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| Age of Wonders 3 First Impressions by Arbit 04/08/2014, 3:44pm PDT | ||||
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| I've completed one free-for-all random map with three other wizards on either lord or king difficulty (3rd or 2nd highest difficulty). I can't remember which. I won.
Stuff that is good -Good strategic AI. Still bad of course, but compared to its competition, good. -Tactical AI is actually pretty good. I was impressed that during sieges it would hold a reserve to push back flying and wall climbing units and not instantly abandon the walls once you managed to breach them. The AI even chose a good unit to hold the breach - pixies, which have high physical damage resistance and have an electrical stun so my knights couldn't maneuver past the single stunned knight that was clogging the entryway. -Music is on the generic side but well done. -During combat, you get one spell per turn no matter how many spellcasting heroes you have on the field. This keeps the AI and his six spellcasting heroes camping out in his capitol from frying your fucking face off in the first round. -Your wizard is no longer a liability that you leave at home and never move. It can level, has a class, and can get combat skills like any other hero. Getting killed has three turn timeout penalty and empire-wide happiness penalty. -There are some interface improvements and the ability to set rally points for cities. -The class system is pretty good. I've only played the rogue so far, but each gives you access to class specific units and tech. Leader customization, particularly visualization, is pretty good. Stuff I'm iffy about -The combat system now includes unit facing and flanking attacks, the kicker being your units automatically to turn face every attacker, including ranged units. It doesn't matter if your dragon is getting pelted on the ass with rocks, it will turn to face the rock thrower and expose its ass to the archon titan standing next to it. The computer is very good at juggling a unit's facing by hitting it from multiple directions and getting maximum backstabbage, and late game strategies seem to revolve around hordes of attack-of-opportunity ignoring fliers stabbing each other in the ass. This is kind of frustrating but can be an interesting combat puzzle in itself. I'm still on the fence about it. Stuff that sucks -City spam. -Every strategy game turns into micromanagement hell once you get to the midgame, maybe sooner, the number one culprit always being the interface. Hey, when your interface designer makes a production overview screen that covers up the unit/building production sidebar, thereby making it impossible to change what a city is producing without closing and reopening the overview overlay, fucking punch them in the throat and tell them to try again. This is like an ergonomist designing a chair with a nice lumbar support and then running spike strips down the center of it. Would that be tolerated by Generic Chair Co? No. Why is this shit tolerated in videogames? Everyone KNOWS that playing the final third of a strategy game is a recipe for carpal tunnel. FIIIIIX IIIIIT. -Just like the AoW:SM, spell and tech research during the mid and end game becomes a ridiculous deluge of crap I don't care about. I'm researching stuff every 1-4 turns and maybe one in five techs/spells is something I actually care about. I feel that these should really define how you run your empire, but mostly they're nominal bonuses that the AI will disjunct with OCD-like rigor*, and by this point it's all about high tier unit and hero superstacks anyway. I think I'm most annoyed by this. -The game is a lot harder to read now that it has 3D graphics. Overall The game is pretty similar to AoW:SM with some nice new twists and some still unresolved issues. Conclusion: wait for steam sale *I don't think I had an empire-wide enchantment last more than 2 to 3 turns, usually 1, until I had the game in hand |
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Age of Wonders 3 First Impressions by 04/08/2014, 3:44pm PDT  Re: Age of Wonders 3 First Impressions by 04/08/2014, 3:49pm PDT Warning about this game by 04/10/2014, 11:41am PDT |
