Seriously, when I played this game as a kid, I already loved it for the many different alien civs you can play as. But now, some 22 years since then, after I learned about this game's lore... OH MY GOD...! Maybe it could be nostalgia mixed with my newfound love for anything similar to Dune, but I give this game a 5 star rating! The music, the aesthetic, the entire IDEA of how to play the game and how the mechanics work... Even the cheesy comms taunts with the rival factions! It all just fits into one fantastic masterpiece of sci-fi entertainment. By the way, there's this youtube channel named Pinstar and they've made a phenomenal playthrough as the Maug, while discurring IN DETAIL the many aspects of the game's mechanics, many of which I even didn't know or had long forgotten. He posted them around this time last year (so October 2024), definitelly check it out for anyone interested in learning how to play this game! I'd do it myself, but I'm too lazy for that. (long rants? yeah, technicalities? pass. XD ) By the way, Tarth are the best bois! FIGHT ME!
Never played more than the demo of this game before, so I was looking forward to experiencing the full game. And I'm enoying what I'm playing... when it works, which is very brief at best! For some reason, after some times or at a random click out of nowhere, the game will freeze or cause and error, forcing me to Ctrl+Alt+Delete to close the game and start it again! I don't know if this is a common occurence with everyone who plays the GOG version of Age of Wonders, but if it is, please tell me how can you solve this! This game is so magical, but I'm failing to enjoy it because of these errors!
When I SOMEHOW manage to get the game runnin (be it Campaign or Skirmish), it's perfect, the beautiful nostalgia trip I wanted. However, before that, I face a bug where the Main Menu and all other menus I manage to open FREEZE UP THEIR IMAGES! They're still functioning, but I can't see WHAT is happening. I click on the Campaign option and it opens up the Campaign menu, BUT I CAN'T SEE IT, because the image on my screen is still of the Main Menu I was previously! Even though I'm ACTUALLY no longer on that one! I don't know why this bug is happening, nor if it's normal to happen on Windows 10 and above, but if it is, then I can give a higher rate than 2 Stars. I'm sorry, it breaks my heart, but this kind of bug on the Menus is just unacceptable! You have to either go around clicking based on memory, or hit the Windows key to pull out, enter Armada II's window again and THEN it will show up the correct Menu image! FREAKING. NIGHTMARE! T_T
