What's Good	What's Bad	3.5 out of 5.0
Entertaining gameplay Variety of strategies for winning Distinctive personality Highly customizable 'quick battles' and multiplayer games Simple, easy to use interface	Confusing storyline Objectives of scenarios (and game overall) not clear Limited campaign replay value Troublesome copy-protection

You will take on the role of Cornelius, a young mage who sets off to find his missing uncle Lucan. As you pass through different regions, you'll encounter evil wizards and their minions, cunning traps, and creatures who just don't like strangers. Cornelius' spell-casting ability is the key to survival and success. Summoning spells produce creatures under your control that can fight for you, gather resources, and explore, while other spells have direct effects on you or other creatures.

Magic and Mayhem seems appropriate for lower-end as well as high-end machines, with a P133 required and a P200 recommended; it played very smoothly on my PII-350. I did have a problem with the program frequently not recognizing that the CD was in the drive, probably due to an obscure copy-protection scheme.

The game's 2D isometric graphics have a charming "medieval tapestry" look similar to that found in Heroes of Might and Magic II. The graphics style complements the fantasy setting of the game in a way that more realistic graphics would not. Creatures and spell effects are distinctive, colorful, and easy to tell apart from each other. Creatures are nicely animated: unicorns rear up on their hind legs, elves sit down to rest, redcaps dye their caps in the blood of fallen enemies. I was pleased to see that a high resolution (800x600) graphics setting is provided in addition to the normal 640x480 mode.

The interface is straightforward and easy to use. Everything you need to access is arranged at the bottom of the screen, usable with a single click. Playing the first scenario in tutorial mode is all you will need to get started. It may take a few scenarios to get used to the "wraparound" map (walk in a straight line and you will eventually return to where you started), but it does help to give the feeling of a real, self-contained world.

The most important part of any game is its gameplay, and Magic and Mayhem holds its own here. The game's greatest strength is its openness to a variety of winning strategies within a scenario. Furthermore, variations in the different scenarios ensure that no single strategy will always work. The scenarios are challenging, but the game is forgiving: in addition to having an in-game save feature, if you are defeated in a scenario, you are invited to try it again.

You must apply strategy before you even begin a scenario, with an intriguing spell-creation system that places the decisions about your wizard's magical armament in your hands. Spells are created by combining magical components with one of three kinds of talismans, so each component can give rise to three different spells depending how it is used. You can't change your spell selection during a scenario, so the decisions you make before a scenario can mean life or death for Cornelius.

Once you begin a scenario, you will immediately be in the thick of things. In a refreshing change from most RTS games, Magic and Mayhem has no "build structures and gather resources" phase. It's important to locate and control "places of power," stone circles which provide the mana necessary to cast spells, but the action surrounding a place of power is different and more intense than around a gold mine in HOMMII or a patch of crystal in StarCraft. Futhermore, how you use your mana is frequently more important than how much you have. For instance, a lightning bolt that fries your enemy may also set trees on fire, burning your own creatures (or the enemy's!). Some summoned creatures are great for close combat, but others are cowardly and are best used from a vantage point on a roof or hill. The ability to issue orders and cast spells while the game is paused is a very useful feature that allows some fine control in the middle of a battle, but overall tactics are secondary to strategy in Magic and Mayhem.

The enemy AI appears to be fairly intelligent. Enemy wizards will try to prevent you from gaining access to places of power, and will try to force you to waste your mana fighting their summoned creatures while they pound you from afar with long-distance spells.

The roleplaying elements in Magic and Mayhem add flavor to the game. Friendly creatures can become allies, which are more than just "special units." You can benefit from allies' spells, but you can't order them around: they will follow their own agendas, which sometimes coincide with yours and sometimes don't. AI for allies is erratic, as even when they share your objectives, they sometimes wander aimlessly around the map and get into needless trouble. On the whole, though, the concept of allies adds another level of depth to the game. The experience point system is well-thought-out and provides balance to the game. You gain experience from achieving specific goals such as killing an enemy wizard, freeing a captive, finding a magic item, or even having an important conversation. Since you don't earn experience points from just killing creatures, the decision to fight or run away becomes a strategic one. After you've completed a scenario, your experience points can be used to improve Cornelius' character or to buy more talismans.

Unfortunately, the fun gameplay of Magic and Mayhem's single-player campaign has been saddled with a confusing storyline. The "missing uncle" plot isn't particularly deep to begin with, and it doesn't explain why you are apparently supposed to kill evil wizards whenever you find them. There are no objectives given for each scenario, leaving you to figure things out as you go along. You do have a raven companion who will inform you of important tasks, and your allies fill in bits of the story, but even so, after a few scenarios I stopped trying to make sense of the story and just concentrated on completing the individual scenarios. This flaw is disappointing, because both the strategic and roleplaying elements in the game would have benefited from a coherent storyline.

Replay value of the single-player campaign is limited, despite the option to replay it at higher difficulty levels. However, the "quick battle" and multiplayer options offer random maps with a plethora of choices, letting you tailor-make a scenario to your liking, even giving a "handicapping" option to balance the game for a mix of experienced and new players.

On the whole, Magic and Mayhem is an entertaining game, though it's not so good as it could have been. It has a distinctive personality of its own, it looks good, it's easy to learn, and it offers substantial and varied strategy and a splash of tactics. Forget about the story and have a good time with what the title suggests: magic and mayhem.