I’ve never had the chance to play a strategy game for a long time. Since I began going through my Steam library, I noticed some games that I haven’t played before — Age of Wonders III is one of them. I just want to say that this is the first game I played in the Age of Wonders franchise and only played the two default campaign — The Elven Court, and The Commonwealth campaign.
The game is a bit different than the games I have played before. It has two modes — a turn-based strategy map and a tactical-combat. This is a bit surprise on my end as I haven’t played a game that has both.
The plot
The world is in the brink of war between the Elven Court and the Commonwealth because of a Commonwealth operative called Gamblag killing an Elven prince. Following the campaign, a powerful wizard reveals that the war is planned and being played by an underground organisation called the Shadowborn, which Gamblag is a part of. Now the player must choose if they will side with their own race’s war or choose to be neutral.
The game
In the campaign, you don’t always play the same leader (hero), the leader depends where the campaign will take place. Not like the other strategy game’s campaign where you always play the same hero and race the whole story mode. You can be an Elven rogue princess, a Draconian arch-druid, and many more on the custom campaign. While the game offer a range of ready-made heroes you can choose from, the game allows the players the creation of their own.
The campaign doesn’t always have to go through of making an army right off the bat. There are a number of campaign that needs decisive actions to gain more resources for your empire. This however doesn’t make the campaign shorter, but it will make the campaign more bearable by being able to make an army without thinking of the gold or mana for unit upkeep. With more resources, the empire grow faster and better.
Cities has a predetermined size and domain radius from Outpost to Metropolis, with the help of some city upgrades, the domain radius can be larger than the default. While the heroes and armies are all important, cities are like the backbone of you empire. Except for city upgrades and unit production, you don’t have to worry about the growth, it will do so on its own. However, there are some things to consider in making the city grow better and happier, by checking the city’s happiness modifier. This indicate if the people of your city is happy with the terrain, the result of an invasion, etc… and needs to be dealt with quickly to so that the it won’t affect the growth of the specific city. Some of this things can be handled by city upgrades or world enchantments such as making the people of the city and units currently located in the city vicinity like specific terrains.
Conclusion
While playing the game, there are a number of issues I encountered. First was when using a flying mount and equipping a non-flying mount on top of a water tile will kill the hero instantly without warning. This happened twice not while not paying attention on the terrain my hero is in. There’s also a crash issue happened the entire day of playing. I think it crashed 6 times in only 3 hours of gameplay. Although no crashes happened before or after that day.
One of the good things that I find very appealing in this game is the ability of automating (skipping) the tactical combat. This makes the game faster especially for clearing a path or an enemy domain guarded by nonessential units.
The lore is quite good. It made for an interesting premise, albeit some of it are cliches. A powerful wizard trying to help the world, a war between two races, a third party organisation that is actually the cause of the war, etc… For a gamer who hasn’t played a strategy game for a long time, Age of Wonders III is a well made, extremely playable game.
You can watch my playthrough here: YouTube Playlist
