Age of Wonders | a Review
originally published on 11/08/2020;
Hello everyone, I am the wonderful G.E.M.Simov, 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 shit.
GAMEPLAY
Age of Wonders is a top down, turn based strategy that utilizes two different modes of play. The first mode of play is the world-map mode (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.
That is one big issue, as the amount of time each battle takes to deal with optimally would be way too great, and so the player might make the sacrifice of it, depending on an automatic resolution of the battle. Sadly, some people might just lack the interest in the process of playing through the game and having manual battles, as some can be incredibly boring and mundane, and others can drag on for many minutes, upwards of an hour.
With a game in a genre notorious for how long it can be, this is not that great an issue, but it simply makes the games even longer, due to the fact that the world-map mode utilizes, typically, a very large hex grid that is filled with all kinds of things, and the way to win is through total domination. Always total domination.
Thus the player needs to focus on fighting, and the best outcome from fighting is the result of manual resolution of conflicts. That simply loses the time of the players, and, alas, the combat is not as in-depth as I would have liked it to be, or at least I was left with that feeling, and it becomes a little boring.
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.
There was a distinct feeling of things being wrong or unfair or unreasonable, as I had the impression that the game was not balanced around much of anything, which was not totally horrible, as I made use of this lack of balance, but there were moments when I felt quite overwhelmed.
The battles, when resolved manually, are made far more entertaining if a hero is present, on the side of the player. The hero unit is a unit that can level up a few times, can use items, can cast spells (if they have the perk, as each level they get to pick perks) and is, generally, a very strong unit.
The hero unit is the great fun of the game, both because it offers RPG elements, and because of its ability to cast spells. Spells are capable of doing many things, both in the world-map mode and in the battle-map mode. Spells make the experience of combat fun, but there is the limit of how many spells one can cast, as no hero can have more than X amount of mana, and many spells would require half of that X, on the battle-map.
Some spells, which are used on the world-map, can require 5 or 7 times X. That is because mana is actually a resource that persists, can be gathered from around the world and can be traded to other players in an attempt to simulate diplomacy (which is absolutely worthless when it comes to the AI). This is an interesting approach to it, but the only use for mana was the casting of spells, and so I dare say it feels as if mana was not as well implemented as the game designers had hoped it would be.
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.
What little I can gather from my time spent playing is that the higher the unit’s attack, the higher the chance it will hit. However, the target’s defense increases the chance that the unit will not hit. And so there are some hidden calculations where units with 10 attack somehow miss against units with 4 defense and then units with 3 attack hit units with 20 defense and it becomes quite the madness-inducing experience. But it is fun when one throws their super-strong hero and the hero does heroic battle against overwhelming odds.
Most of the complaints I have with the way things work are connected to the battle-map mode of Age of Wonders, and the world-map mode of Age of Wonders is actually wonderful. It is quite coherent in the way it functions, and it is not bogged down by many things.
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 city interface and, in general, the way cities are upgraded and units are unlocked, is very reasonable and makes quite a lot of sense - it is simple, but it also possesses a measure of complexity that makes it all the more enjoyable to engage in. One thing that remained a little disappointing for me is the fact that the cities have set sizes to them and they cannot, by any means, be made any larger than they already are. That felt a bit disappointing, as every city’s units that can be unlocked is limited by how large it is, meaning that the best units are reserved for the biggest cities.
Another big issue, with campaign missions, at least, is that the player always starts at a monstrous disadvantage.
Example A: Player starts with 1 city that takes up 1 hex, smallest city. Enemy starts with 4 3 hex sitices, 1 4 hex city, many farms that produce income. Enemy also starts in the middle of the map, while the player starts in one corner of it.
Example B: Player starts with 3 4 hex cities. Enemy starts with 9 4 hex cities, 5 farms between those cities, other utilities around those cities and 6 sources of mana.
Example C: Player starts with no cities. Enemy starts with 2 4 hex cities, 1 3 hex city and a large multitude of 1 hex cities, farms and other utilities.
And, ladies and gentlemen, the player is always at a disadvantage, because the AI is very simple and bare-bones, 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.
In between games of Age of Wonders, in the campaign of the game, the player is allowed to pick things to bring over from their previous ‘mission’ or rather game, however, if they spend the time to play and explore all of the map, they find some artefacts that make their heroes stronger or they produce many strong units. Alas, when they want to bring over things from their previous mission, each separate thing costs a number of points, and the players have a set point limit for how many things they can bring, which means that if a player were to go and wander about and explore, they would be punished by the game by being forced to throw away the treasures they had discovered.
This has happened to me, and I felt incredibly unsatisfied. That is not good game design, as it forces the player to lose something they had gained without the option of ever getting it back. When the player does something that is optional, they are granted a reward, but then, when the player is punished for doing too many optional things, they get mixed messages. How did the game designers intend for it to be played? Did they expect players to go ahead and explore around and find everything? Did they want the players to even do that?
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. I was pleasantly surprised by its graphical fidelity, because I expected something like Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and that game is a bit older, although only by a few months. 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. There are some truly impressive ones, and there are some truly comically weird ones. I say weird because, even though I feel as if they are bad, they still somewhat fit. The music of the game is average, at best, as some tracks were somewhat appealing to my ear, but others became a little boring. None of them were, however, at all distracting from the playing of the game, which was good. 2/3
STORY
Age of Wonders features a relatively intriguing tale of two factions, the war between them and how each leader handles some unexpected events. There are two campaigns - the “Good” Campaign, also called the Keeper campaign, and the “bad” campaign, which actually is kinda bad, also called the Cult of Storms campaign. Each faction is vying for power, trying to achieve its goals, and, of course, the winner is the faction whose campaign the player chooses to do. The interesting thing is that there is a branching story here - before each mission, and after it, there is a page, two or three of story, and, depending on which mission the player picks, the entire story changes, be it in subtle or more pronounced ways.
The story itself revolves around a pair of colorful characters, and then their two leaders. The leader of the Cult of Storms is Meandor, who is, technically, the rightful ruler of the Valley of Wonders. Meandor is trying to claim rulership of the lands, leading dark elves, and is quite the racist xenophobe, wanting to kill all humans. The character in the Cult of Storms campaign is Talic (or however the player names them, as they can become a custom character), and the story is told through his perspective.
The leader of the Keepers is Julia, sister/cousin of Meandor and current de facto ruler of the elves. The Keepers are like the UN, keeping the peace and helping others. Although some deserve more help than others based on harmful stereotypes. Elric is the character through whose eyes the story in the Keeper campaign is told, and he has the potential to notice and point out the hypocrisy of the Keepers.
The story is quite interesting and unexpectedly rich in meaning. Even though the Keepers appear to be the go-to good guys, they have some issues, and even though the Cult of Storms appear to be the go-to bad guys, they have some good qualities to their beliefs. It seems as if whoever wrote this had actual, living and breathing humans as the example and created nuanced parties, rather than one bad and one good.
The way the story is told is through journal entries, which is not at all bad. They are not voiced, but reading through them is quite the pleasant enterprise, as the manner in which they are written is very interesting. The story does have one canonical ending, as the sequel makes it clear which one it was, but that does not detract anything. 3/3
LEGENDARY POINT
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Maybe it does. Maybe it does not.
Even though I had fun playing this game and enjoyed it to a certain degree, I felt myself becoming increasingly bored by it, and not because it was not interesting, but because everything repeated itself and became quite tedious. I did not feel the #SPARK™.
Age of Wonders does not get the Legendary Point. 0/1
CONCLUSION
6/10. Age of Wonders is a decent game, above average in quality, and I would gladly recommend it to people who find themselves to be looking for any strategy game out there. It’s a great experience to go through, if only for the story, and it’s a sight to behold.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display.