(Ranged units feel a bit overpowered, especially in the early game.) This is the mode where Age of Wonders III shines most, despite a couple of small but exploitable balance issues. Still, it feels great when you pull off the victory against overwhelming odds through expert use of cover and flanking. More than that, and I started making dumb mistakes trying to rush through battles.

I found that a solid 15 versus 15 battle was about the sweet spot, at least as far as my patience was concerned. In fact, 42 units gets a bit tedious as you micromanage each individual move on every turn. Elves, orcs, dragons-somebody started a war and somebody else felt betrayed and on we go. The infodump nature of this method makes it hard to care about anything the campaign has to say. Most of the story is told through lengthy interludes between chapters, presented to you through one of the slowest text scrolls this side of Star Wars. Vital tactical techniques, such as the game’s reliance on flanking, are left to these text explanations, so it’s easy to lose the game’s relatively easy battles early on without understanding what you’re doing wrong.Īge of Wonders III’s story is delivered in big walls o’ text. Most of the tutorial hints are presented in text tooltips lengthy enough to have been written by Proust. You can feel like a decent strategist without delving too far into the game’s mechanics, even if there’s a lot of room left for you to improve.Īge of Wonders III throws up roadblocks.

While 4X games are always complicated-there are a ton of systems to learn-a game like Civilization is good about giving you the small victories up front. Age of Wonders III simply neglects about a decade of improvements in user experience, resulting in a game that feels opaque and unintuitive up front. Getting started with Age of Wonders III is a hostile and intimidating experience, and not in the Dark Souls-esque “purposefully obtuse” way.

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Age of wonders 3 campaign hero reset