This set of the game + expansions costs more than I paid for the titles in boxes in their release editions! DoW2 is dumbing down beyond all recognition of DoW1. While DoW1 featured one of the best voice acting ever recorded for a video game and a beautiful soundtrack composed by Jeremy Soule (known for The Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars series) DoW2 VA is like a mockery of the nightmare future of the 41st millennium. It is pretty obvious the actors are completely unfamiliar with the setting. Probably to save costs, an unknown composer Doyle W. Donehoo has been hired whose music is... cruel to the ears. Single player campaign in the base is terrible. Player controls only up to 4 squads led by heroes who gain levels and find equipment through missions. It is completely devoid of strategy. It feels more like an hack&slash aRPG. In the campaign in the second expansion player selects any of the 5 races and embarks on a set of mostly scripted missions. I think each race's campaign looks similar with dialogue and enemy units being different. It does not allow as much freedom as the conquest campaigns in DoW1 Dark Crusade and Soulstorm do. The multiplayer was the worst RTS PvP experience I ever had. It feels like a knife fight in a pool full of animal feces. The only good aspect of DoW2 is that, like in other Relic games, the action looks quite cool and watching units blast each other with weapons of the dark future is an eye candy.
Age of Wonders 3 disappointed me greatly by shipping with only few races, removal of miss chance of attacks, removal of city rebellion risk while it is being forcefully migrated or razed, turning undead into ugly ghouls... Age of Wonders 2 is my favourite game of all time. For first few hours I thought AoW4 is decent, offering a great amount options so I would like it more than AoW3. However as I played it it became I realized that somehow Triumph studios managed to create a game I like even less than AoW3. There is no campaign. There are some scenarios on randomly generated maps with little story. Maps feel plain. There are very few exciting locations upon them, unlike AoW1 and 2. There is basically *one* type of interactive structures upon the strategic map. The Ancient Wonders, a dungeons which reward resources, items, units etc. and which may be claimed afterwards by city or outpost to provide income and allow recruitment of some special unit (here cities expand their territory like in Civilization, parties cannot flag structures). There is a bizarre concept implemented: guards of resource locations will grow in power with time. This is utterly unfunny. Recently, I spend quite a long time playing scenario included in the Dragons expansion. It turned out to be broken. When I fended off siege of my capital city, the city never cleared the status Walls Breached, it became inoperable and stopped providing income. There is no way to fix this because it cannot be released as vassal nor the capital can be moved. I reloaded and it happens always, from multiple save points. I probably could win that scenario being handicapped like that since the AI is not outstanding but I lost desire to play anymore knowing that any game may break like that. It is 7 months after release. Optimization is poor. Game does not look in any way splendid and yet performance is much worse than eg. Anno 1800 which looks beautiful. And why Undead Reaper wears pink panties on his head!?
I want to clarify misinformation that appears here in user reviews. Game may be launched without Easy Anti Cheat by using -noEAC launch command or GOG Galaxy option. It seems many have came to conclusions without learning the game. The campaign is perfectly playable when player takes it slow and considers their every move. It is supposed to be a strategic campaign. The game contains computer controlled opponents in skirmish mode. To play versus artificial intelligence player has to enter Battle menu, click 1v1, select fleet and then start battle. It is quite entertaining game but I am taking one star away because there is no possibility to create custom colour scheme yet the game is an adaptation of a tabletop wargame. There is also unlockable metagame content which requires player to spend time to compete on the same ground in multiplayer.
