Age of Wonders 4

This is the first 4x Strategy game that I have played that doesn't feel like a Civ clone with some minor tweaks. It has its own unique identity and distinctive playstyle. I can see myself playing this long-term alongside Civ, unlike all the other games in the genre I have tried. I really love the strategy and uniqueness of the game, but the little things like the UI and late-game performance can be annoying. The main issue that plagues this game is clunky UI. It's not very mouse-friendly. It can be hard to tell where to click to select a unit especially if they are on a city or dungeon. Many icons are just too big and get in the way. The names of cities sometimes sit far below the city causing me to click on nothing when I intended to click on the city to view its stats. It feels like it was designed for console first and little effort was put into the M&K experience. Even just adding a simplified 2D view would do wonders for this game in terms of legibility. Another flaw that sticks out is that I don't feel like I can zoom out large enough when dealing with my troops across multiple fronts. When you zoom out too far the view converts into a noninteractable overview map. I am guessing this is also a limitation caused by this feeling like a console-first port of the game. Its a pain constantly trying to find where my troops are on the map. I have to constantly tab into my hero menu to find the army I am looking for. This is not a great solution as you can have heroless armies doing their own thing as well and those can be a pain to locate without spamming through the next action button. The performance in the late game can also be a little rough. I am running a Ryzen 3900x and RTX 2080, yet I still get noticeable frame drops where the game feels like it is running at 15fps. Civ with much larger maps only slows down from me when I end my turn. AOW4's slowdowns are intermittent and more annoying due to the clunky UI making clicks less precise.

It's wonderfully complex in a way that pulls you in to explore alternative ways to play. The replayability is engaging as your factions ascend from each playthrough, encouraging alternative ways to play not just across factions, but within them as well. The setting is just enough to encourage you to develop your own story of your race and leader. The complexity and variability here put most other 4x games to shame.

It's fun enough and I do like the dragon DLC, but not for the asking price. I'm convinced that this company is on the scummy side - I can forgive Ai that needs to cheat to win, but DLCs within the first month of game launch? That's just cut content right there that they sell back to you at a premium. The game with the DLCs costs about $150 USD. Just go play Heroes of Might and Magic 3 until the price is somewhere around reasonable.

This game is a Turn-Based Strategy, "isometric-view-angle" (or "god's view") game. You the players are in charge of an entire species as well as civilization, while commanding from a Hero/Dragon/Eldrith/KingMage avatar. So you are one person that can interact with the world, just like the heroes you can hire to work for you. Much more than that, you also have to take charge of the development of your people, in three main ways; 1. Growing cities with buildings and extras 2. Hiring/Summoning small groups of various fighting units 3. Managing all the income and expenses As a sidedish you also have access to some very limited diplomacy actions, as well as research in loads of magical tomes, and magical equipment for your Heroes. So, all in all it is a massively complex chessgame...well the combat screen, when units have to face off, is one of the most complex parts of the game. It will take you some time, but eventually you'll have a second sense of how to move your troops around. I am reluctant to ever give a 5 star review, because I couldn't possibly say; "The Best Game EVER!"...because "ever" is a looooong time. There are also a bunch of detractors, which have possibly been illuminated by others, but one of The biggest problems, must have been launching the game without it being finished, and then adding the actual game later on as Down-Loadable-Content, which you have to pay for. There are many small things in the few "reviews" already posted here, although none of them seem to me, as a "broken game" or "not worth playing". Most of the things listed as problems, are solvable and quite easily in my mind. Which is where MODS come into the picture, because as always this company really appreciates what other creators can come up with.

I loved playing Heroes of M&M as a young one, and later discovered Civilization and was completely hooked by the complexity yet easy to grasp mechanics. What one game has and the other do not, meets splendidly in here - Age of Wonders. I am completely new to the series, 4 being the first game in the series I ever played. Graphics and replayability seems excellent, game mechanics provide great incentive to try and frequently utilise different types of heroes, units and towns (buildings). Spells both tactical and strategic make everything more magical an experience (as well as each-new-turn dynamic). One of the few things I do not like about HOMM is the fact it does not guide you towards using more than one or two heroes, in AoW however, it feels natural to be building diverse kingdoms with each town managed (incl. its surroundings) by a different hero (and their army) - them taking care of the region, incl. going to war with the neighbours. One of the few things I do not like about Civilization is the feeling of "grind", whereas in AoW thanks to the (optional) manual battles the flow of play is ever-changing. In general, I also enjoy the fact the game is fully turn-based (getting older, it is sometimes difficult for me to stay on top of real-time strategies), and I also appreciate somewhat inclusive (in nonintrusive way) language ... and overall beautiful, magical feel of both graphics and design. I also need to stress out how easy is to get into the game, given its complexity, especially since I never played it before - tutorials and encyclopedia are very useful, although some enhancements / synergies are not really explained, or only briefly (but the information can be found on the internet, or simply "observed" by playing). I rarely buy a game for its full price, especially "on blind" as it only got recommended to me based on my love of Civilization - to cut the long story short, Civilization and Age of Wonders are all I need for many years to come.