Leaders and the heroes they hire act as a solid core for each empire in the game. Infant orcs shall no longer be placed straight into barbarian school and wee draconians can aspire to be more than a giant’s Zippo. No longer are dwarves doomed to a life in the mines. This means that a leader’s choice of profession is considerably more important than the species they were born as, which makes the world of Age of Wonders remarkably progressive as far as fantasy environments go, even if many of the lady elves do look in danger of catching a chill. In general, racial traits are inherent while class-specific skills and units are unlocked through construction and research. Winged avenger orcs look like green-skinned archangels soaring across the battlefield and the dreadnaught class ensures that everyone can get involved with some steampunk sorcery rather than just the dwarves. Mixing up classes and races creates some unusual combinations.

I've barely complained about the hard labour and long hours at all this week.Įven though I'm weary of dungeons, dragons, Tolkiens and toadstools, an army of fairies going head to head with an assembly of theocratic orcs is quite a sight to see. In fact, playing the game has been my job for the last few days, which is an almost entirely pleasing state of affairs. It's still capable of eating my evenings and nights, but thankfully I don't have a degree to work on this time around. Now, thanks to reclaimed publishing rights and a bit of Notch magic, the venerable series has returned.

When I started writing for RPS, I didn't expect I'd ever be reviewing an Age of Wonders sequel. I've spent many hours with the long-awaited strategy sequel and here's wot I think. It hasn’t extended its tendrils to tickle any deeper fancies either, although I’ll concede that the world is a little weirder and more wonderful than my initial expeditions suggested. It's only been a month and a half since I wrote my mega-preview of Age Of Wonders III and spending around fifteen hours with a review copy of the game hasn’t done a great deal to change my mind about its many merits.

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