RAGE OF MAGES

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

Despite my personal promise not to touch anything vaguely RPG
related until I had cleared the backlog of the various strategy,
educational and adventure games gathering dust, I ended up playing
and finishing Rage of Mages after one particularly frustrating
night when I found I was getting nowhere with "Riven" (don't worry
- I'll persevere.) I am an even newer convert to the real time
strategy game than I am to RPGs and already I have found many
flaws common to all of them. The most frustrating is the lack of
intelligence of your units - a very weak outfit will beat the hell
out of them but they never fight back unless specifically
instructed. This is one of the reasons I still haven't finished
"Warcraft 2" although I hope to do so in the course of time.

Rage of Mages (ROM) is a real time strategy not dissimilar to
either Warcraft. It is also probably the first game designed in
the USSR that I have ever played. AND it's extremely enjoyable and
addictive.  The underlying reason for playing these games always
seems to be quickly forgotten - it's you in a scenario trying to
kill all the baddies.  Some are easy - some very difficult;
however the game is not huge so most experienced gamers will
probably finish it within a few weeks.  I only found something
resembling a walkthrough on the net when I had nearly completed
it; as it was, this was only helpful in informing me of the fact
that I was near the end as the author had used a very different
strategy from mine in completing the missions.

I suppose the crunch question after finishing a game is - would
you replay it if only to write the definitive guide? No - it gave
me great deal of pleasure but while I was prepared to restart
"Final Fantasy 7" I easily finished this on the first go and while
I suspect I would generate a better and stronger hero second time
around, it wasn't that compelling.

As for the first question posed - your troops are slightly more
intelligent than usual - they do fight back. On the other hand
they do not intuitively attack any enemy within vision, a feature
I should like to see available in forthcoming titles which should
of course be cancelable if you are using a character to spy.

Try it - I doubt it will disappoint. It certainly does not deserve
the disastrous rating that it was given by a certain PC games
magazine (oddly enough the only one that didn't like it.)













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