Warlock II: The Exiled
After Paradox Interactive’s fun-loving, fantasy-filled 4x Warlock: Master of the Arcane became a surprise success it wasn’t long before fans of the game were delighted to learn that Paradox was producing a sequel. Warlock II: The Exiled, which was released in 2014, brought improved performance, a greatly improved user interface, and new content to the burgeoning Warlock series.
The first thing that should be made clear about Warlock II is that it should be viewed more as an expansion than a sequel. Warlock II contains tons of new content and new campaign modes but its foundation remains the same. Players will recognize the graphics, mechanics, races, units, and terrain immediately. This doesn’t in anyway detract from the enjoyment of Warlock II or its position as an improvement over its predecessor but it is important for players to avoid the potential disappointment of viewing Warlock II as a true sequel in the same vein as Age of Empires III or Warcraft III.
The story of Warlock II follows the narrative setup by the Armageddon DLC of Warlock. This is reflected by a major change in the campaign layout. Players now follow a linear progression of story quests and scripted events to return from the outland shards of the multiverse to Ardania where the United One, a Great Mage who successfully cast the Unity Spell, awaits to confront them. All of the 4x elements of Warlock remain for this campaign mode (except the Unity Spell victory, which is not available in the campaign mode). Players can explore the outland shards through portals by completing a quest to open a portal and sending units through to the new world. Story quests can be completed at the player’s discretion allowing the player to explore all of the randomly generated shards before finally proceeding back to Ardania.
An alternative form of the campaign called Battle for Outlands mimics the outland shard environment of the campaign without the story quests turning it into true 4x freeform gameplay. Each shard is based off of a single terrain environment found in Warlock on Ardania and the various underworlds. Several new terrain types were added to the previous underworlds of Warlock and seventeen shards can be found in a single game on the largest map size. Each shard has enough room for three to four full sized cities, but this isn’t a serious problem with Warlock II’s new special city mechanic which allows players to convert unwanted cities into specialized minor cities that can produce gold, mana, or serve as fortresses. These special cities only occupy the tiles immediately around them and do not count towards the game’s new city limit feature. A city limit should seem unusual in a 4x game but it can be expanded through research and is sufficient for player needs in all but the largest maps.
All units, structures, spells, and great mage perks from Warlock return in Warlock II and are joined by two new races: the multi-racial Planestriders and the mechanically oriented Svarts. The new races feature entirely new unit rosters and each brings two Great Mages to the usual selection of Great Mage profiles. As with the previous races, the Planestriders and Svarts specialize in the production of certain resources and emphasize certain unit and damage types. They blend in very well with the existing races and add greatly to the sandbox potential of mixing racial combos in large games. Warlock II also adds several new Great Mage perks and starting spells; including ways to moderate the city limit and the possibility to select starting shards and even a spell that can summon a random lord for hire. DLC has also been released providing more start locations, starting lords, and unique spells.
Perhaps one of the most notable changes in Warlock II is the enhancement of the spell research system. In Warlock five low tier spells appeared randomly at the start of the game for the player to research. Each spell would be replaced by a related, higher tier spell when it was researched. Now spells have been divided into Sorcery, Wizardry, and Divine categories and further broken up into several tiers based on their cost and power. Researching a certain number of spells in a category unlocks the next tier of spells for research giving the player much greater freedom to choose what spells to get and when.
Sadly, multiplayer has not seen much improvement since Warlock. The campaign and Battle for Outlands modes are both compatible with Warlock II and, despite a buggy launch, are for the most part very stable. However, the lingering lack of simultaneous turns, while appropriate for a 4x game that emphasizes combat, is a real damper for a game with limited demographic and economic micromanagement. The additional fact that the interface is only somewhat successful at keeping track of units strung out across the many outland shards makes turns in the later game laborious as each player checks on their multiple worlds while the other players idly stand by.
Graphics requirements have not increased by any noticeable amount. Machines and internet connections that handled Warlock should be able to just as easily manage Warlock II. The voices and sound for the new units is a welcome addition to the existing cast. Another minor change was the transition of several of the Great Mage’s expressions into fantasy languages. This change certainly increased the flavor of encounters with other opponents, but considering the limited number of phrases utilized in diplomacy it can be a minor annoyance as the AI babbles random words at the player over and over.
Warlock II is a very appropriate follow on to Warlock. Even though it lacks the all-encompassing content overhaul that marks a true sequel, Warlock II vastly improves on every feature of Warlock and fans of the first Warlock game, and the Majesty series of games in general, will certainly enjoy Warlock II. The added content greatly increases replayability even for those gamers who have already exhausted Warlock as the new races, game modes, and content provide even more options for exploration and racial combos. Perhaps the greatest mark of Warlock II’s triumph (and tragedy) as a follow-on is that after playing Warlock II, the original Warlock will appear too lackluster and uninteresting to revisit.
Warlock: Master of the Arcane
By the time Paradox Interactive released one of its titles set in the Majesty universe game setting in 2012 the 4x genre was well established with the Civilization series and its latest iteration Civilization V serving as standard bearers. Warlock: Master of the Arcane takes many traditional elements made popular by these other titles and adds a strong fantasy combat aspect to it. Indeed, saying that Warlock is a ‘fantasy Civ V with more combat’ would be a pretty accurate summary of the game’s overall appearance and performance.
Warlock, despite its similarities, was not meant to be a Civ V clone but rather uses reliable mechanics of 4x play to facilitate its new concepts of fantasy adventure and conquest. Domestic management, particularly in the areas of ideology, policies, and great people are toned down or practically non-existent. The centrality and dynamics of military conquest takes a prominent, almost central role with each faction featuring its own unit and unique building roster and special Lord hero units appearing to add their considerable ability to a faction’s might. Spells also make a significant appearance, providing the only element that could be equated to technology as the spells must be researched before they can be used.
As with many 4x games the storyline is oriented around the characters that represent a faction’s leader, in this case the Great Mages. When selecting a Great Mage the player can view several paragraphs of biography and backstory. This ties into the in-game lore, accessible when clicking on the portraits of units, and to a lesser degree the narrator’s exposition when the player achieves victory. Aside from this there is little story to be found, with most of the in-world immersion coming from interaction with AI Great Mages and the exploring of the uncharted Ardanian landscape. While this does effectively limit the game to one mode in singleplayer and multiplayer this is not a major detriment to the enjoyment of Warlock. Just as in other 4x games the narrative is primarily crafted by the player. Players can even customize or create their own Great Mages by choosing a portrait, name, faction color, race, and starting spells or abilities.
Other prime elements of single player enjoyment stem from exploring Ardania and parallel worlds. With each new game resources, monster lairs, and neutral cities are randomly generated offering new challenges each time a new game is begun, ensuring that each race can be thoroughly tested before the process becomes routine. Sadly the AI is less lacking in staying power with limited diplomatic ability and generally simple (if sometimes effective) defensive tactics. The world’s monsters however form a vastly greater threat, particularly in pursuit of holy sites or rare resources in the parallel worlds.
Although multiplayer doesn’t exactly bring anything fresh to the experience of Warlock (aside from the obvious benefit of another human) the game is fairly easy on internet requirements. It’s turn-based play is sadly limited to the active player, no simultaneous turns are present, but as a turn-based game with little in the way of In-between-turn processes the game experiences little variance in bandwidth requirement. Unfortunately random crashes can be more common than one would like and frequent saves are recommended. Several patches have ensured that primary functionality are maintained so simply playing the game is unlikely to induce an error, yet with the release of Warlock 2 further multiplayer support is not to be expected.
Warlock: Master of the Arcane for all its flaws is a masterful first step in what could become a very entertaining and endearing series. Warlock 2 (which will be discussed later) follows in its steps with many improvements and gives great credit to everything Warlock served as a proving grounds to develop. Warlock’s games are lively, humorous, and for the most part fairly prompt with a fair amount of customization options for players to explore. Any 4x player, skilled or casual, who wanted to see fantasy and more combat in their Civilization games will be more than satisfied with what Warlock: Master of the Arcane has to offer.