Age of Wonders: Planetfall

Before I give the review, I should provide some context. Since the original, I have been playing AoW games and have put thousands of hours into the various games. I love 4x games, and the AoW series has always been excellent. Picked this up at the beginning of a long weekend with the intent of playing it more or less continuously. It did not go to plan. As other reviews have mentioned, the color pallet is just not acceptable. That is undoubtedly a problem, but honestly, it is countered by the beautiful artwork. The problem I have has also been mentioned in other reviews. The game is just simply boring. The actual gameplay mechanics is what I am talking about. 4x games that get the gameplay correct are played repeatedly for years and years. You never get tired of the gameplay because the gameplay is fun and enjoyable. I have started and stopped at least a dozen games this weekend. And I will be honest, I have not finished a single one. It might seem strange that I am giving a review for a game in which I have not completed a single map. And yet, here we are. I will try a few more times, at least. Maybe eventually, I will just grind through a game to say that I finished one. But that is just me being stubborn instead of the game actually being worth playing. The research tree is entirely bland; it is +5% here.. Minor unlock here... You have a selection that you simply must-have. Not even sure why the others are there. The units are completely uninspired. The concepts are lovely, though. The idea of building an empire to connect random games? Brilliant. The game on paper has all the right things. They've got everything else that you could ever want in a 4x. The only thing they forgot to include was fun.

I would say that Planetfall probably has the quality of other AOW games, which I would personally consider high. Regarding any comment on the AI, if one doesn't find enough challenge this is likely to be fixed, as it was in AOW3. So, being my favorite series, I'd like to give it four stars, but it's not what I would have hoped for. The AOW series has always been wargame-leaning, though AOW2 and AOW3 had city building options. Probably not the most complex gameplay, but I enjoy them as classics which have good stories and campaign with a hard mode. Planetfal and is primarily geared toward people who want to do tactical combat, which I don't care about. The tech tree is dombinated by weapons and tactical operations which I don't care about. Maybe I could, but the global strategy element and city options you would expect of a 4X empire building game of the sci-fi genre are not there to a degree that will provide much strategy. The city options are at any very basic, and the empire you build has little depth. On the plus side, I think the music is good and the factions have flavour, though to be honest I can't really feel the difference between them in terms of gameplay since I don't do tactical combat. I like that the map consists of provinces, versus past AOW games in which stuff is mostly just strewn about.

Almost everything I disliked in AOW3 was fixed here. I tired almost every combination of race and secret tech, and while some combine better, I can't say that there is a combo that is useless, or doomed to fail. The combat itself is fun, with plenty of options for weapons, skills, buffs and debuffs (although the UI can do better describing what some of the things do outside of combat). Somw fights can take too long, but there is always the option to skip it with auto combat in cases you feel this is an easy win. Besides, you have amazons riding a T-rex! Maybe I should have started with this line, since how can you be anything bug great with this? :)

I play with Galaxy turned off so perhaps it does not show how many hours I played, but I finished the compaign for all races except the Assembly. Also I played AOW2 and AOW3 before for many hours. Anyway, this is an excellent addition to the AOW series, the game plays smoothly and gives you that "one more turn" feeling, like a good 4x game should. It has a good deal of different units and with the modding system you can made your own favourite units and groups, which works really well and adds much flavour to the game. They also addressed some critique of the former games where your cities could be taken with a small enemy army because your army was away and not defending, by having cities keep their own garrison of units that you can improve as well. I see other reviews commenting on the busy GUI and complexity of the game which I believe are fair comments and have some truth in it, but once you understand what is going on, the GUI actually makes a lot of sense. The big point here is that the game does not explain itself well. The tutorial is quite bad and even for an AOW veteran it takes a bit to figure out what to do when. Also, the storyline is absolutely rubbish, still I have no idea what the hell is going on with a former queen or all the factions that are mentioned in short text dialogues that pop up here and there, but never show themselves, and leave you half hanging between a bigger story and a short quest that you need to finish within several turns. Also, every 2 missions of the compaign you change race and have to get into a new background story that matches poorly with the ongoing bigger story. It really is a shame because the game is really good, if only Triumph hired a story writer to come up with the compaign... I really do hope the story writers will be included in making the DLCs.

This is perhaps the best Age of Wonders game yet because of the depth the game offers compared to its predecessors and other 4X titles. I mean you have a strategic layer with all the info you would ever want, tactical battles that resemble X-COM and all round plays and feels like a Civilization game. There are different races and classes (called Secret Techs) to choose from, many different research paths, empire management with upgradeable sectors, custom heros and units, small and large scale turn-based battles, an actual good randomly-generated map algorithm with many different settings, NPC factions, quests... you name it; this 4X has it! It also has cool small details like auto combat, combat retry, choose-your-own-adventure style "exploration sites", equippable mounts, settlement growth management, research priority queueing, hidden personality traits, a casus belli system and more... a lot of which you don't see in strategy games anymore. The map is easy to read, all the info you want comes in an encyclopaedia, there's a campaign and voice-over tutorial, different game modes and multiplayer hotseatting. My favourite mode is Galactic Empire, which has you create your own planetary empire and then explore randomly generated planets with their own traits and rewards. Your progress carries over per-match and your custom heroes can all make an appearance as playable units. As for negatives for this game I would say the clunky UI, odd sound effect choices for it, bad voice acting and campaign storyline, shallow character creation and that each new map beginning is always the same: two sites and an NPC faction right nearby. There should be more variety in terms of beginnings even when you change the map settings. Also I hate the Therians. Overall, one of the best 4X games ever.