I love being a gamer in 2023 Every single F'in game is broken at launch.

We enabled Megafauna in our ice realm and now I keep losing full stacks of Tier 3 units to f♥♥king penguins.

I created a race of dwarves that live underground and fight rats. For Rock and Stone!

This game has skaven yes-yes, thats a good trade-barter, get the warp stone for horned rat, the doom is coming for man-things, die-die

If you enjoy 4X games and/or tactical battles, get this game. I put in 12 hours in on day one, and the only thing keeping me from playing more, is the weakness of my own flesh.

> Make a race of evil barbarian kitties > Accidentally discover a super broken interaction with some items you randomly got > Breeze through every other civ, only one remaining. > Lose everything to a race of Archmage Toad zombies riding ponies that you created for the previous game. > Shed a happy tear.

i made a cat faction based on Mufasa and did the good guy route, then i made scar and did the bad guy route. after , i played another campaign where they were both united against me, and scar betrayed mufasa. 10/10

just one more turn and i'll write a review

I no longer have a sleep schedule.

Conquered the world as Pepe the Frog. Feels good man.

Is it a good game? I think so. However, I'm not going to write a thousand word essay to justify my choice. I'm not in college, I'm not getting paid, and I'm not your parent. So sod off. :P

A game like a nagging spouse. This ahead. I really loved the game from the start, AoW is one of my all-time favourite game series, but things really change when you look at the game in detail, especially with the latest patches. Pros: - The game has a very active dev team addressing issues and evolving the game constantly - A very diverse cast of characters, units and spells allowing for a large variety of play styles - The AI is somewhat intelligent and there are in fact challenges to beat in the game for good reward early-on which makes a difference - A good feel of competition. Sometimes Cons: The use of guerilla tactics and a constant onslaught of nuisances completely ruining the fun. Example: - Opponents building useless outposts to cage your expansion in, completely ignoring repercussions because factually the only choice is constant war or submission which entirely negates development and building styles, diplomatic relationships with close neighbours. It is basically a deliberately programmed bully tactic to constantly harrass the player. - constant pop-up of nuisance events which are set to detract from the main goal. Expanding West with your main army? Would be a shame if far East there is now an event with a useless reward which forces you to waste 10 turns (aka 5% of the whole game) on resolving an issue, and if you dont the punishment is actually between game-breaking severe to serious handicap level. In short: The game is the equivalent of an always nagging, gaslighting, abusive spouse. Under the pretense of having a good time, or giving it another chance...you will be more busy eye-rolling and sighing in exasperation. Either way, if you want a game that looks nice but plays like sitting on a hot plate, go for it.

Non-existent strategic "AI" that relies entirely on cheats. At higher difficulties, It passively sits within its borders spawning stacks of high tier, experienced troops. By turn two, it'll have two full stacks of units, when it would take a player 5 turns to produce a singular unit. Own the entire map? Have all the free cities vassalized? AI down to its last territory? None of that matters, because like the fed, printer goes BRRRRR. AoW's a 24 year old series, but the strategic AI's barely improved since 1999, cheating endlessly to provide the illusion of competence.

Sid Meier's Civilization V or VI, but with magic, dragons and other mythical creatures. If that doesn't sell it, no review will.

Okay so - this game has some good, some bad and not much ugly in my opinion. I'll list some of the bad, some of the good and then I will go into details about them and for some of them I will say a word why I think something is bad, though some others might consider it good or vice versa. So lets kick it off - with the bad!

The bad:

Water gameplay is lacking Faction diversity watered down by customization Tome faction thematics are not all complete Enchantment upkeep "Campaign" is marred by RMG and not coherent No item crafting.

The good:

Combat is engaging and better then ever Diverse options of units outside of cultures Sieges are a great addition City management improved RMG is a powerful tool Toggleable? Yes!

Now let's dip a little more deeply into each of these points starting with the bad:

Water gameplay is lacking. As the tin reads - there is nothing to do on the water. There is nothing to engage with or search for- no wonders, hardly any resource nodes or pickups, no unique game elements. TS seem to have decided water tiles are just meant to be a hinderance and not a game element which is a huge shame considering how decent water gameplay was in Planetfall or how much interesting things you could find there at the end of AoW3's life cycle. I sincerely hope they do more with it in the future. Faction diversity watered down by customization "When you have a million choices the choices often become the same". You can make decent unique factions, but you will never be able to make them as unique as they could have been had they been pre-designed. For a lot of people the faction customization is a positive. For me it's not. I will however say the faction creator is a powerful tool so if you like customization then this should be up your alley. Tome faction thematics are not all complete Tomes generally have a rough theme covering them, but not all of them have a uniformed theme from tier 1 to tier 5. You might have an idea in your head when you begin, but half of my games I found myself not finding fitting tomes to "finish" the faction concept. Enchantment upkeep Enchantment upkeeps can quickly go out of control because the upkeep is per unit and enchants all of your units of that type and doesn't scale according to the tier of a unit. So you might end up having a tier 1 unit garrisoned in a city costing you 18 gold and 30 mana in upkeep when it's unit upkeep base is only suppose to be 8 gold. Story realms are marred by RMG and not coherent I did in no way enjoy the story realms. The story telling becomes disconnected when RMG (Random Map Generator) places a mission goal in a weird spot that requires you to march past the enemy you were supposed to unite to fight together. The story is also super loose and incoherent as it has to be when the map is randomly generated and you play a nameless whoever that can be swapped out each story realm. For my part I would have prefered if they crafted the campaign maps and locked the character and faction the player plays as to actually tell a story - focus on the story and not the sandbox. There are enough sandbox modes to play. No item crafting. There is no crafting of items in the game (yet).

And now for the good!

Combat is engaging and better then ever Keeping this short - the tactical combat is the best yet and AoW has in my opinion always had the best 4X combat. Diverse options of units outside of cultures Though culture units aren't very unique some of the tome units make up for it. Sieges are a great addition An extra layer to tactical combat - it's adding more good to the great in my opinion. It's a fun aspect with siege defenses and siege operations to counter them. Great addition. City management improved I'm not much of a 4X city manager, but I will admit there has been a lot of strive made for city infrastructure. More thinking required - so this is a positive if you like more complexity to city management. RMG is a powerful tool As much as I hate the RMG for the narrative campaign, the tool makes beautiful and somewhat sensible world maps for the sandbox. Toggleable? Yes! You can customize your sandbox experience to the Nth degree. What's not to like? TLDR; It's a great game if you like 4X fantasy - especially if you like customizable factions. The game performs great and plays great so if you are into this sort of gameplay then the game is for sure for you.

Leopards on unicorns. Think about it.

Super pumped to play this game and cant even get past the main menu. Starting cutscene plays beautifully at 120 frames but as soon as I get into the main menu I drop to a 5 FPS. no matter what settings I change I cant get the frames any better. Why is there no full screen display mode? Why is there no resolution setting? Guess I will wait for a patch before I can play PC Specs CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12 Core RAM - 32 GB GPU - AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

As an avid AOW fan (1400+ hours in AOW:3), I was really excited for this game. Unfortunately the new design choices they've made ruin AOW:4 for me. A more "civ" style map that somewhat focuses on land resources, hardly any focus on racial uniqueness, the feeling that my heroes never really have the time needed to be heroes, the lack of ability to "spam" cities across the map (you only focus on a few now) being replaced with the absolute need to spam outposts, and a less than stellar AI are a just few of my gripes. The exploration factor seems to be gone as it's now commonplace and almost necessary to just automate scouts to explore in lieu of your hero. You're lucky if you get to explore a few wonders (in the title of the game) before the game is over, assuming they haven't been "claimed" by the AI already. All of this combined adds annoyance and ruins the immersion and hero meta RP that I've been so fond of all these years. I prefer long games, huge maps, and multiplayer with my friends and family. This version is unaccommodating in that regard on all three fronts. It seems to be made to play much shorter games, maps weren't originally designed to be very big (without a mod and a PC to accommodate them), and multi-player has been plagued with issues since release which defeated the whole purpose of me buying the game. I kept playing in the hope that multi-player would be fixed, but sadly, as of writing this, it is still mostly unplayable within my circle. If your play style is similar to mine, I personally would not recommend this game as it is.

You know that scene in Apocalypse Now where Chef is talking about how, in a navy kitchen, he watched in horror as beautiful slabs of delicious prime rib got thrown into cauldrons and boiled into a flavorless, gray mush? Welcome to Age of Wonders 4! It's a game filled with lots of little parts that range from fine to great, but all of them are in service of an extremely hollow and exhausting wargame. The most egregious example would have to be faction creation -- I love my mana-addicted hermit halflings and satanic goat-lords, but whatever charm they have is lost as they are boiled, strained, and molded to fit the game's sole top-level concern of waging some frankly uninteresting wars. Ditto for diplomacy, city-building, and, ironically, even the game's fantastic tactical combat -- all potentially interesting and beautiful mechanisms that the game instead treats as cogs in a tiresome machine. It doesn't help that the game is also bland audiovisually. Map features blur together, as do the largely interchangeable and unrecognizable troop models. We're a long way from the stark, vibrant, and most importantly legible art of Age of Wonders 2. Sound effects and music are as workmanlike as the game's visuals and structure, without an ounce of whimsy or charm. Not once have I thought "ahhh, this is just a fun place to be." Playing, looking, and listening -- it all feels like going through an airport to catch a plane for a business trip to Des Moines.

They have effectively pulled a bait and switch. The old character system that so many of us have loved about this game, is gone. In its place is a standard pre-determined class based template system. Refund requested.

Developers have known about a Gamebreaking bug since November 2023 (https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/3954784199552859858/) and have not fixed it yet. Ive encountered this Issue myself. The suggested fix of the Developers worked, thankfully. But disabling shadows to be able to play the Game isnt really something good. Be aware of this. Also AI is cheating, literally pulling Units out of their ass when you win too fast. Other than that: Game is very fun, do recommend but Review will stay negative until they fix this bug.

I am not interested in supporting Developers who lock threads and shut down discussions about their woke agenda. its a good game but I'd rather buy a decent game made by good people. "Paradox Interactive is an ESG / DEI company that signed a petition in support of Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. | archive.ph/hkzNN | archive.ph/FDFj8"

Someone gave this a negative review because you can pronoun your heroes.......imagine someone wanting to play a RPG the way they want to play it and someone else being triggered by that ability. I use standard pronouns myself, but who am I to deny someone the ability to play a character with the right gender based on what they like. Also, the game loads fine for me, dont really do MP on these so can't speak to that. It is one of the most beautiful campaign maps I have seen. The combat is rewarding and visually appealing. The tutorial is amazing and the voice overs are amazing. If you like 4x, civ, rpgs, fanatsy setting youll like this game imo.

Wow! GIant KIngs is 25 dollar's I guess those tariff all ready kicked in.

Like Civ and Might and Magic had a love child.