Age Of Mythology (PC) > Reviews > Age of Amazingness

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment	Excellent - very playable game
Graphics	Good
Sound	Good - relevant music & effects
Difficulty & Complexity	Average - suitable for most

Advantages:	Endless gameplay, good on broadband, fun as anything .  .  .  ever
Disadvantages:	very similiar to previous age of empires titles

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This is an amazing game (and i'm very sory about the title), it has almost everything exactly right. With the new title several small changes have come, as well as the very obvious unit changes.

Instead of having endless numbers of civs to choose from, you now have nine gods, each with their own special powers and units. These nine gods are split up into the Vikings, The Eygiptians and The Greeks. The new gods don't just have different units though, there is also hundreds of new strategies, different buildings, and different techniques that have been changed.

Originality:
I've decided to start with the only bad point about this game. It is not all that original. Although most people would say that this is not a bad thing, sometimes you sit there after a paticularly bad defeat online thinking, 'why couldn't they have changed that slightly.' There is a huge scope of minor things that they have changed, and in fairness, this has improved the game greatly. But at the same time, there is a huge amount of other things that they cold have done to make it different.
Some of the best tweaks that they have made are:
The new multiplayer system that is integrated into the game.
The new units and the way that they have created three main types (heros, myth units and human)
The ability to view the map from any direction
God Powers
The new single player quickplay start up (choosing type of map etc.)

Some of the things i find annoying are:
There aren't as many buildings (or it feels like that)
There aren't as many units (as above)

Graphics:
The graphics, while not the main reason that you'll want to buy this game, are very good.
There is detail at the same time as not being too complicated, and it is now 3D but runnable with a relatively poor graphics card. You can also ad some pointless, but fun, affects such as footprints so you can see where your guys have stepped.

If you wanted to compare these graphics to another game, i would suggest that you think about Command and Conquer Generals or a little better than Medieval Total War. If you've played either of those games you'll know that they do indeed have high quality graphics.
Basically the graphics attached to this game are super! (but not quite super duper)

Sound:
I'm not sure that there is much i can say about this really. The sounds is of the usual Age of Empires, nuthin special but completely relavent, although the new tunes are probably better and less annoying than before. Also, some of the things the villagers say isn't gobaldigook, but most of it is.

Learning Curve, Difficulty:
As ever with age of empires, you have the stupidly easy, hard, and very hard, and even harder. But this time they appear to have missed out on fairly easy difficulty. This is kind of levelled out by the fact that you can just give yourself a teammate, but i can imagine it being frustrating finding it impossible to beat the computer, or just too easy.

Luckily for me, i've played a lot of this and have progressed onto hte very hard kind of level, but for a fast learning beginner it gets hard, suddenley.

This game has retained the good old starting campaign that teaches you all the basics.

Longevity:
What can i say. Age of Empires creators, but it has gone and outdone the Age of Empires series as well. Because of the multipayer mode, you can now play for hours on end without getting bored. And there is always so many strategies to choose from, endless game!

Interface, Playability:
Good as ever. nuthin really needs to change. Simple mouse and hotkeys, with new shortcuts added at the top of the screen making it better than ever.

This is the amazing kind of game that Ensemble Studois have been churning out recentley, and it really is brilliant. BUY IT... NOW!

and please leave comments on how to improve my reviewing