You will hardly find a more elaborate sci-fi 4X turn-based strategy. Functional diplomacy, solid AI and brilliant battles are further supported by a highly modular approach to hero and unit customization.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall perfectly mixes the XCOM series with the Civilization one without renouncing to the peculiar characteristics of the past chapters of the series.
Emerge from the cosmic dark age of a fallen galactic empire to build a new future for your people. Age of Wonders: Planetfall is the new strategy game from Triumph Studios, creators of the critically acclaimed Age of Wonders series, bringing all the exciting tactical turn-based combat and in-depth empire building of its predecessors to space in an all-new, sci-fi setting.
Build your empire with one of six unique factions, ranging from the militant Vanguard to the dinosaur-riding Amazons and the cyborg-zombies of the Assembly. Progress through each faction’s missions using your wits, military strength and diplomacy, exploring planetary ruins and encountering other survivors as you unravel the history of a **** civilization. Fight, build, negotiate and technologically advance your way to utopia in a deep single player campaign, on random skirmish maps, and against friends in multiplayer.
Overall, Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a solid sequel that differentiates itself sufficiently and improves upon the franchise's formula. It has a diverse mix of units and races, wonderful artwork, and what appears to be a massive range of strategies. Customizing your forces with an array of passive effects and active abilities is handled effortlessly by the UI, and it's very rewarding to use it in the tactical combat. The campaign should take anywhere from 30 to 60 hours to complete, depending on how quickly you play, and that's before stepping into the random scenarios and multiplayer, where a wide range of options and customizations can cater to your play style.
Triumph returns to its unique mix of Civilization and XCOM with the new Age of Wonders: Planetfall. Leaving behind the fantasy trappings of the previous games, Planetfall heads into sci-fi territory. The new colony system speeds up play and allows for interesting options for hobbling your opponent's cities, and the combat system is blown way out, with combinations of race, technology, research, and unit mods allowing for a dizzying array of army choices. In fact, Planetfall's biggest problem will likely be onboarding new players because of its density. If you're up to the challenge though, Planetfall is a worthwhile entry point into the series.
A good format that optimally mixes two different strategy modes, but which in turn has too much information to process and requires time to adapt, with a somewhat more repetitive campaign than we would like.
a satisfying strategy experience with a ton of replayability, and factions that feel truly distinct. Its randomly generated maps can feel so organic you might think they were hand-crafted. It has a bevy of minor issues, however, like a cumbersome UI and stilted animations, and its lack of tactical depth on the battle map leaves it feeling like a game from a decade ago.
Not that i did not enjoy the game before the New DLCs but the constant huge changes and upgrade definitely already brought the game to 10/10 grade The best thing is they the game will get few more upgrades before we also give the modding community to polish it even more
I am huge fan of the franchise and this is another great edition of AOW Over all Triumph and Paradox are bunch of super cool people and I want to thank them for this game
Planet colonisation tactical RPG that plays like a cross between Civilisation and XCom. Each of the two elements are probably not strong enough on their own to carry an entire game but blended together, they work.
Definitely addictive, putting ticks in a lot of boxes for what it set out to be. Procedurally generated worlds; an interstellar empire to build via multiple playthroughs; campaign modes that introduce you to the story and characteristics of the many factions in the game. Everything I don't complain about below is likely OK, or even great.
TLDR: If you've been looking for a marriage of Hex Map 4X + XCOM, then Planetfall will be an entertaining and addictive experience for you. Its good, not excellent. You may feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of enemy variety. The learning curve can feel pretty bad and you will never truly 'learn' this game, but it gets better as you invest the time to familiarize yourself with all the factions and tech trees in the game.
I was surprised to find that the combat in the game felt balanced, given how much variety there is in tactical combat and unit modding. I was initially attracted by the blend of two of my favorite worlds: Civ V-like 4X and XCOM-like tactical combat. Planetfall does a good job at both, but not as good as either of those two games individually. The 4X manages to feel too fast and too slow at the same time. It always became a chore after midgame. However your mileage may vary if you don't set your mind on world domination / conquest, which I expected to keep me invested in the process, but I may have been shooting myself in the foot going after this particular victory condition.
While I was initially intrigued by all the unit modding options and branching empire research paths, I started to borderline hate it all after I purchased the DLCs, which introduce even more factions and units (and variables). The learning curve was already steep, but it exploded after including more factions. It literally got exhausting when there is an entirely new challenge around almost every corner - how does one properly prepare for... everything? The simplicity of Civilization V and our familiarity with real world history really helped in getting through the chore of learning the game and getting to the fun part, but in Planetfall I always found I had to read and learn more than I like, because no two fights are ever the same and if you're going to play at your best (which is usually the mindset in any strategy game), then unfortunately you may feel obliged to thoroughly inspect every single unit in every single fight before making your first move. I felt I have a certain capacity for going through this process over and over again, or perhaps domination mode simply doesn't work well for this game. Its likely more enjoyable if you got one of those big math brains. Or you've played this game for hundreds of hours and you already know what this or that mod, unit or effect does. What to expect, which enemies to focus, how to approach them etc. The fun only starts when you've properly familiarized yourself with the situation. Impossible to enjoy chess if you don't know the rules, right? Well expect to go through the learning process many many times here.
The AI is fairly easy to dominate if you prepare well. Diplomacy in this game is unfinished garbage and the AI is often too forgiving. They show no mercy when the odds are already against you, but in evenly-matched fights I found it easily achievable to come out of it with all your units alive and ready for the next battle. Very often the AI doesn't seem to have good priorities when confronting you - they tend to move to unfavorable positions and seemingly make a point out not forcing you to lose some important unit you misplaced yourself.
Auto-resolve could really use a deep learning engine (make it happen for the next Planetfall!) - While the outcome was impressively fair for the most part, I still had to manually take over in fights where you absolutely do not need to lose a single unit if you use one brain cell.
And screw the vocal narration in the tech tree! I wish there was a way to turn that off. It is essentially a bunch of made up nonsense narrated by accents and quirky voices from every corner of Earth, there to distract when you're trying to read. They even vocalized the made up name of the made up dude who is supposed to be the author of the made up aphorism or quote being narrated... AAAGH!! At least in Civilization I learned some wisdom from actual wise men who lived.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall no es nada mala idea, pero no me acaba de convencer la ejecución. Por un lado, combina un mapa y un estilo de juego clásico de los 4X, donde explorar, luchar y esas cosas; pero las misiones son tan guiadas que, en realidad, acabas haciendo las cosas más o menos iguales siempre, según los objetivos que te fijen. Por otro lado, se combina eso con unas batallas por turnos estilo X-Com, con muchas más unidades, que sin embargo no consiguen transmitir esa tensión típica de X-COM donde cada movimiento cuenta; como sabes que puedes producir libremente en el mapa principal (normalmente sobran recursos) perder una unidad es un paso atras (pierdes la experiencia y eso) pero se sustituye fácil. Por ello, la jugabilidad acaba estando a medio camino entre un 4X y un juego táctico, pero sin ser suficientemente profundo en ninguno de los dos lados. Y la historia es muy floja.
Gráficamente el juego más o menos cumple, pero sin ningún tipo de alarde ni increíble originalidad. El sonido es más flojo, haciendo que en general el apartado técnico del juego sea muy discreto. Pero, al menos en mi experiencia, no tiene unos bugs demasiado notables.
El resultado de todo ello es un juego que podría ser muy bueno, pero acabó abarcando demasiado y no profundizando en ningún lado. Un 4,5.
This game was a disappointment. Critic reviews seemed to say that it was great despite some minor shortcomings. I do not agree. In fact, none of the aspects of the game are done well and, it being a hybrid of a few genres, is a stark reminder that it cannot hope to come close to any distinct genre in depth or quality.
The combat is boring; this game is by no means XCOM-like beyond superficial details. There is little skill involved and the AI seems to use cheap tactics. The incremental upgrades lack any impressive oomph. The locales are rather generic and get old after a couple of hours.
The campaign is boring, the writing is bad, and the acting is worse. Not enough background is given to induce caring about the protagonists.
Though this game bears a resemblance to the latest Civ games, there is no visual indication of sector improvement and the improvements are generic and limited.
I can imagine someone enjoying this game for more than a couple of hours but, given how many choices there are this year, this seems like a "don't buy".
SummaryAge of Wonders: Planetfall is the new strategy game from Triumph Studios, creators of the critically acclaimed Age of Wonders series, bringing all the exciting tactical turn-based combat and in-depth empire building of its predecessors to space in an all-new, sci-fi setting.