But if you're willing to look, there are very few games that show you as much as you'll see here--a nearly infinite variety of rising gods and dying empires and a fat man with a magic belt--and no games that do it with focus, depth, and extraordinary economy of Dominions 3. [Jan. 2007, p.60]
For those TBS fans out there this will most likely be one of the best games out there. Though it carries a hefty MSRP of about 50 bucks, It is very unlikely that any game will be exactly the same. There is just too much content for that.
If you are looking for fancy graphics, a gentle learning curve, or a casual strategy gaming experience look elsewhere. If however you want a challenging game with a tremendous amount of depth, content, and attention to detail you have found a real gem. The gameplay experience could be described as unforgiving but success in this game is very rewarding because it requires careful planning and execution. Also, the departure from the "High Fantasy" mythos is refreshing. From Norse and Hindu mythology to Lovecraft's underwater horrors there is so much inspired content it is almost mind-boggling. This is an excellent game!
I just discovered this gem ****, and I have to say it's one of the best turn based strategy games I've ever played. The amount of depth in this game is staggering. There are a huge number of nations, units, spells, items, and tactics at a player's disposal. I actually found the UI to be pretty good once you learn the basics, and I didn't find the basics as hard to learn as some folks have suggested. It will take you a very long time to learn to be competitive in multiplayer though. The only negatives about this game that I have found are the dated graphics, and that the AI quite dumb.
A return to the complex, deep Dominions world of fantasy turn-based strategy. Dominions 3 is a heavyweight game, but one well worth the effort to delve into.
Don't be fooled by the dated graphics. Dominions 3 is a complex, deep, and incredibly rich strategy game that will reward those willing to invest in it with an almost unlimited variety of play.
If you like fantasy, and if you're ready to graduate beyond the must-haves like Civilization and Heroes of Might & Magic, then Dominions 3 is a unique game you won't want to miss.
Excellent TBS. Many Options and endless ways to win or lose. Ai is very good but the game is made for Multiplayer. But be warned, if you don't like micromanagement do not try this game If you like to manage every turn every province and you are a fan of old school TBS Dominions 3 is a must have.
This is a serious game. Probably for TBS, the best out there. It is deeply engrossing. Options endless, strategies endless, highly moddable, dedicated community. The game is richly complex and winnable with literally 100's of strategies. A virtual gold mine **** from a strategy point of view. A caution, the learning curve is steep. It's not angry birds. Some posters have said that the AI is weak. It can be adjusted, but simply it has too many options which are adaptable and good. I suspect that because there is no "right" choice, the AI can't handle it all. Made even more amusing and complicated is the fact that when you give orders, they may not be obeyed or not play out the way you'd like just like real life. The replay value is not exceeded by any game on the market. Now for the bad. The graphics could use a little work, both in appearance and in a manner that enables one to follow the action a bit better. But graphics are not the main selling point. The point is game play and options, endless options. Also, near the end game, micromanagement becomes a serious issue. It is possible to lose track of where units are going and what they are doing. Perhaps there should be a final destination marker and a way to track what the units are doing in a more trackable way. The organization and tracking need a bit of work and some of the interface rough spots need to be cleaned up. Having said that, it is probably the finest game out there if strategy is what you seek.
Let me start by saying that I love strategy games. Civ Series, MOO, MoM, GalCiv, Distant Worlds... the list goes on. However, I hate this game. That's right, I hate it. I will focus on what I dislike about it so that other players can get an idea before buying this game. If you want to get a better summary of the good aspects, read one of the other positive reviews :)
First off, if you are good at single player strategy games, the single player will be of little challenge to you here. You'll have to play play-by-email multiplayer games (or find skirmish games online). Play-by-email games will last quite some time (months) so be prepared for such things. I'm not a huge fan of this but I got used to it. However, if you don't have the patient for such things, it would be in your best interest to stay away.
Now, on to what I really dislike.
This game has so much depth to it that, as others have put, the strategies are endless. However, the mechanics of this game are nowhere near the level they need to be. To put it simply, you lack sufficient control over your units and will find a good part of the game will be to just get your units (especially mages) to simply do what you want them to do... and then get frustrated when they do something stupid.
You see, the battles are totally out of your control. You give your units orders and then watch the battles unfold in the next turn. You can give your mages, and units, commands but they are very limited. In the early game, this isn't a major issue. But, in the mid to late game, where mages become very important, the fact that you lack good control over mages becomes a huge issue.
You can only give commanders 5 orders total. After that, the unit is totally under AI control. Not only that but, if the unit can't perform what you want it to, they may do something reckless or otherwise stupid - sometimes even costing you the unit or gems (which you use to cast spells, more or less). When multiple units do such things, they can even cost you the battle. So, a huge part of the game becomes simply getting your units to do what you want them to. Does this sound interesting to you? It definitely was not fun for me - especially when you invest a good amount of time (late game, when your armies become gigantic - even an hour or more) programming your units to only find them not do what you want. There's not even a simple command for a mage to cast one spell and do it continuously. Or to not cast certain spells.
I could go on about other AI issues that annoy me to know end but I'll end it there.
My next major gripe is the way that Super Combatants, so called SCs, work in this game. Once you get into the later part of the game, you can start creating powerful items for these large, powerful units. The problem is, they become so powerful that they can take on entire armies! Even an army composed of high level summonable units which, from my point of view, should be able to stand up to them! Swarming will not work even in the least bit! So, you must rely on mages. However, these SCs will have items that are resistant to certain magic types. So, only certain magic spells will really work on them.
But, wait, didn't I just say that you have little control over your mages and that they are very difficult to program to get to do what you want? Now you see where further frustration comes in.
Also, in regards to strategies with these SCs, they will absolutely destroy entire armies but, get the right spells in, and you may take them out before they can do anything. One good spell, with some luck, can take out an SC with one hit or even charm it to your side.
To sum it up, you may get strategies that work like this:
Strategy A >>>>> Strategy B
Strategy C >>>>> Strategy A
This can be to the point that, if you aren't adequately prepared to counter something, you may have little or, even, no way of countering it. It also means that these SCs are very important to get and all players aim to get them later in the game. Without them, you are at a major disadvantage.
So, to sum this part up, balance is not in this games best interest.
Finally, I hate the ability that units, and armies, can effortless warp around the map. It destroys the whole idea of fronts, which all strategy games have. What fun is it when a unit, or army, can appear anywhere on the map at any time? There's no way of countering this as you can't predict where they will appear; you can only guess.
If the above things do not bother you and you do not mind lacking control over your units, you will most likely find this game to be a great one. However, if you are like me, you will find this game to be an incredibly frustrating experience. I played a good five or six multiplayer games (remember they take months to complete) and I will say that my most recent one will definitely be my last.
I picked up Dominion 3 about 24 hours ago and have onomnomed it since (yes, straight. I do that.). I saw the recommendation for 4 on my Steam but kinda baulked at the price considering the PD style of art (#3 still put me back a fair bit). I'm struggling to see what other people see in it. Its not really that different from Centurion Defender of Rome back which was released back in the 1990's. The sound and the gfx are on par, if not worse and its the same principle: give vague instructions to an AI and watch it totally screw it up when the fight happens (I just rage quitted from the last chance I gave that game).
It's an interesting concept and the implementation in Dominations is reasonably complex (lots of spell and potential unit combos, like TONS) however the instruction is almost as limited as it was back in Centurion. You can just about instruct your hero to do a couple of things in sequence. In the game I just quit from my sequence was: long range fire spell *2 => fly into their ranged troops and kill them with your fire AOE. Worked out fine for a few fights but then my hero appeared in the middle of my own troops burning them all to death. Why are the spells and the tech paths complex but the tactics, the actual part that is the core of the game so incredibly simple?
Attack/Hold and Attack/Retreat/ etc. You can then specify if you want to attack a particular type of unit or maybe just the one at the back, however you can't elegantly sweep your army from right to left nor pull of a sweet pincer movement (which you could in Centurion). Considering this game sells itself on the principle that it has complex combat, considering the fact it sacrifices the gfx, the sound, EVERYTHING for it I'm disappointed that the tactics are so incredibly bare. The spells and abilities are just fluff. So all we have is a lot of fluff. The fluff is cool. I just wish I could program the commands for them where I'm not terrified everytime I look at a fight result to see if my hero died because he didn't understand them.
Forget the "civ like" stuff, that part isn't fun either. It suffers from "ring around the rosie" syndrome where if one troop sneaks past your defense you'll be stuck chasing it for a good twelve turns before you can corner it while it burns down all your temples. So you're left desperately trying to block off the landscape to avoid this which then just leads to a sort of dull stalemate.
There are limited strategic decisions to make outside of your magic and god build. I could maybe tolerate half of these problems if it wasn't for the user interface from hell. I'm sitting here getting RSI from having to constantly click on units to purchase them individually. The interface is directly from the early 90's, its awful, there is _no_ excuse for this. Don't try to bribe the mercenaries in this game too highly or you'll lose your mind (its an arrow, that increments by one that you have to click for each increment), especially when you then accidentally hit "reset" because your brain assumes its "done" because "reset" happens to be exactly where the "done" button should be ("done" is exit).
I just can't believe that this is the third iteration of the game. I found out recently the first iteration was about ten years ago. What exactly have they been doing in the past ten years aside from travelling back twenty years to take game design lessons from people in the nineties?!? The premise of this game is incredibly entertaining but this implementation is just **** This is genuinely their third go? The opening screen teases you with a 3d landscape that they can't be bothered to port onto the map screen.
When I was a kid in the old smoke filled arcades I once saw an older gent try to play the game "time traveller". It was this really bad game that was sold on a hologram gimmick. I watched him struggle with the controls as a "baddie" shot him in the back in each one of his lives and he pathetically shot in the wrong direction. The old western style gent that narrated the game offers the same advice each time: "remember, turn before you shoot!". The third time this happened was too much, he shouted back at the screen: "I AM F**KING TURNING". He then looked at me and my brother and said: "Kids, don't play this game its ****". Today, I get to pass this advice on to you. Don't buy this game.
This 0/10 is for putting this game up for sale on stem for 19 euro 8 years after its original release.
Price aside this game deserves to be a 4/10 in 2013. Graphics and sound would have been good 20 years ago. Strategic gameplay is maybe the deepest of any computer game ever made, but/and also entirely unbalanced, unforgiving and uncompromisingly hard. This is to say, you need to know exactly what you're doing at every point in the game or you'll just suddenly die (no matter how well you seem to be doing) and have to start over (or find another game if doing multiplayer). There is no save. While this caters to the target audience perfectly (this game is 10/10 if spending about a year full-time, studying its every little nuance, appeals to you), but makes it a less than good game objectively.
The fantasy themes are very well presented, and the best part of the game is how it lets to create The Lion or The Witch of Narnia, or Gandalf or Sauron, or a DnD Lich-King, or a Titan of the Greek Mythologies or just about any classic powerful being as a pretender to godhood. No other game on any media have been able to mix a fraction of the themes or come as close to portraying them as well as Illwinter. They also deserve kudos for being Indie before the concept was concieved. I wish Illwinter good luck with the upcoming Dominions 4, but if you're curios about this game you should find another way of procuring it other than buying it. Illwinter does not deserve your money, demanding what is full-price for a brand new top-notch indie game for an 8-year old indie w 20y-old graphics w an extremely narrow target audience.
SummaryDominions 3: The Awakening, is the follow up to the acclaimed fantasy strategy game, Dominions 2: The Ascension Wars. While that game set the bar for rich, engrossing turn-based fantasy strategy gaming, Dominions 3: The Awakening seeks to raise it once more. Leading one of over fifty possible nations in three different Ages, it is your g...