There is not any ‘nostalgia factor’ at all in my review. I’m honestly a mere beginner in the Age of Wonders series. Installation on Linux (Wine) was somewhat tricky. Followed a tip from a Winehq report and unchecked window manager decoration and control for AoW in Winecfg. Then the game is playable windowed and you can drag the window to your screen resolution still the UI does not scale accordingly and Alt+tab does not behave as it should. Not a biggie but then I came across endless error messages, crashes to desktop and forced reboots. The problems thankfully were solved thanks to the unofficial patch made by this good fellow ‘Int19h’ (see Age of Wonder series discussion here on GOG forum). Early on in the Keepers campaign I was pleasantly surprised by the competitive AI on default difficulty settings. I had to think ‘strategically’, carefully explore the map, adjust my army composition to enemy units in the easiest of all maps! Subsequent maps became daunting always in disadvantage against the rival clans and challenged by sneaky attacks in my rare lines the moment the bulk of your armies advance on a remote location on the map. The what-it-seemed obvious for me choice lore-wise, to ally Elves, Dwarves and Halflings turned the very last map to a nearly impossible feat. Of course AI is perfect. Diplomacy is just cosmetic in single-player. The 2D graphics have aged well though. Story / lore are admittedly decent despite the generic tolkienesque high-fantasy setting. I can only compare it to Civ3, HoMM3 from this era but those were great ones and AoW emerges victorious. It is a solid strategy game 20 years after its release and my very best 2 or 3-euro investment in gaming so far. It just cries for a game engine re-implementation for greater compatibility with modern systems.
I just revisited the second instalment in the Deus Ex universe. Don’t have much to add to the general consensus that this is an inferior sequel yet a decent game in its own right. Lots of console compromises but deus-ex series ambience and allure are still there. Just a technical note: I’ve used a lutris script (GOG version + mods) for playing it on Linux (wine) which automatically installs ‘Visible Upgrade with John P Unified Texture Pack, ‘ESRGAN Texture Pack’, high-res fonts, dgVoodoo2 and Large Address Aware patch. Game looked considerably better than vanilla and ran perfectly well without the compatibility issues many players complain about on win 10.
A masterpiece of video gaming. I'm old enough to have played it at the time of its original release but I never really did before. At the turn of the century I had only an office pc incapable of handling even an essentially 2D title like JA 2. Indulging myself now with some retro-gaming mostly on Linux, I played the vanilla campaign with the help of 'stracciatela' cross-platform remaking of game's engine which used the assets taken from GOG Windows installer installed via wine. Aside the initially intimidating interface and somewhat steep for my capabilities learning curve, this was an engrossing experience of true tactical playing. If you are new to JA 2, overcome the initial shock and you'll get compensated for sure. JA 2 puts to shame many modern turn-based strategy games with hugely better graphics and more advanced mechanics because it is bestowed with good writing, distinctive visual style and cohesive vision. Genuine labour of love, I suppose. Sign of a dedicated creative team for which creating a video-game was more or less another kind of art-form.
