If you like turn-based strategy, whether it's in a table top game or a video game, Age of Wonders is at the top of the list.
Released: October 31, 1999
Price: $6.49 CAD
Genre: Turn-Based Strategy
Age of Wonders was released back in 1999, so we're getting pretty close to the grand 20-year mark in age. For such an old game, you might think it would look pretty aged and unable to hold up to present-day gaming. In my opinion, this game is a classic that is still plenty of fun to play and has a great art-style that still looks great even to this day. If you go back to the original pictures of this game before it was released, the art is so simple and would easily have gotten old pretty quick. Thankfully they decided to go in a bit of a different direction which I think looks like someone painted it by hand; this sort of painted-looking art-style is definitely my favourite. Of course the visuals are important when deciding whether or not to play a game, but there's so much more to talk about.
The gameplay is turn-based; if you're really into board games, this will feel just like playing a board game where everybody takes a turn one at a time to plan out their strategy and execute their plan of action to the best of their ability. There are some options such as having the map already explored, whether or not to have your leader as a playable character in the game, and whether the turns are taken simultaneously or one at a time. Personally, I prefer to have to explore everything on my own, have a leader, and have turns played one at a time; though every once in a while I change it up for fun.
Games can be a little as 2-players all the way up to 12 with each player playing a different race; each of which have different advantages and disadvantages. Each game revolves around capturing cities and other landmarks, then using the income from those sources to create the right mixture of units to eliminate your opponents. If you've ever played a turn-based combat game, you may already understand how each attack has a chance to hit or miss. If you really enjoy the strategy of combat, you can choose to control each battle yourself, or have the game automatically generate an outcome for you. Obviously this speeds up the game to have it decide on an outcome for you, but the system has a certain way of doing its calculations which can sometimes give you a completely different outcome from controlling the battle on your own. One example is if you're trying to protect a unit that is low on health, you can choose to have that unit run away on your own, but the computer-generated outcome will run that unit headlong into battle even on 1 health point.
Throughout the game you also have to choose what spells to research to help tip the scales in your favour. Your leader and additional heroes which join you during the course of the game may or may not have the ability to cast spells. These leaders and heroes have an amount of spell points which get refreshed at the beginning of each new turn and from this they can cast spells which each cost a number of spell points. Choices of spells can change the state of the overworld map, enchant units to make them stronger, or can be used in battle to turn the tides in an otherwise unwinnable situation.
If you can't tell, I absolutely love this game and could go on and on about all the great qualities forever, but unfortunately at some point I have to acknowledge the grit of the game. There are some points which can be a little bit painful either due to the age of the game or due to design. Depending on how much time you have, you may enjoy watching all the animations. Some days I like having a relaxing time watching the animations go on, but they can be a little bit slow sometimes which makes an already long game take even longer to play. You can be playing just one map for an entire month without proceeding to the next scenario. This is why I tend to play while running a program which speeds up the game. My only other real gripe about Age of Wonders is that it has a habit of crashing while playing in any kind of windowed mode. This usually isn't a bad thing as I prefer to play on true fullscreen anyways, but there is another problem where if you tab out of the game and tab back in, it likes to either crash or not open back up... which can make it difficult if you have other things going on while you want to play some Age of Wonders. This makes you have to plan sessions to play rather than just opening it up whenever for a bit while doing other things.
Overall, even with the negatives of this game, I have to give Age of Wonders 10 / 10 because it's just so amazing for me. I highly recommend getting this game and playing through it if you're into strategy. The Age of Wonders games are my favourite turn-based strategy series so far (though I haven't managed to start playing the new Age of wonders III yet).
If you're interested in seeing some gameplay, you can head over to my Age of Wonders Gameplay page or you can watch my videos directly on my YouTube channel TheDaemonVirus.
~ Kyle Welykholowa
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