Age of Wonders User Reviews

BigRedMachine
from Zoetermeer, , The Netherlands

Jul 4, 2003

I submitted this review because I already made it for another site, so enjoy. It's LONG!

Opening Comments:

Finally, a real RPG from my own little country. Holland is put on the map with this game.
It’s not really being distributed into the whole world, but there are multiple ways to get a copy of this gem. This game may be viewed as a fantasy/strategy game. It also has a gamplay that resembles that of an RTS, but RPG elements dominate most of the game. This game has also mayor influences of the Heroes of Might & Magic series, but it’s definitely not a copy of the game. I will make this clear in the upcoming review.

Story/Characters

As with a lot of RPG’s, you start with your own character, a hero. You can choose out of 12 races: Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, High Men, Humans, Azracs, Frostlings, Lizard Men, Orcs, Goblins, Dark Elves, and Undead. As you can see we have our share of good and evil races here. And according to that you also have two main storylines in the game. As one of the good heroes your mission is to reach the Elven Court to re-establish peace on Earth after queen Elwyn was brutally murdered by the evil Cult of the Storms.
Naturally you can also play as a hero from the Cult of the Storms to prevent that from happening and rule the Earth in chaos. As you can see the story is pretty standard, but no complex storyline is needed to keep playing this game. During your quest, you can choose out of multiple missions to create at least 8 different storylines all together.

Hereby you can gather allies on your way. You have a total of three allies at the end of the game, depending on your choices and missions throughout the game. And this also depends on your alignment. As you can see the story may be not that great, but you can definitely play this game multiple times, 8 times to be precise. Only a few missions are for each storyline.

On to the characters. There are a lot of characters that are involved in the story, but you’ll mainly hear from them during the explanation of your current quest. So they’re not really helping you much during the story. Your main character is very complex. He can have dozens of appearances, hundreds of abilities and a few stats to increase.
These stats are attack, damage, health, defense, magic resistance and speed. All can be increases by level gaining, but more about that in the gameplay section.

As for the creatures you can control, there are about one hundred creatures, 8 for each race. Going from the standard goblin to the infamous Red Dragon. Also more about this in the gameplay section.

Gameplay

You start out somewhere on a map in a kingdom somewhere far, far away and long, long ago. You go across the game map by playing various missions. And those missions are mostly RTS based maps. You start with a Hero or a few Heroes and a few creatures somewhere on the map. And you have to complete the objective in turn-based style gameplay. And your turn ends if all your parties on the map are out of movement points. There are loads of cities scattered over the map to capture, upgrade and defend. These cities also get you your income and your creatures. And there is also an enemy or multiple ones to defeat.
Now, the main gameplay is the same as any other RTS, you conquer cities, you build creatures and you crush the enemy. But you can only have 8 creatures in a party. Including the hero. You also see only the strongest creature of the party on the map.

Now comes the interesting part, when you encounter a group of enemies, you are transferred to a map where you see all creatures and resembles the environment where you were on the big map. Here you battle your way in RPG style. You can move your units turn-based to each other and release all kinds of attacks and abilities and even a whole load of magic on each other. All comes with To Hit Rolls and chances of magic failure and more of those elements which are usually not seen in regular RTS games. Your turn in battle ends when you’ve spend all your attack/movement points on each character. So this battle goes on until on enemy flees or is defeated. You have the same type of gameplay when attacking a city, only there are walls and houses surrounding the defender now. So you also need siege equipment which can be bought by workshops on the map or made in your own towns. The map is also filled with other useful buildings. You have mage towers which give you spells, or docks which give you boats and eve towers which can hurl huge poisonous clouds over to the enemy. And much more of nice little gimmicks like that.

A very interesting feature of this game is the ability to find artifacts on the map. There are ruins and castles and dungeons scattered all over the map, allowing you to enter them and fight your way through a lot of guardians to obtain an artifact. You also do this in the same battle style as normal encounters, only you are in a dungeon or cave now. These artifacts can raise your characters stats or give them certain abilities. The basic stats as mentioned above are vital to the Hero; they all have influence on his strength in battle. And the abilities can give nice advantages. You can give your Hero various Archery abilities, or make him evade attacks easier. All kinds of advantages can you deploy to your character. And the RPG elements for your Hero do not end there. Of course there is the occasional level-gaining and experience points are also here. If you go up in level, your get a certain amount of points which you can spend on stats an abilities.

A final thing I want to discuss here is magic. You can spend a certain amount of mana each turn. You can either give it to the research of your spells or give it to stock for your character to use it in battle. Or find a nice balance of course. The research depends on the elements you chose at the beginning of the game. There are Death, Life, Earth, Fire, Water and Air. You can have multiple elements, but never two opposite elements. And you can unleash the researched spells on your opponents in battle!

Music/Sound

Ah… Back to the times when they had heroic music when you headed into battle! Seriously, the music that accompanies you on any quest you do is very suiting to the situation and is really nice to hear. Orchestra and tones straight out of nature team up to give you a nice atmosphere when going through the game. You also have the ability to choose whichever melody you want to hear in any part of the game and you can compose a play list. So if you have a favorite, it’s up to you to listen to them all the time!

The sound in the game itself is pretty standard. You hear foots tapping, swords clashing and characters yelling and all other things you expect with games like this. Most of the sounds are very… Well… Cute. But that is because it’s not really a bloody game and most of the characters do look pretty cuddly. But I’ll discuss that in the graphics section. As for the rest of the sounds, it’s pretty clear and well done, but this part just doesn’t excel from any other game in the genre.

Graphics

Don’t expect anything spectacular here. The graphics are more or less the same as in the Heroes of Might and Magic series, so expect 2D maps with 3D-ish rendered figures walking around on them. There’s not really much more to say about the view on the game. The isometric view you have on the game does its job, but is also nothing spectacular. You have a nice view on the wonderful world of Age of Wonders and that’s what matters.

But the characters themselves have a pretty good vibe. Their just all so cuddly, even the evil Orcs and fearsome dragons look pretty un-evil. Some may think that doesn’t fit in the game, but I myself think that it fits perfectly into the game. This isn’t meant to be a bloody, gore-filled slasher. It’s suitable for most people and the graphics reflect that. This game does have some very impressive effects though. And those are the spells you can unleash in battle. Lights are flashing everywhere and bolts strike down from heaven. Especially the impressive Geyser-spell is very nice to look at. A gigantic flare of water rises from the earth, carrying any character on top of it to dazzling heights with a nice fireworks display. After that the character is dropped to receive massive damage. So the graphics themselves are not really something to “oooh and aaahh” to, but it definitely has a function and fulfils it with flags and honor.

Closing comments

Well, here is the first good game from my own little country that is available in other countries. And I must say it has become a little jewel to treasure. It’s not really an RPG, but more of a turn-based strategy game with major RPG influence. And it does a marvelous job at being that game.

The story is very well written and drags you through the game easily. The graphics are nice at certain points, but don’t really excel, same goes for the sound. But the true power behind the game is the gameplay, the most important part of any game. You have tons of options on any map and the battles can take epic forms. And the RPG part of the game is very well thought out. The leveling and handling of abilities and stats form a great deal of the gameplay and can literally make or break your Hero.

There are minor things you can get annoyed with if you don’t take the look of the game for granted, but for gamers who go for a very big chunk of gameplay, I can definitely recommend this one. And I’m sure the game is a lot cheaper now, since it’s been released a few years ago. But still this game is considered the best game ever to come from Holland and I can’t blame them for that. So if you can get it somewhere, I suggest you to buy it! It’s definitely worth the few bucks you will pay for it.

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