First Impressions:

Graphics:

Graphics like these make me miss the olden days of 2 dimensional yore. Yep, that’s right, there’s nary a polygon to be found in Age of Wonders, nor should there be. If you have any appreciation for hand drawn art at all, AoW should appeal to you, at least graphically. My one complaint is that the units sometimes blend in too well on the battlefield, making them hard to see. If you can overlook that however, the graphics are pretty darn good.

Sound/Music:

The sound isn’t anything special. You’ll find the typical spell sounds, death cries, and battle grunts (which inevitably are 2 octaves too high in strategy games, who knows why?). This doesn’t mean much to a strategy title though; Music is much more important for setting the scene, and it does a pretty good job of doing so. That is until you’ve been playing for 3 or 4 hours (and you probably will be, AoW can be rather addictive), and you’ve just heard each song too many times. It would have been nice to have more music to listen to (especially for battles), but the music that’s there is pleasant nonetheless.

Gameplay:

The gameplay should be very familiar to those of you who have played the Warlords or Heroes of Might and Magic series. Basically you control a series of armies on a world map whose main purpose is to capture precious cities, which provide income and a means for producing more units so that you can ultimately destroy the enemy leader. In addition to your run-of-the-mill units, heroes will occasionally request to join your cause. Besides being more stronger or more versatile than regular units, heroes can explore dungeons to uncover magical items or special units (which aren’t always beneficial, I discovered the hard way. Heed my words: If it’s red and it flies, stay away from it!) . Also, their ability to cast spells comes in mighty handy when you just want to get things over with, and you probably will after spending 4-10 hours on a single map.

Of course, this length is what makes AoW such an addicting game, or a tedious one, depending on your patience. On larger maps, it seems to take forever to find the enemy leader(s), and once you do it’s a while before you can amass the forces to beat them. What keeps all this entertaining is the sheer variety of things to find on the map: Dungeons, Wizards’ Towers, Magical Nodes, Caves, Colosseums, and of course cities and enemy units, among other things. Once you’ve exhausted things to find, however, tedium sets in and AoW becomes an exercise in patience.

Don’t take this the wrong way now. Length can be a good thing in some games, just not in Age of Wonders. Why not? Well, it’s the AI. Any strategist knows that the best defense is a good offense. You can’t win a war by sitting still. On the flip side, attacking when you aren’t ready is suicide. Thus to win any war you must know when to attack and when to hold back. Unfortunately, AoW’s CPU sorely lacks this critical knowledge. To their credit, the developers did program different styles of fighting, from passive to aggressive, but the passive enemies don’t to anything but stockpile, and the aggressive ones do nothing but attack. The enemies who are intended to be middle ground do make an attempt to organize concerted attacks, but they rarely concentrate their forces and consequently are incapable of taking anything except for lightly guarded cities. I will give the AI this: they are valiant defenders of their turf. On the battle maps, the computer was often my equal, although some cheap tricks could be employed when I needed to win against the odds.

Now one might think that the computer would fight more smartly if the difficulty level is increased, but this is not the case. It is much, much more challenging on the Hard level, but that is due more to decreased profits from cities and increased unit costs than it is from improved AI. So, if what you want is a mad challenge, play Hard mode. But if you’re sojourning for deep strategic posturing, go play a different game.

Beyond the AI, I felt that the battle system limited tactical options. In battle, units must move and then attack if they are attacking melee. If they are firing projectiles however, they may move OR attack, but not both on the same round. What this often means is that to move to put the enemy into archer range is to make your archer susceptible to the enemies’ rushing melee attack, which of course, defeats the whole purpose of the "long range" attack. Archers ARE still useful, but all sorts of tricks must be employed to gain an advantage from them, tricks that I feel are unnecessary.

My final gripe with Age of Wonders is that it is buggy. But then again, this is my gripe about every PC game. Don’t know what it is about the PC video game industry, but they never manage to fix all the bugs before shipping.

Enjoyment:

Despite my harsh words, I did actually enjoy Age of Wonders. Its story was entertaining, as good as I’d expect from a cliché fantasy setting. In addition, AoW’s unique mix of exploration and combat proved itself to be a refreshing change of pace from the more war-oriented strategy games, and if it wasn’t for the excessive time required to advance, and the computer’s poor AI, Age of Wonders would have scored much higher.

Multiplayer:

Of course, the solution to poor AI is to battle another human being. The case is no different for Age of Wonders. When I played against my friend I found out quickly how inferior my skills were. I decided early that forming an alliance with him was the best option, that is until I backstabbed him and brought his evil empire down in flames by organizing a sneak attack on his leader. If I hadn’t already burned myself out on the single player game, I would definitely be playing more multiplayer Age of Wonders.

Overall Impression:

As I’ve said. AoW is excellently crafted, and shows off the hard work of the developers: Epic Megagames, and Triumph Studios. The only major areas of trouble were the AI, the battle system, and the daunting length of each map. But those carry a lot of weight, and consequently Age of Wonders suffered because of them.

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

Pretty gender-neutral. There are plenty of female images(and female heroes) to choose from for your leader, though there were far fewer female units beyond this. I do not object to that however since no war in recorded history has significantly included female units in battle. As far as advertising goes, the only one I’ve seen is the box, which features a shapely woman on the cover, though she is actually wearing full armor (much to my surprise), so you’d have to be pretty stodgy to object to her.