Age of Wonders 4 – Review

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When Paradox had their showcase earlier in the year, I heard a lot of fans calling for “Age of Wonders” a franchise I’d never paid much attention to, mostly because it’s a genre I’ve never played a lot of, classed as a 4X strategy, the aim is to Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate, and here we are a few months later and I’m wondering what I’ve been missing all these years.

I’ve dabbled with a little Civilization, but never really invested myself into the genre, so while I was already family with building up victory points to claim the win by any means necessary, I’d usually opt for a diplomatic route, rather than trying to battle opponents who always seemed to build their armies quicker than I could, but sitting down with Age of Wonders, I was in for a big surprise.

My first game of Age of Wonders was all a little confusing, I jumped in as Karissa the Red a ruthless fire sorceress of the orcs with a bad attitude and an even worse reputation. I hoped her Orc army would make a suitable figurehead for attack and after the first 10 or so moves, things were looking promising, but I soon bit off more than I could chew and spent the next 50+ moves struggling to regain my lost ground.

As you might expect the core gameplay loop is similar to other titles in the genre, but Age of Wonders 4 really starts to shine when you look a little deeper. That first choice of a ruler, was from about 20 preset leaders, each with their specified race, weaknesses and strengths, and I was pretty impressed at the level of detail for customising Karissa, until I realised you could create your own race and leader from scratch and then the level of detail, customisation and options available to you really do make Age of Wonders 4 stand above