Graphics

It's not still 2D

The original Magic and Mayhem wasn't exactly a Venus among games, in fact it was quite ugly. Magic and Mayhem's major selling point was its gameplay, not its eye candy. While Charybdis is still keeping up the gameplay, the graphics in this second installment of Magic and Mayhem has undergone a serious overhaul.

You hover over the battlefield, looking down on all the 3D glory as it unfolds. The effects are quite nice, cast a fear spell, and a flaming skull appears, spooking all nearby creatures, whereas Apocalypse will herald a ravaging fiery demon that destroys everything on screen. Make no mistake, Art of Magic does not have a convoluted 3D engine that makes use of your 3D card's long feature list. The 3D is nice, and while a good amount of polish will go into the product before final shipment, in the end, the game is not going to set any graphical standards.

All hail the apocalypse!	What the heck is that?
Hill giants stomping around	Calling down the powers from above

For the love of control!

The game engine instead provides just enough graphical goodness to keep you playing, but more importantly, the 3D engine makes it easier to manage the battles. While the build of the engine that we played didn't have this feature fully implemented yet, Charybdis has promised a fully controllable 3D camera similar to the one in Shogun or Homeworld.

The original Magic and Mayhem was immensely chaotic, and it was very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of explosions and battles transpiring across the battlefield. While a newbie will still be overwhelmed if they leap into a monstrous battle, with a bit of adjustment the camera and 3D engine should help players adjust to the complex battles transpiring before a given player.

Meteor showers galore	Can't say its not imposing
Wandering through a mine	My place of power!

If a battle takes place in an Elven city, the map will still be presented as it should, there will be buildings with rooftops, monstrous trees that will block your camera view, and numerous other little features that a real scenario would have. Fully 3D terrain has a tendency to clog up strategy games, most developers simply remove them, or render maps that aren't cluttered. Art of Magic clutters the hell out of maps. Forests don't hold anything back, you can lose your units in buildings, or tunnel outcroppings, caves and all the various 3D cover structures you could think of.

This is why Charybdis included the option of shaving the tops off of all the 3D objects that impose line of sight restrictions. You can see in the screenshots a little tiny tree stump above your wizard's health. Click on the tree and you can either restore or remove hazardous 3D objects to allow you to see the entirety of the battlefield from a tactical point of view, or to simply enjoy a realistic looking forest in 3D. We also noticed a distinct FPS increase when the extra levels of objects were removed.

Hanging onto the edge

Trolls, guarding a bridge... We couldn't pass this one up.