Age of Wonders 2 Review
| Developer: Triumph Studios With cinematics by: Poptop Software Publisher: Gathering of Developers System Requirements: Processor: PentiumŪ II 300 MHz processor or equivalent Memory: 64MB RAM (minimum) Disk Space: 500MB Video: DirectX 8.0 compatible 4MB video card OS: Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP |
|
Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne is an excellent turn-based strategy game. It offers huge replayability, nice graphics and an opportunity to flex some magic muscle. I will be focusing on the gameplay here and explain why I like it.
Being turn-based, Age of Wonders 2 doesn't offer much for action freaks but the game is great for strategy fans. Especially those liking the 4X variety. There is a simultaneous turn mode for something fresh, but I prefer classic mode: each player gets a turn, in a predetermined order and governs their kingdom in that fashion.
Every player in the game has a wizard unit, the goal is to defeat that unit, which you will usually want to place in a wizard's tower in one of your cities. From the tower, the wizard can cast spells over a large area. This large area is your domain and you can expand this by building more and larger towers and magic relay structures you can control. Every hero unit has a small domain area around it which you can use to cast spells in combat (if your Wizard is in a tower).
Heroes are powerful units which you can outfit with equipment that you find in various locations on the maps. They can cast spells like your wizard, and even improve the mana income of the wizard if they are casters themselves. Heroes can also gain experience by killing units in combat (they also gain 1 experience per turn). At a set number, your hero will gain a level and you will be prompted to choose an upgrade. There are many skills in AOW2 for your heroes. Standard things like stat improvements (+attack/damage and health/movement) are useful but I really love the skills you can learn. Archery allows your hero to fire arrows at an enemy unit, and there is a marksmanship skill which improves the damage and attack (chance to hit) of the archery skill. Leadership skills will improve the attack and defense of every unit in your hero's party! Quite useful! There are many more skills like this but it would be very long winded to go into detail on each one.
Every wizard can choose a sphere of magic to specialize in. They are: Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Death, Life and Cosmos. Each offers a very different playing style. Life has a knack for healing, while fire is mostly destructive in nature. Each is fun to play (My favorite being Air) and you can see different uses when fighting against other wizards and the races they command. Spells are researched and some will take many turns to learn (you can gain research points by building structures in your cities as well as putting some of your mana power into the research project). Wizards can further be customized by choosing starting skills such as conqueror which will net you an additional 50% experience for every unit killed in combat or merchant, which provides a gold income bonus to each city. Your wizard can later research these skills and become truly powerful over time.
Each race has different units available to them and some wizards will perform very will with certain races depending on their sphere. There are eleven races to play: Human, Tigran, Draconian, Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, Archons, Dark Elves, Orcs, Goblins and Undead. Each race has four levels of units. Each level has a higher upkeep (in gold) for the unit. For example a level one unit is usually very weak and will die quickly to a more powerful unit, level 2s are stronger and have higher upkeep. Level 3 units tend to be the primary defenders of my cities, some of these are very powerful. Finally the level 4 units which have the highest gold upkeep, and are for the most part the strongest units in the game. Races have a variety of units for each level, meaning there are plenty of units to work with.
You will need many cities to support a large military, and there's no shortage of buildings to produce in each one you control. They provide extra mana and gold income, research, allow construction of your military units and house your wizard's towers. Each city can also build one shrine, which worships one of the four gods. The shrine of war will make any military unit start as a veteran. The shrine of nature will boost population growth. The shrine of magic will bring in mana and research. The shrine of order will boost production points and improve the happiness of your city (happy cities sometimes finish construction several turns faster).
Building a shrine in one of your cities opens up quests from that god. Quests range in difficulty from easy, average to hard. These may consist of hunting down infidels, razing an enemy city, capturing a magic node, etc. Completing these quests will net you great rewards for your effort. Sometimes giving you a spell or an artifact for your hero to wear!
Age of Wonders 2 is great, there is a fun campaign to play (you go through each magic sphere), plenty of maps included with it, and there are many custom scenarios available for download. This game has given me plenty of fun, although sometimes with many wizards on a map the turns can slow to a crawl. At that, I give it a 9/10.
Buy it here.I have written some tips for Age of Wonders 2: attacking enemy cities, defending your cities and basic tips.
Also, Carl's Guides offers cheats for this game. Click here to cheat.
If you would like to submit an alternate Age of Wonders 2 review click here
