Age of Wonders: Planetfall

I have been playing the Age of Wonders games since the release of the original Age of Wonders. Love the game style and the genre. Have always been happy to sink many hours into every AOW title. I was excited for Planetfall but also being a fan on the fantasy genre and not so much sci-fi I was also worried it wouldnt give the same feel. I was wrong Planet fall is a great addition to the AOW series and the developers made a good choice to mix it up and take the sci-fi / futuristic approach. However at first I didnt feel the depth was there in terms of unit diversity i.e not as many units to train as say in AOW 3 but adding mods to units can allow for some customisation. The tech tree is deep; you can focus your technology however I find myself always just researching the shorter time to develop techs as you will eventually develop all techs across the technolgy trees. Developing colonies is a good addition. Instead of population growth expanding the size of your cities like in AOW 3 population growth now allows you to annex sectors instead, giving you direct control over how you want each colony to develop i.e research colony, industrial colony, agriculture etc... Population happiness needs an overehaul as it seems to me the mechanioc is simply just more population = more unhapiness and to fix is simply build another hapiness producing building and ad more workers. The deplomacy side of the game is good. I like the attempt at deeper diplomacy however like in the hapiness situation i can just compliment my way to better relationships although its not a lasting affect. It reminds me of the diplomacy in Stellaris only not as clean. All round the game is great. If your a fan of the AOW series then Im guessing you already have the game but for everyone else that likes turn based strastgey games give it a crack you'll love it.

Great strategy, one of my favorite ones.

AoW is my favourite game series and Planetfall so far has become my favourite of the series. The game seems to have even more hilarious wordplay and dire penguins are also in! The gameplay has been upped. All new features (sectors, unit mods, overwatch, research tree) as well as the return of true flying (can't be attacked with ground based melee) work together nicely. The campaign is also pretty cool with a lot of flavour and branches (haven't finished it yet though). Edge scrolling with the mouse is not in (yet?) so I use "WASD" (dragging also works) but that is really the only small drawback I can find so far. I also haven't encountered any bugs yet (but I read in the forums that the Xbox version had some trouble that are already resolved by now). Overall a very immersive, strategically challenging, strategy game with interesting lore that is, for a 4x game, exceptionally good at "generating/telling a story" while you play. Obviously I can only recommend it!

Great game, i love it! The modding community is awesome.

Less grind, but more bugs. The Eldritch Lords were less welcom than the Dragons. The graphics are beginning to get in the way of playability, especially on mountainous terrain.