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What a disappointment!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 13
Date: May 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is Civ II meets D&D. Its horrible. One of my five LEAST favorite games.

I am now dumber for playing this game...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: July 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I give it to you straight. This is the worst game in my collection. The graphics are horrible, not even as good as Master of Magic that was published fiver years earlier. The music isn't good enough for an elevator and the game play couldn't be any worse if it tried.

You can't build new cities, you have to pay to bring items with you...The whole game is stale and unimaginitive. The map editor is hard to work with too. They pain, the pain... It just won't stop. I haven't played this "turkey" since the first week I bought it six months ago.

Disappointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: January 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I thought that would be an enhanced version of "Master of Magic".
This is not a half as good as old MoM was!
The most frustrating thing is that you cannot build a new city and the old cities can not grow.
By the idea this game is closer to "Heroes of Might and Magic" rather than to MoM, but it's not as good as HoMM either.
Does anyone need one more clone of HoMM, though not as great as the original was?
About the quality - nothing oustanding. Same as millions of other games on the market. And same boring.

Transparent, short lived gameplay

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: June 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I found this game to be FAR to obvious. The races have merely a percentage of a difference between them. The game has zero variety. Play it for an hour . . . and then you'll see how it will ALWAYS play. Boring.

It's fun while it lasts

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: January 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game not too long ago never having played a turn-based strategy game, although I am a longtime veteran of RTSs. At first it was a lot of fun, researching new stuff, taking over towns, etc, but it began to get boring. Three or four levels into the single player game, it was still extraordinarily easy, and I already had access to most of the upgrades, but it was getting annoying. You can't have parties of more than eight, so when taking on a castle garrisonning 20 enemies, things get quite ridiculous. All of the units are pretty even in strength, and the cutscenes were not very good, basically a bunch of still shots blending together.

I do buy games for the single-player, though. I don't have a great internet connection, so my reviews don't apply to multiplayer aspects of games. It may be great online, I don't know. However, offline it is fun and addictive for the first few days, and then it quickly becomes yet another game junked onto the shelf.

Caution -- when you're playing, this game becomes one of those "Just a couple more minutes" games that you never stop playing.

I waited 10 years for MoM 2 and this is what I get!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: September 24, 2000
Author: Amazon User

To compare Age of Wonders to any game other than Masters of Magic is ludicrous. This game is blatantly an MoM clone with deprecated gameplay and better graphics. Granted MoM was a terrific game, but surely Triumph Software could have improved on more than the interface. The few improvements over MoM are:

- better (barely better) graphics - a couple new races - a few new spells (most spells are exactly the same as MoM) - tactical combat inside monster lair locations - simultaneous turns - game doesn't end when someone researches the mastery spell.

Its list of features that are lacking from MoM are:

- brutally simplified town management (is this a shooter?) - can't build new towns - no town growth - an 'upgrade' option to replace individual building - one player per race - confusing diplomacy that changes round to round - no improvement to combat, identical to MoM - no improvement to heroes, identical to MoM - no improvement to magic system, identical to MoM

Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on this game. Other reviewers and friends say that the simplified interface is a blessing. That the micromanagement of MoM was tedious. But what is wrong with having an AI do your town management for you if you choose? In all fairness I have, and will, be playing Age of Wonders for hours. Buy it for MoM with a facelift, but it is not MoM2.

Almost, but not quite

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: October 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Playing this game, you never think "Boy, I wish they had included..." because they did. This game has everything a lover of fantasy and strategy could want. Upon first playing, it seems to pick up the mantle left by Master of Magic and run with it. But the more you play, the more it just doesn't catch you. I never found myself looking up and seeing daylight with this game, as with other great series (Civ, HOMM, MoM, Warlords). Something is missing that you can't really put your finger on. Rather than wanting to play just one more turn, you instead have to force yourself to keep through each senario. No one I know who has the game played for more than a couple of weeks before getting bored with it. Somehow, it doesn't have the mistical fun factor of a truely classic game. It is an excellently made game, and will perhaps fill the void somewhat, but I am still waiting for a true successor to MoM.

Solid.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: February 09, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Although it may not be the most innovative or the most expansive game on the market, Age of Wonders captivates the hearts of gamers withits solid tried-and-true gameplay. Even if the game borrows details from several others, it just improves so much on the gameplay that it's hard not smile. While the game lacks any randomness, it captures the old-school feeling of true feudalism. The color palette is fantastic and I was surprised at the superior quality of the music - excellent, to say the least. The units are well-balanced, and despite the low number of different unit types the game allows for a fascinating amount of strategy, unlike the other games which mainly specialize in getting as many units, items, and characters on-screen as fast as possible.

Even if a game doesn't fill your screen with glittering effects, or doesn't offer you fifteen billion different customizable units doesn't exactly mean that it cannot be excellent. Age of Wonders is.

Master of Magic it ain't.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: January 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

For those of you saying this game is basically a rehash of Master of Magic I don't know what game it is you think you've been playing. While Age of Wonders is a very good game and I do reccomend buying it, if you are expecting a game with the raw amount of possibilities that were present in Master of Magic you will be dissapointed. There aren't even half the spells available, you can't create magic items for your characters, the units for each race are basically the same and the number of varrying units isn't very great, and no random map games. The other thing that really bothered me is that since there are no random map games you have to play all pre-generated scenarios which force you to pick from a select number of races and follow a set goal for the scenario.

But, on the whole, the game is good, just don't go into it expecting a game very close to Master of Magic. Oh yea, and here's to Microprose to make a sequel to Master of Magic. =)

nothing new, but still fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Fans of Master of Magic or Heroes of Might and Magic will fill right at home with this game, since it is, at its core, the former made to look like the latter. While not at all original, then, this is still a truly enjoyable game. There are plenty of races and units to choose from, and the game looks considerably better than the games that influenced it. I thought the storyline was fairly original, and enjoyed the fact that it isn't completely linear (the choices you make affect which races you can control along the way).

The biggest downside to this game is that although there is an interesting campaign as well as stand-alone scenarios to play, there is no random map feature. For each existing map, the races you can select from are preset, and some of the races aren't represented very well. For example, if you like playing as Highmen, you're stuck with playing the same three maps over and over. The game does come with a map editor, and you can get some decent maps from fan sites, but a random map generator really would have increased the longevity of this game.

In summary, if you're a fan of turn based strategy games, then you should get many enjoyable hours out of this game, even if it doesn't really introduce anything new to the genre.

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