Hey, hey people. Seth here. Today, I'll be covering an old game from my childhood. Lords of Magic: Special Edition The first time I played this game was also the first time I ever used a bootleg CD. I never got the chance to really play it, since my friend's burned CD ROM copy started spinning so fucking fast in my disc tray that I got shit scared and took it out. Because, at the time, I read some urban legend somewhere that a StarCraft CD was spinning so fast in a tray that it flew out and decapitated some kid in South Korea. Did that really happened? Probably. That child is still out there and he's still dead. Good riddance. Lords of magic, made 1997 by Impressions Games. They actually made most of my favourite games. Great guys. Well, they made a lot of historical games and then they said "Fuck it, let's do some magic shit." and they did. and it was beautiful. I got the good old games copy, which runs just fine and it comes with a special edition, which was designed to be playable by special needs children. The game is pretty simple. Start the executable. Start a new game. Choose your Lords class. "Mage" "Warrior" "Thief" **Repeatedly select thief** Then, pick your faith. "The circle of life has no beginning or end." "Choose your faith and write your own destiny." which can be any one of the eight different elements except death. Mom says it's my turn to play death. Fuck off, Josh. Go play with yourself. We both know you're adopted. You know, Josh, I miss dad. I don't like mom's new boyfriend. After you've picked your aliment, you get thrown into the game. Welcome to the magical land of "Urak" "U-Rak" "Iraq" Anyway, your job is to kill Balkoth, lord of death. if you kill him, you win. Better yet, if you succeed in killing Balkoth, you get to play as Balkoth and dominate the lesser races. God, I love this game. Unfortunately, Balkoth starts off with a huge army, a magical rod that insta kills you, and a sweet-ass ride. In contrast, you start with six men and a history of sexual disease which requires the daily application of expensive ointment to soothe your burning taint. Being perfectly honest, you're poor as shit, and nobody has any faith in you achieving anything. So, to prove them wrong, you'll need to conquer your nation's great temple, which has been taken over by all manner of sodomites and degenerates. Being too weak to take the temple on your own, you opted to hire a mercenaries. Mercenaries are cheap, expendable cannon fodder that will serve you for the promise of insane wages. which, if you play your cards right, will never fucking come. and they never do, since my conscripted men were forced to bravely give up their lives as living walls of flesh between me and the enemy. An acceptable loss. Temple liberated. You can actually start playing the game. The temple attracts the followers to your cause each week, which you can immediately put towards unpaid labor and hype producing mad cash and fame at your capital. How many hype beasts you've got operating the podiums, and how many impressive deeds you perform, all translate to Fame, which translates to more unpaid followers, who will toil and sweat in the fields for you, to help you in. Now, you can expand your territory, Trade with, kill, or absorb the other faith and finally fuck up Balkoth. Most faith actually start out completely neutral to you so diplomacy is always an option. Except your opposing element. He hates you, He hates your way of life, and he wants to steal your boyfriend, and make him wear programming socks. Murder him with extreme prejudice, mount his head on a pike, and free his slaves from servitude by making them work for you instead. Just be warned, the incel followers of his heretical religion will lash out and attack the one responsible for killing their reigning orangutan. So be prepared for retribution. Naturally, you'll be doing a lot of combat. Let me explain combat, so you don't pop a blood vessel screaming at the monitor like I did. Units can attack and defend. Pretty simple, right? WRONG. Control-clicking on a unit and making them defend on themselves makes them parry instead. Knowing how to parry is the difference between horrific disfigurement and decisive victory. You see, parrying takes half of a units attack and smacks it onto defense, depending on the unit taking hits. You've just turned them into an invincible slab of diamond. Now, you can comfortably fro shit at your enemies without losing a single soldier. There's also berserk and aimed attack, which does the exact opposite of parry to try and down high-level targets. If you have swallowed all of that information, Congratulations, you are now a tactical master at Lords of Magic. Of course, You could just Huff glue all day and play air. Buy a couple of faeries and toss dingleberries at strangers while hovering over an unreachable cliff. What an amazing experience. Thank you, Impression Games. Besides traditional combat, There's also spells you can research by cramming your wizards into solitary confinement for a couple of weeks. These can gift you with numerous blessings and gift your enemies with numerous disabilities. It's sometimes hard to know exactly what the fuck a spell does. And so I recommend trying them all. Some of my favorites include Polymorph Other, which permanently turns anything into a farm animal and Polymorphs Self which permanently turns your spell caster into a farm animal. There's also theiving. Most of a time thieving sucks shit. Want to speedrun the game? Started as a thief lord. Well, I hope you enjoyed your time in Urak. If your thief isn't some master of shadows, who could steal the very melanin off a dwarf, you're gonna get caught and violated. However, thieves can also do the same to enemy champions. Instead of killing them, clobber them unconscious and incarcerate them as prisoner of war. Then, beat information out of them daily, before sending them home. The faction will actually like you more after that. Also, very important, if you reclaim a temple for another faith, you absorbed them. which mean more fat stacks of cash and gullible followers for you to exploit. Also, if your main Lord gets horribly disemboweled, it's not the end. The other Lord can take their place as a convenient replacement. Over time you can upgrade your nation's capital to hold more followers and construct higher-level guilds. If you take up your mage guild to level three, you get access to that nation's legendary creatures. They're all insanely powerful, except water. Water sucks dick. The AI doesn't even have boats. In fact, one of those legendary creatures you can produce is unique. You're only allowed to create one per game, and one is all you need to actually end the game. So, let's discuss the main objective of this game. A topic I like to call: "Dabbing on Balkoth" Understandably, Balkoth is overpowered as shit, and attacking him directly is a bad idea. So, what do we do? We finna dab on him. Balkoth is dumb as shit, so he has no idea what to do when you keep capping his resources with packs of shitty seagulls. He'll try and chase them to the shoreline and give up each time. He's not as dumb with his guilds, of course, so he leaves "one guard" to make sure nothing happens. Thus, I recommend sending a pack of giant eagles to kill the guard and set his guild on fire. How are giant Eagles capable of arson? Maybe their little claws carry tiny little match boxes with them. I don't know. It is a mystery. The eagles are so fast, they can torch the guild and fly back to the ocean in a single turn. Keep doing this repeatedly. Burn all of his guilds. Make him waste all of his time chasing fucking birds across the shoreline. He will, inevitably, burned through all of his finances repairing his guilds, which you will simply burn again, making the metaphor complete. Once he's completely economically broken, keep bullying him until you're ready to put him down. When the Faqua is given, send your most trusted warriors on a one-way Holy jihad. Select all of them and left-click on Balkoth the kaffir and usurper. The apostate whose arrogance dares place himself above the infinite love and wisdom of Allah. Then, go off and make yourself tea or something. It'll take a while. the results of your holy crusade will appear when you return, and unfortunately, it is unlikely that any of your men survived the attack on Shaitan himself. But who gives a shit. Balkoth is dead. Enjoy. Celebrate your victory, then come back and play as the true Lord of Urak. There's also a Legends of Urak mode. You can play a couple of preset adventurers and do quests. If you click on the middle of the selection screen, you get to play a secret character, "Siegfried" "The mighty Siegfried has failed in his quest." who has terrible voice acting. One word of warning though, if you plan on starting as the chaos nation or anywhere near the chaos nation, I urge you to reconsider. Alternatively, I urge you to download the unofficial patch. Why? Fuck it. Just pause this video, go download the game, and start as chaos. Come back to me when you've experienced whatever the fuck that was. You may notice that you die instantly. That's because an interns finger-slipped, and replaced every level one brownie in a region with a level eight Pegasus. For reference, a brownie is a small shitty hobbit meant for scouting, a Pegasus is a legendary unit produced by the Life Nation. and there's at least 20 of them roaming around now and spawning infinitely. I guess chaos really lives up to its name. But no, it's fucking terrible. Holy shit. Overall, an amazing game. I give it a very high number of unpaid workers mining asbestos in my mines over there average life expectancy. The game is fantastic and incredibly charming. Even though it's almost as old as me, it's aged incredibly well. The same can't be said for myself. Please, give it a try. I'm sure you'll love it. And remember: "To learn the ways of war is the true calling for all women." Don't play water.
