Milord, It Be Strategy

It's been some time since Magic & Mayhem first gave us an unusual hybrid between role-playing and strategy. Since then, we haven't really seen anything similar until now. For those of you who are new to the series, Art of Magic is at first glance a role-playing game. Character statistics are built up by combating monsters and completing objectives, and a storyline evolves as the game is played. Upon closer inspection of gameplay, though, its resemblance to an RPG is cut incredibly short. Gameplay takes place on a single map at a time. In this map are a number of pads which provide mana to your wizard. In order to be able to have the firepower to take down the one or more enemy wizards in the map with you, you must seize and maintain control of the mana pads. To do so, you can summon creatures to stand on them, defend them, and give you the mana.

Of course, as with everything in life, this is far easier said than done. While you're trying to control the pads, your enemy also controls some and can summon infinite amounts of creatures as well, thus making you be everywhere at once to defend the pads. Sound hard? Belive me, it is! Even on the easiest difficulty level, AOM managed to keep me re-loading the map every few mi

Many people have called Sacrifice as an obvious clone of Magic & Mayhem. I don't really find that it was so much a clone as it "borrowed" a number of concepts. In Sacrifice, you had to control the mana fountains which supplied you with more mana for your spells, but unlike M&M where summoned creatures are primarily used to defend the mana resources and the wizard has many other spells to do combat with, Sacrifice was more of a real-time strategy game where the summoned units must be strategically used and balanced to attack the enemy's units. While M&M applies the tactics to an RPG type game, Sacrifice used M&M style gameplay for a strategy.

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