Sure, you can play on a Dune-like desert world where everyone's capital starts underground, then infest it with Cthulhu monsters, but you might find the mechanics haven't really been fine-tuned for all the possible, weird combinations yet. And even completing their final transformation into beings of pure ice didn't remove the penalty! I found more strange edge cases like this the more tweaking I did with my campaign setups. That's a pretty big oversight for such a punishing mechanic. You have to actually mouse over a unit to see if they have the modifier, meaning I was constantly marching my armies around in the snow to find a safe province where they wouldn't freeze to death. Remember that cool ice queen map I mentioned? I made a badass race of wolf-riding frost vikings to tackle it, but I found that its provinces were often affected by a modifier called Arctic Blizzards that isn't visible in any way on the map, and it blocks your units from healing even if they're parked in your capital city. This amount of customization doesn't always come without some hitches, though. I especially love the racial transformations at certain tiers, which might turn your people into plant hybrids who can move much easier through forests, or frostlings who can build farms on snow. Doubling down on one affinity or mixing and matching are both very viable, creating a practically absurd number of combinations for what your race might become by endgame. Within Chaos, for instance, you can focus on fire magic or revelrous, aggressive infantry like berserkers.
They're divided into six alignments – Astral, Materium, Chaos, Order, Nature, and Shadow – with two tomes per alignment per tier that might be very thematically different. Rather than technological ages, Age of Wonders 4 has five tiers of mystical tomes unlocked through research, each providing increasingly powerful units, spells, and campaign mechanics.
But the magical progression system that carries you through the ages does a lot to alleviate that feeling. So if I were being harsh, I could say there are only really six playable civs with a lot of little bells and whistles to swap out. Your culture pick – Barbarian, Feudal, Mystic, and so on – defines most of your starting roster and how your empire's economy works. Feline necromancers who ride around on giant spiders? Go for it. Lanky dwarves who live above ground and love magic? Sure. The visual aspect is mostly just cosmetic – it comes with some suggested racial traits that fit the classic fantasy version of each race, but you can of course change those out. You can make noble orcs in shining armor who march dutifully to battle with holy words on their lips, or bloodthirsty cannibal elves who live for destruction. It's probably the most customization of this kind I've seen in a purely fantasy game, and I was especially excited by how it let me play against stereotypes. The other thing that had me planning two or three campaigns every time I started a new one is the in-depth, freeform empire creation tools. I had such a good time with these, I almost found it hard to go back to the more traditional style of play.
HEXCELLS REVIEW IGN SERIES
Often, the victory condition in a story realm is to complete a series of quests culminating in a showdown with a memorable antagonist. And in addition to being very respectful of your time, these themed, story-based realms feel significantly different from just dropping into a standard 4X map with conquest, development, and research-based victory conditions – which you can also do, with tons of interesting customization options. Rowan Kaiser, ApScore: 7.1Īlong the way, you can unlock neat new stuff from ruler cosmetics to functional combat items, to challenge maps like a frozen wonderland ruled over by a Chronicles of Narnia-esque ice queen that I really liked. I have no doubt that the strength of the tactical combat will help find a strong niche, but for me, that just makes the relative weakness of the strategic side of gameplay all the more disappointing. Still, it's a fairly successful return for a game series and style that seemed undeservedly buried. The quest for the ultimate fantasy strategy game will continue for a while longer, as Age of Wonders III only partially fits the bill.
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