

Shame on those that did not make a Master of Magic 2. *wagging my finger*

I totally agree. This game was great then and is still great. Thank heaven for gog making it available. Like you, I've always wished for mom 2 and wondered why it never happened. They did sequels to master of Orion, right?

It is truly one of a kind and still rules its genre.

I can understand that there isn't a MoM2. Many games don't get a sequel because of various reasons but! I have never understood why someone haven't made a similar game. There might be copyright issues and what not but come on. You can get around that and the rights can't be expensive now. It's a mystery.

Have you tried Heroes of Might and Magic 3? It's extremely similar. There are a few differences that might make you prefer one or the other, but they have a lot in common.

I never got hooked by the Heroes of Might and Magic games. Main reasons is that I hated that you can only move troops with a leader and that you have to harvest various resource places all the time.
I'm sure there are other things I disliked with them but it's been so long since I played them I can't remember.

And I dispute your claim of it being extremely similar since it's way dumbed down compared to MoM.

MoM is the one and only master of the genre!

HOMM have been borrowing stuff from MoM since version 1. Actually the main differences HOMM1 had to King's Bounty (from which it mostly originates) are borrows from MoM and some artwork. And from then up until version 5 they have been adding more stuff MoM had 15 years ago. HOMM4 is the closest, which is one of the reasons I like it! Most HOMM fans disagree though.

Age of Wonders is essentially a remake of MoM. It's pretty decent game actually. I do like and own AoW.* but they are no replacement for MoM.

Actually i wouldnt compare it with Age of Wonders. For me MoM is more similar to Civilization game and i grouped them: (Heroes Of Might And Magic <-> Age of Wonders) and (Civilization <-> Master of Magic)

Making a MoM2 would be expensive because the current IP holder is greedy. Making a similar game has been tried, with a fair amount of publicity, by Stardock (makers of the Galactic Civilizations series), but the game they produced was horribly botched which not only discouraged them from further attempts, but probably tarnished the whole idea, at least as far as suits at game development houses green-lighting funding for a project.

I would dearly like to see a worthy successor to MoM, but I'm not holding my breath. Then again, when GoG was founded, literally my first thought was "If I help support these guys and they do well, maybe eventually they'll publish MoM so I can play it without jumping through hoops." That one payed off, so maybe a good MoM successor will come along eventually too.

Damn those greedy suits!

Yeah I finally tried Elemental: War of Magic when it was on sale and the reviewers was right. It's one of the least fun games I've played.

The chance that GoG might sell MoM was one of the biggest reasons I joined too and GoG delivered. :)
Now I'm eagerly awaiting 8/5-12 so I can try Warlock: Master of the Arcane. This might be it.

Actually elemental:fallen enchantress is currently in beta atm+ available for preorder.
Elemental is the stardock CEO's pet project and the company is gambling its future on this and/or sins: rebellion being succesful.

Honestly I don't think it's possible to save Elemental without a complete overhaul and rethink of what they want with it.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to scrap it altogether and start from scratch.

"Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion" will most likely be a success. I pre-ordered so I'm playing the Beta and the game is really fun.

Methinks fallen enchantress could surprise you, it is an overhaul and reworking of the game along the lines that you describe.
Scrapping the previous work alltogether and starting anew might have been for the best, but well, one of the difficulties of elemental's original launch is stardock made the engine from scratch (despite have no experience doing so for this type of game) and seeing that FE uses the same engine only refined, guess they invested too much in it to give up completely.

Whether it'll be the true successor to MoM i know not, but at this point in the beta I can tell you the game is fun, a marked improvement over the original game.

As for sins rebellion, don't wanna go offtopic but yeh, looking forward to that too <3

Mmmm incidentally... I wonder what are the odds of stardock games making an appearance on gog.com?

That's good news about Fallen: Enchantress. I'll wait for reviews when it's released and hope for the best. :)

Stardock games on GOG would be nice but unfortunately I wouldn't bet on it. Sins Rebellion is on Steam and Stardock have a app of their own. But I can wish. :)

Didn't Stardock sell their own digital distribution system to Gamestop or some such? I'd think that's why their games are starting to show up on Steam.

Yeah. Stardock had Impulse which they sold to GameStop so Impulse is now a GameStop client/app.
Stardock have dusted of their old app Stardock Central so for example Sins of a Solar Empire are now on the old/new Stardock app and on GameStop. The reason for this is that GS don't want any programs on their app so Stardock had to start up Stardock Central again to make their programs available for download. The new Sins, Rebellion, is on Steam. It'll probably get on Stardock Central too I reckon.