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- Illwinter Design Group
- Illwinter Design Group
- Illwinter Design Group
- Illwinter Design Group
Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension
Released On: Aug 30, 2013
Metascore
Available after 4 critic reviews
8.6
All Platforms
Learning how to play Dominions 4 is not easy, but the endless hours of fun you'll get out of it are more than worth the effort.
Dominions 4 is a turn-based strategy game set in a non-traditional fantasy world filled with various nations inspired by mythology and religion. As a player you first pick a nation and then customize your god. Then you just need to wipe out all the other factions and their false gods. Isn't that simple? The game really shines in multiplayer mode because fighting against real humans feels much better than dealing with AI factions that can't even use diplomacy. The best thing about Dominions 4 is the fact that it has tons of depth and replayability but it's a shame that the graphics and user interface are outdated. Well, I guess you can't have everything. [Dec 2013]
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 40 User Ratings
8.6
88% Positive
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
3% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
10% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 40 User Ratings
8.6
88% Positive
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
3% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
10% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
I play this nearly 500 hours. Awesome! A lot of spells, items, units. You need to plot your strategy very well, you need specific tactic for every nation, against every nation, against every unit or player. So every game in Dominions 4 is unique. I recommend this for everyone who love turn-based strategies.
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PC
This game is obviously not for everyone ... But if that's for you, then nothing out there would compare in terms of variety, strategy and background. The races are very nicely inspired. Even some would seem less attractive from the description, manage to create an atmosphere in the way you play them.
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PC
Nevertheless, if you’re able to look beyond the simplistic graphics to the fantastic game underneath then this one is a real treasure.
Dominions 4 can be favorably compared to getting a Bachelor's degree in Wine Tasting. It's difficult to get into, ridiculously time-consuming, and ultimately a ton of fun. But, like a Wine Tasting degree, it requires a lot of effort and will cost you considerably without getting a great deal back beyond pure enjoyment (and maybe better reading/memory skills). Besides the steep price tag, it will eat into your precious free time and your mental stamina. But, at the end of the day, life is short and you should spend a large part of it doing something that you enjoy. If you like 4X/adventure/strategy/imaginatively rich games, then this is absolutely something that you will enjoy. Now you just have to decide if that enjoyment is worth the cost...
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PC
This is a great game. If you do not mind an outdated graphics you will enjoy the immensely deep, rich and satisfying game. I am playing it for years and still haven’t tried all the factions. For those interested into world mythologies plenty of surprises there. You want to be Pharaoh of Egypt to take conquest of Greeks? Or play with vengeful forest creature taking the revenge against industrious kingdom of Man? Maybe Aztecs and Incas can defeat sunken continent of Atlantis? Perhaps Slavic deity Perun will become one and only God to rule the world? Some nations have elite blessed troops while others use powerful magic and the third could use thousands of cheap hordes of undead soldiers. Must have game for those who enjoy deep strategy game.
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PC
My 5/10 is a neither here nor there grade. Most likely any Dominions game will be a 0 or 10 for you. It's a 5 for me exactly because I'm neither here nor there. I love it, but it may be more work than this kind of fun is worth for me.
Graphics and sound would have been good 20 years ago. Strategic gameplay is maybe the deepest of any non-abstract 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 (Although you can backup the game-files manually to effectively make one). 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 you 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 close to portraying them as well as Illwinter. They also deserve kudos for being Indie before the concept was concieved.
Dominions 4 is a clear improvement to Dom 3, affording better graphics and implementing some important re-balancing. If you come from Dom 3 you'll probably be dissapointed that your old best strategies will be less sound, but I think this make it a better game in the long run. The pricing is too steep in my view, but if you know you're gonna like it, it's well worth getting on a rabated sale.
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PC
Gaming like it's 1994.
This seems like a really deep strategy game. And as much as I love some games in this genre, I can't recommend this one. The presentation and interface are so obtuse, you probably will not figure out how to play it without watching a tutorial video and/or printing out the manual. Even navigating the interface enough to display the pertinent information to begin figuring out what's going on takes some learning.
I would not recommend this game for anyone who has spoiled themselves by playing anything more modern than Master of Magic. It seems downright criminal to list this game for $35.
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PC
Not a good sequel to the great Dominions 3, and certainly not worth the high price being asked for what is basically the exact same game. (the game badly needs a complete code re-write for it to meaningfully make progress, but that doesn't seem to be something the devs want to do, preferring instead to make some easy money from yet again re-using code that is now 10+ years old, mostly legacy, and largely a mess)
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Some areas of Dominions 4 have been improved over its predecessor, such as repeat recruitment, but other areas have been made worse, and some unfathomable changes have been made to core aspects of the game (movement, communions, slow recruitment, forts, blood hunting, scales, bless). Many of these changes make no sense at all, and in several cases (communions, movement) do nothing except make the game flat out worse than Dominions 3.
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And there seems to have been a concerted and intentional effort made to slow the game down considerably, which is a seriously bad idea given that most MP games last 60+ turns anyway, and suffer badly from player drop-out/lack of interest in the latter stages. And the changes that have been made will likely extend the average MP game length to past 100 turns. so I can only imagine how bad player drop-out rates will be in Dominions 4 MP games (I think it's quite clear the devs do not play MP games at all, or at least not in anything like the same manner as most Dominions MP players do, and so they devs simply have no idea of the negative consequences their design changes will have on MP games, in particular the length of a typical game and the drop-out rate of these games. As all they see are how the changes look on paper, but have no practical MP experience to understand how the changes will work in practice)
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The Dominions community have been very patiently waiting for several years for a 4th version of Dominions, and even though many will praise this game no matter what, deep down they will know this is NOT the game they were waiting all these years for. And even though it's still hands down the second best MP TBS game there is, it can't even compare to the best MP TBS game, which is Dominions 3.
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Illwinter, next time try listening to the MP community BEFORE you make huge changes to core areas of the game because perhaps then you'll make only good changes that the community badly needed and have been asking for for years, and not liek you did with Dominions 4 which is mix a few good changes in with a dozen or more terrible ones that nobody asked for, were not required, certainly don't help, and only make the game worse for players.
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PC
Summary You are a God! You are master and ruler of a loyal nation. You have unimaginable powers at your disposal. You have claimed this world as yours. But there are others who stand in your way. You must defeat and destroy these pretenders. Only then can you ascend to godhood and become the new Pantokrator. In Dominions you take control of a p...
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Aug 30, 2013
Developer:
- Illwinter Design Group
Publisher: Illwinter Design Group
Genres:
