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Age of Wonders
Released On: Nov 11, 1999
Metascore
Critic reviews are not available yet
9.1
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
All Platforms
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Critic Reviews
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User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 104 User Ratings
9.1
92% Positive
96 Ratings
96 Ratings
4% Mixed
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
4% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 104 User Ratings
9.1
92% Positive
96 Ratings
96 Ratings
4% Mixed
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
4% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
Very old, hidden gem, but a gem it still is. Everything except the graphics holds up, even 20 years later. The story is really good aswell and has branching paths with multiple endings.
I especially liked all the darker endings you can get if you side with the more neutral or evil races.
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PC
Age of Wonders is a beautiful game. I always feel like it is a less commercially successful but more refined, purer kind of Heroes of Might & Magic. If you like Heroes but haven't tried this game, you may meet your true love yet with this one. Its mechanics are a bit less forgiving than newer Age of Wonders titles but is still a lot of fun to play.
Unlike HoMM, stacks of hundreds or thousands of units aren't a thing in AoW. Each unit produced is just that one unit(you can imagine it like an army unit or whatever) but combat isn't like a stack of 60 gold dragons attack a stack of 1200 peasants and kill 800 of them, it's each individual unit fighting with their stats and hitpoints and awesome interesting abilities and whatnot on a physical hexagonal battlefield, moving, making use of obstacles and terrain and everything. There are lots of other differences of course, but another that I like is instead of different strongholds with different race units and creatures as in HoMM, here we have cities of different races and your leader alignment affects diplomacy and other things in your relation to these races and their alignment, an arrangement I like a lot better. Different races not only have their basic soldiers with slightly different advantages and disadvantages but also have different creatures that can be recruited at different levels similar to HoMM but having the fantasy races so neatly represented feels so much more immersive imo.
There are 12 races to choose from, 4 of neutral, 4 of good and 4 of evil alignment.
Neutral races:Humans, Azracs, Lizard Men, Frostlings
Good races:Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, High Men
Evil races:Dark Elves, Orcs, Goblins, the Undead
Of these, Humans, Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, Dark Elves, Orcs, Goblins and the Undead are classic fantasy races and their units, creatures and theme will be what you'd expect, the others are(afaik) Age of Wonders original races.
Azracs are sort of desert humans, with hints of Arab, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Persian and Indian themes and powerful magical creatures at their side. Lizard Men are well, lizard men with most units having the ability to swim which opens up the movement options in world map immensely. Frostlings are short and sturdy survivors of frozen lands with cold and freezing related skills. High Men are like Humans that haven't fallen from grace, that are pure good and heavenly, sort of like an angelic saintly human race with lots of healing and clerical abilities.
Your leader's race will determine your starting town/city's race, but on the world map you may not only conquer other cities with populations of different races but also have cities with a different race but similar alignment to yours join you for some gold. You can then have different units produced from the conquered cities' race in your armies but if you are evil and have conquered a good town, if you produce units from their race, they will cause discontent in your armies and will likely rebel and either desert or attack your armies afterwards. What you can do instead is raze or loot that town or migrate a race of which you have some population of from another town into that town. Such actions will affect your relation with that race. For instance if you are an **** race) and keep migrating other races into halfling(also good) cities you conquer or worse yet loot or raze those Halfling cities, Halfling race which was due to same alignment were friendly towards you will become neutral and later hostile to your kingdom and will no longer accept joining your armies or kingdom voluntarily. Conversely, as a human(neutral race), when you encounter an orc(evil) city, they won't join you for gold, but after you conquer them they'll not rebel and will serve in your armies with reluctance but without rebelling. This is because they are indifferent to you because you are neutral, they would rebel against a good conqueror and cause trouble in their armies. However if you keep building walls in orc cities you conquer and migrate orcs into other new cities you conquer, perhaps worsening your relation with other races, they will become friendly towards you and may later join your kingdom for gold voluntarily.
Never before a game of constant systematic genocide, forced migration and race cleansing present itself in such a peaceful and pastoral way. 10/10, would recommend.
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PC
I can only confirm what JorgeOlsson wrote in his review.
This is a very good game, with interesting story, lots of campaign missions, offline and multiplayer scenarios to play.
It's been long since I last played it, but since its on sale at Steam, this is a must buy for anyone who enjoys turn based strategy games.
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PC
Although perhaps a hundred people will ever read this review, to those that do know that you are looking at this game for all the right reasons. This is the quite simply the best turn based strategy game of all time. Taking control of one of twelve races, you fight your way through many different scenarios playing how you want to play, either allying with other factions to work together against your enemies, or crushing all who would oppose you.
Beside the many scenarios, there is a huge campaign which can be played from two perspectives: The Keepers who choose the path of light and seek to return the world to peace and tranquility, and The Cult of Storms who would seek death to the humans who removed them from their position of power. With an amazing soundtrack, endless hours of entertainment and a huge fan base offering hundreds of mods and additional scenarios that is still alive even now years later, age of wonders is the one game that every pc gamer who loves turn based strategy games should own. Play it, and you will see exactly what i mean.
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PC
A very boring and aesthetically unsuccessful game, both in terms of the drawing of the character icons and in terms of the soundtrack. However, it has ingenious mechanics that have never been seen before in games of this genre. 6/10
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PC
Hello everyone, I am the wonderful Gordoth Enodious, a slav wannabe who has been fattened over my childhood with Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and I am talking about Age of Wonders.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk smack.
Gameplay
Age of Wonders is a top down, turn based strategy that utilizes two different modes of play. The first play-mode is the world-map mope (dubbed so by me) and the second is the battle-map mode (dubbed so by, you guessed it, your mom).
The world-map mode utilizes only the mouse, as does the battle-map mode, for movement and other actions. There are a few hotkeys but I did not use them in my adventures through the game, but for maximum efficiency, it would be a decently good idea to make oneself acquainted with these… And quick.
The world-map mode involves controlling different units to go about from hex to hex (as there is a hex grid in place) and interact with creatures and objects. Creatures could be neutral parties of units roaming about or simply standing still, or enemy parties of units moving with their own purpose. Upon interacting with a creature, the player is asked if they would like to resolve the battle, if there would be one, manually or automatically.
As it is known, ladies and gentlemen, resolving the battle automatically saves between 10 and 60 minutes, but yields a result that is not as good as what might happen were the player to take control and deal with the situation manually. The AI that is used to make decisions in the automatic battles is quite stupid, but that can be somewhat excused as the game was made in the year of 1999.
Units have unique abilities, but, most of the time, said abilities are chance-based or simply passive, and so they are relatively interesting, but they are not exciting. Sure, I might find it cool that the leprechaun had 3 attacks against him miss, in a row, no less, but it is not exciting in the same way clicking the “big fire” skill of a unit and throwing a massive ball of flame at the enemy is.
On top of that, there appears to be an incredible discrepancy between the quality of units. Some units are stupendously grand, while others are miserably weak, even though both share the same upgrade level requirement for their recruitment.
The hero unit is the great fun of the game, both because it offers RPG elements, and because of its ability to cast spells.
The hero unit is a great contributor to the lack of balance, mainly due to the fact that the player can pick to level up the hero unit’s stats, defense, resistance and health, and then produce an incredibly hard to kill goon that can take out between 1 and 16 enemies by itself. I’ve done it, and it’s incredible. The way defense and attack works in this game is very weird, and so it makes very little sense.
The only issue that exists in the world-map mode, alas, is a major one. When the player ends their turn, if they have EVER seen an area, that area is permanently uncovered (unless a specific condition is met), and any enemy that moves through areas EVER seen by the player have their movement simulated. That really slows down the game, but it allows the player to see what their enemies are doing.
There is the option of having the turns be played simultaneously, although the game is still turn-based, but in those situations it is much harder to keep track of what the enemy is doing, not only because the player does not have their camera pinned to the moving units, but also because of the fact that the event system is very bare-bones and provides very little information to the player.
The player is always at a disadvantage, because the AI is very simple and barren, thus that is the only difficulty that the game designers could think of to implement into the game. Artificial difficulty, which is not about overcoming an enemy through outsmarting them or outplaying them, but is about slowly whittling down their armies until the player has more cities than the enemy does.
Overall, the game is quite wonderful when it comes to some aspects of its gameplay, and quite lacking in wonder when it comes to others. Alas, its issues make it become quite tedious after a while, and so I cannot, in good conscience, give it that high a Gameplay score. 1/3
Presentation
Age of Wonders looks quite good. The sprite-work is spectacular, the detail on some battle-maps is awesome, the hexes on the world-map are well crafted into something that looks quite good.
The sound effects are a mixed bag. The music of the game is average. 2/3
Story
More on that on muh tumblr, 5k word limit, bby mode metacritic can't handle actual criticism
3/3
Legendary Point
No
Conclusion
6/10. Age of Wonders is above average in quality. Go play it if you like strats
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PC
Summary Age of Wonders encompasses many facets of games that have preceded it, but it adds improvements of its own and is consequently a complex and highly evolved strategy game.
Rated E
for Everyone
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Nov 11, 1999
Developer:
- Triumph Studios
- Epic Games
Publisher: Gathering
Genres: