Age of Wonders: Planetfall

I own the game on steam and i've really gotten into planetfall recently, aspects of the controls are a little fiddly in places. A similar complaint I have about the otherwise really got Age of Wonders III, this games precursor. But other than that both are really good 4x with a lot of scope. Some may be put off by the RNG aspect of the x-com like combat but I find it really fun and enjoyable. The sci-fi setting is more comic book space opera than the deeper sci-fi you would have seen in old classics like Alpha Centauri, and other games but it suits the action orientated and sometimes hero-centric gameplay really well.

I've been playing this game for years and years. I don't get very far in the campaign, because I keep going back and playing the same missions over and over again. It's such a rich and varied game, but I feel like I've only waded into the very surface of its depths. It's like playing Civ with a complex faction selection element, paired with quests, tactical battles, fine grain unit design and story arcs. It's crazy. It's like someone stole my wildest, most impractical 4x game ideas that I scribbled out as a teenager. I feel like this is a very underrated game. I dunno, maybe it's not for everyone, and I sometimes get cautious about it because hours of my day will just vanish into it, but I gotta say, this is one of my favorite strategy games.

The other games in the series just have a lot more going for them. Shadow Magic has crazy wargame shenanigans and 3 has a solidly balanced but still deep and interesting interplay between the races and magic, each leading to very satisfying experiences on the tactical layer. This game has, by far, the most complex economics out of the other games in the franchise, and I do like how they handled sectors and such. It's not as deep as Civilization or anything, but I like it more than the slightly-more-complex-than-HoMM approach previous entries in the franchise took. Unfortunately, the extra economics just don't lead to a satisfying experience on the tactical side, because the factions and secret techs have zero depth compared to AoW 3. In theory, the unit mods system makes up for the lack of variety in units you can produce, but very few mods even provide meaningful alterations to the unit's actions in combat -- more often you just wind up organizing performance mods around a strategy like setting things on fire or shredding shock resistance with lightning attacks. The lack of unit variety also lends itself to relatively lacking unit counterplay, and since offense tends to be stronger than defense that results in your "army power" number being a disappointingly accurate predictor of how the battle is going to go, often with the winning side having very low casualty counts. TL;DR -- There are a lot of really cool things going on, but they're never really interconnected or leveraged in a satisfying way, leading to a game that's much less than the sum of it's parts.

Worth thinh about this title is that around turn 40 clicking through notification becomes a chore, as well as selecting what to build in cities - no way to automate it. Even selecting new research at this point doesn't mean much and is also a chore because technologies no longer affect balance of powers. Not much affects it - there is no sense in specializing cities or building upgrades etc., by turn 40-50 all is clear and all that's required for victory is at hand. I played only on Hard. AoW 3 was way more balanced - and it was by not very well balanced. The story is good, the art is good, the overall felling of the universe is great, but the gameplay becomes boring really fast. It's the old same endgame problem of all 4x strategies, except endgame here is 1 hour after you start a map.

Been playing for three days and at least 18 hours+ now, and absolutely love it! Dont compare with regular AoW, or even HoMM...this is Alpha Centauri done right!! Modernized, better factions, tech tree done similar, not as "preachy" as Alpha Centauri though, and the graphics are amazing!! Too easy to get wrapped up in playing, I logged over 12 hours yesterday 😅 Definitely worth a five star, more if you can get more content or DLC without needing to play online! Seriously, this should not be compared to the fantasy games except MAYBE in play style, and even then this game is deeper. It is a LOT closer to the style of Alpha Centauri and the expansion. Play that if you want nostalgia and less complexity! Heck, give it a runthrough before playing Planetfall, you will appreciate both more! My only complaint so far is the long loading screen... Other than that, once loaded plays fantastic, no glitches, and fairly high graphic and audio settings! Looks beautiful and thats just in 1080p! One of my better investments, actually!!