Rather than talk about the content of AOW4, I'm just addressing the UI. AOW4 has the user interface of a lazily done console-to-PC port. My biggest gripe: the resolution can't be changed. Instead, there's a resolution slider, which gives the option of making the game look worse while still taking up the entire screen. I asked for a refund for this reason - I use a widescreen monitor and play strategy games windowed because I don't like moving my mouse across my entire screen every time I take an action. Being unable to change the game's resolution is the most perplexing design choice I have seen in a recent PC game. Queuing up city building orders is non-functional. When selecting a building or unit to queue, you pay the full cost immediately. Without a huge stockpile of gold, any kind of queuing is not practical or possible. The default key-bindings are weird, and I highly recommend rebinding many of the defaults. I can't fathom why anyone who has ever played a 4X PC game would set CAPSLOCK and SHIFT-CAPSLOCK as keyboard hotkey. Just…why? I couldn't find a way to cycle through turn notifications. In Civ6 I bound mouse 4 to cycle through the notifications, addressing them as I chose. In AOW4 I couldn't find any way to address these notifications except to click on them, and each had to be addressed in the order the game presents. Moreover, the whole notification system is clunky. Overall, I found interacting with my little magical empire unnecessarily cumbersome. AOW4 interacts like a console game, with a lazy port to the PC. It's not complete rot, so 2 stars, but I cannot recommend purchasing it.
