Age of Wonders 3 - Review Roundup #2

Here are three more reviews for Age of Wonders 3 I managed to roundup this week. All three are positive, and don't forget the game will be out on Monday the 31st.

Gamespot - 7/10

Online foibles aside, with its tactically rewarding battles and streamlined empire management, Age of Wonders III is a well-crafted strategy game that doesn't let itself get bogged down in needless busywork. It pushes your focus onto its strongest suit, the battlefield, while keeping everything else in the background. Some smart elements of randomness help keep you on your toes after multiple sessions, though you will find several go-to strategies still apply regardless of the sort of army you lead. Age of Wonders III is the welcome return of a long-absent strategy series and a tactically rewarding game.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun - No Score

Age of Wonders III could have been constructed in the golden age of turn-based strategy. In fact, given the competition it’s going to have as the year goes on, it’s an additional reason to believe that we might be heading for that golden age right now.

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IncGamers - 8/10

Age of Wonders 3 has taken almost forty hours of my life away so far. Players new to the series will like the depth of both content and gameplay, and should also like the balanced gameplay mechanics. Veteran players will love discovering new class specific units, researching the wide variety of new spells and the expanded story, but I do fear that some veteran players might take a while to get used to the Age of Wonders 3 changes.

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More information.

Better or worse than Fallen Enchantress? Could care less about graphics...

ChaosTheory said:

Better or worse than Fallen Enchantress? Could care less about graphics…

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If you're all about the adventuring, then go for Fallen Enchantress. If you like story and warfare go for Age of Wonders 3.

I'll hold off judging til after I play AOW3. I find a lot of FE:LH to be lacking, which is kind of a bummer since I really like Stardock and love GalCiv.

Hard to say today, but I'm certainly looking forward to checking out Age of Wonders 3 tomorrow. I doubt it will be a goat. Speaking of which, don't miss the release of Goat Simulator the following day. You thought the trailer for Dead Island was good...

ChaosTheory said:

Better or worse than Fallen Enchantress?

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It seems that Fallen Enchantress has broader scope, deeper town building, research etc. Combat in FELH was also good IMHO. So If you dont focus on combat very much, I doubt that AoW3 is significantly better.

The one thing it has that FE doesn't have is MP, which is significant for me.

Farflame said:

It seems that Fallen Enchantress has broader scope, deeper town building, research etc. Combat in FELH was also good IMHO. So If you dont focus on combat very much, I doubt that AoW3 is significantly better.

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Which has a better campaign? I don't play random maps or scenarios, so campaigns is what I care about.

wolfing said:

Which has a better campaign? I don't play random maps or scenarios, so campaigns is what I care about.

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I don't know about AoW3, but I found the campaign in Fallen Enchantress to be quite boring. I couldn't even come close to finishing it.

The campaign is probably the make or break thing for me too. Traditionally I like the idea of 4X games, but I usually get bored of them after a single random map. I need some sense of progression to keep me interested.

I did really like the campaign system in AOW 2, so hopefully they can manage something as good for 3.

I'm interested into singleplayer (campaign) only in this game.
Couldn't care less for multiplayer mode(s) in strategies.

Why? I always wanted to play games against challenging AI. Emotionless, logic only based opponent. One would think an opponent who should be far superior to "organic" counterpart.
Sadly, AI usually, not just in strategies, tends to be the weakest part of the game. To cover it's crap script instead of a tricky and skilled AI opponent, we usually have to deal with retarded ox who's "challenging" only by having more health, resistances and DPS than you. In some cases even that is not enough so the tanky opponent also summons out of nowhere (usually endlessly) a crapload of minions to help him. Doesn't stop at that, it never shares same restrictions you have, for example he can't go out of mana or something.

In multiplayer games/modes there is no need to make a decent AI at all. Thus I'm not interested in that. I do enjoy MOBA games, but only because those are different from other genres.
I plan to pay and will be writing about AOW3 when it gets out (today?). But it'll be only about singleplayer part.