Age of Wonders 4

There are some good ideas in AOW4, but it has too many bad points which make it a chore to play. Some examples: Independent guards of treasure sites grow in power if left alone, but not in ancient wonders. The result is that low-value treasure sites end up being much harder to take than high-value ancient wonders. It makes no sense. Killing enemy leaders and heroes gains you no advantage. You do get a small amount of gold and some equipment, but within a few turns the leader is back with newly-recruited heroes, every one of them around the same level and with the same or better equipment as the ones you just killed. They've somehow managed to make the graphics worse than AOW3, and even AOW2. I'm not talking about how pretty it looks, I'm talking about how easy it is to tell what's going on in combat. The units blend into the background and it's difficult to distinguish between them without zooming right in. The developers obviously realised this was the case, hence the big circles above the units' heads showing you what type they are. I find myself looking at the circles rather than the units themselves during battles, which is a shame. The adjacent-hex rule has been removed in favour of picking two of your nearby groups at random, so you'll sometimes get a group you didn't want. I could go on with various other examples, but I'll finish with probably my biggest criticism, which is that the rate you can build up an army is so high you have big 18 v 18 (or near that) battles so frequently that they become tedious. It feels like it's been designed for people who like to auto-resolve combat, which I don't. I can't fathom why you'd want to build up an army only to not use it. In summary, I don't see any reason to play this in preference to any of the previous games in the series.

Game is solid, but there is a deal-breaking issue for me - the Pantheon progression system, and here's why: - Locks gameplay elements (mechanics, attributes, cosmetics, weapons) behind tens of hours of progress - Pantheon save system is stored locally, and then it gets directly synced to the cloud. However, if you install on new hardware (change hard disk/ SSD, or new machine), the game creates a new Pantheon save, which overwrites your current one, and that leaves you with hour of progress being wasted (got mine wiped at 50hrs) - Devs have no intention on fixing this issue or removing the system, they're expanding it even with more things to grind. Their justifications are even more insulting. - Why is there a need for an online MMO-type progression system needed in a $50 single-player offline 4x strategy game with optional multiplayer? I paid good money for this game, and feel cheated. Never buying Paradox or Triumph games again until they fix this.

I've been playing this series since AoWI 20 something years ago. I was happy to pre order the Premier Edition and support Triumph. But I can't play the game. There is no multiplayer chat tab as in the old games, so to chat with other players, you have to open a separate tab, scroll down to the bottom, and then read the text, then close the tab to get back to the game. This seems to a clumsy, slow, and frustrating way to get players to communicate. I put me off trying to chat, which meant a lot less fun in the multiplayer. Then, there's all clutter. My friend and I both had to resort to reading the combat log after every attack in combat, because visually, we couldn't figure out what was happening. In game, there is so much going on, in the city, outside the city, that it feels like a whole bunch of features were jammed in without any regard for whether they improved the in game experience. Both my friend and I agreed that this could be a good game...in a year or two after patches, expansions, and mods are released. As it is now, I've requested a refund because for me, it's a chore to play.

Rather than talk about the content of AOW4, I'm just addressing the UI. AOW4 has the user interface of a lazily done console-to-PC port. My biggest gripe: the resolution can't be changed. Instead, there's a resolution slider, which gives the option of making the game look worse while still taking up the entire screen. I asked for a refund for this reason - I use a widescreen monitor and play strategy games windowed because I don't like moving my mouse across my entire screen every time I take an action. Being unable to change the game's resolution is the most perplexing design choice I have seen in a recent PC game. Queuing up city building orders is non-functional. When selecting a building or unit to queue, you pay the full cost immediately. Without a huge stockpile of gold, any kind of queuing is not practical or possible. The default key-bindings are weird, and I highly recommend rebinding many of the defaults. I can't fathom why anyone who has ever played a 4X PC game would set CAPSLOCK and SHIFT-CAPSLOCK as keyboard hotkey. Just…why? I couldn't find a way to cycle through turn notifications. In Civ6 I bound mouse 4 to cycle through the notifications, addressing them as I chose. In AOW4 I couldn't find any way to address these notifications except to click on them, and each had to be addressed in the order the game presents. Moreover, the whole notification system is clunky. Overall, I found interacting with my little magical empire unnecessarily cumbersome. AOW4 interacts like a console game, with a lazy port to the PC. It's not complete rot, so 2 stars, but I cannot recommend purchasing it.