5) A is for... Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
The challenge: To play through each of the games on my Steam library.
The rules: I have to play at least 1 hour of each game, in alphabetical order.
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is the third AoW game. Strangely it doesn't have any number attached to it, so I had to look up where it came in the series chronologically. Steam has listed it after AoW3, and I'm not sure why AoW3 wasn't called AoW4, but there we go.
The intro of the game tells me that the wizard wars of the first two games have sucked the life force out of the world, and because of this wizardry is outlawed. Because you play as a mage in this game you have to take the side of the arcane, which is a bit sad. We (or at least, sensible, forward-thinking people) take steps to minimize the damage we do to our environment, so it makes sense that in a setting where magic is killing the world it should be at least limited. I suspect that later on in the game it'll be revealed that wizardry is fine and it's something else destroying the world, otherwise it'd be really hard to get behind the protagonists.
Anyway, the human empire (lead by a guy called, I kid you not, Phobius), are chasing down the last wizards who escape into a Shadow Realm. Merlin from the second game tells you he's trapped and you should rescue him. Well, actually he says 'although I'm in great pain, don't worry about my fate', which I just can't help but read as kind of whiny.
As the game begins you can choose one of two protagonists, Julia the Elf or Ke-Nan the human. Of course I chose Ke-Nan.
The game play is very similar to the second game, just more polished. It has a few quality of life improvements, but more importantly the combat is a lot faster. Everything is massively sped up, and it makes the combat so much more exciting. Like, seeing an interesting bug as opposed to watching paint dry.
Eventually though it did run into the same problem AoW2 had: single units stomping around taking all of my resources. I'm sure better and more patient players than me would have all sorts of tricks to stop this happening, but I just don''t enjoy that kind of minutiae . I got so fed up of running around chasing bad guys that I started just using the auto combat feature (which, truth be told, was probably more favorable to me). This was fine until I found an enemy I thought I could beat, but the auto-battle decided I couldn't, and it was game over. RIP Ke-Nan.
I still had a bit of time to go so I had a quick look at Julia's campaign. Honestly it was more of the same, although I did chuckle at the NPC Oakleaf, who was from the town of Oakbark. Poor guy.
Truthfully, if AoW3 wasn't around, I'd recommend this game. For someone with a greater attention span than me I can see the slow pace and build-up of the game being really appealing. It would scratch the same itch that C&C used to for me, when I'd put the enemy AI on easy and just build up as many techs and units as I possibly could. I'm going to put AoW:SM into my 'good game, won't play' folder, if only for having a character called Ke-Nan.
The rules: I have to play at least 1 hour of each game, in alphabetical order.
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is the third AoW game. Strangely it doesn't have any number attached to it, so I had to look up where it came in the series chronologically. Steam has listed it after AoW3, and I'm not sure why AoW3 wasn't called AoW4, but there we go.
The intro of the game tells me that the wizard wars of the first two games have sucked the life force out of the world, and because of this wizardry is outlawed. Because you play as a mage in this game you have to take the side of the arcane, which is a bit sad. We (or at least, sensible, forward-thinking people) take steps to minimize the damage we do to our environment, so it makes sense that in a setting where magic is killing the world it should be at least limited. I suspect that later on in the game it'll be revealed that wizardry is fine and it's something else destroying the world, otherwise it'd be really hard to get behind the protagonists.
Anyway, the human empire (lead by a guy called, I kid you not, Phobius), are chasing down the last wizards who escape into a Shadow Realm. Merlin from the second game tells you he's trapped and you should rescue him. Well, actually he says 'although I'm in great pain, don't worry about my fate', which I just can't help but read as kind of whiny.
I think Phobius is the one on the right?
As the game begins you can choose one of two protagonists, Julia the Elf or Ke-Nan the human. Of course I chose Ke-Nan.
The game play is very similar to the second game, just more polished. It has a few quality of life improvements, but more importantly the combat is a lot faster. Everything is massively sped up, and it makes the combat so much more exciting. Like, seeing an interesting bug as opposed to watching paint dry.
Eventually though it did run into the same problem AoW2 had: single units stomping around taking all of my resources. I'm sure better and more patient players than me would have all sorts of tricks to stop this happening, but I just don''t enjoy that kind of minutiae . I got so fed up of running around chasing bad guys that I started just using the auto combat feature (which, truth be told, was probably more favorable to me). This was fine until I found an enemy I thought I could beat, but the auto-battle decided I couldn't, and it was game over. RIP Ke-Nan.
I still had a bit of time to go so I had a quick look at Julia's campaign. Honestly it was more of the same, although I did chuckle at the NPC Oakleaf, who was from the town of Oakbark. Poor guy.
His dog is also called Oakbark
Truthfully, if AoW3 wasn't around, I'd recommend this game. For someone with a greater attention span than me I can see the slow pace and build-up of the game being really appealing. It would scratch the same itch that C&C used to for me, when I'd put the enemy AI on easy and just build up as many techs and units as I possibly could. I'm going to put AoW:SM into my 'good game, won't play' folder, if only for having a character called Ke-Nan.
Comments
Post a Comment