Spell effects can be quite spectacular, with lots of flashing lights and sound. Unfortunately they can be murder on frame rate. When casting certain rain-based spells, even with a very fast accelerator, one mage can bring the frame rate to a grinding halt. Despite this minor problem, I liked the fact that I could run the game in higher resolutions on my Voodoo2, which helped to deal with the sometimes obtrusive interface elements. Sound and music is good, if not spectacular.
Music is used sparingly near certain locations and is mostly forgettable.
Despite a few flaws, sound design is solid overall though ambient sound could have been better. This is a complex game with lots of spells, magical items, classes and monsters. Game mechanics are not obvious at first either. The manual does a very poor job even of acquainting a new player to the basic, and the interactive tutorial, while welcome and helpful, doesn't really make up for this shortcoming. To make matters worse, the included city maps in the manual are often just plain wrong, making the maze-like quality of the cities even worse for new players.