Microsoft has announced that the Xbox Games with Gold line-up for May 2023 includes Star Wars Episode I: Racer and Hoa.
As detailed on Xbox Wire, the two Games with Gold offerings for May will be available to anyone with Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with Star Wars Episode I: Racer coming up first from May 1 to May 31 and Hoa up for grabs between May 16 to June 15.
Based on the iconic podracing scene from The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Episode I: Racer sees players climb aboard their favorite podracers and take charge of the controls as young Anakin Skywalker, Sebulba, and a whole host of other characters from the galaxy far, far away.
After taking an adrenaline-fuelled ride through Tatooine, you might want to soothe your mind with a trip through the beautiful world of Hoa. This puzzle platformer is one to get lost in, as it features breathtaking hand-painted art, lovely music, and a peaceful, relaxing atmosphere.
Issue 2 of IGN’s Hidden Treasures column explored Hoa and how the Ghibli-inspired platformer was born from its creators’ kindness toward nature and one another while trying to evoke the feeling of being a child again, experiencing the world with curiosity and fresh eyes.
For me, developers Deconstructeam are the GOAT at fleshing out characters through the subtle art of conversation. Whether it’s revealing the dark secrets of corporate espionage from the mouths of loose-lipped employees after a cocktail or two in The Red Strings Club, uncovering the cut-throat life of a hitman as he arranges beautiful bouquets in Eternal Home Floristry, or unravelling the personal philosophies of an old man who claims he can speak to God through a radio in Interview With A Whisperer, their games are detailed portraits of complex people. And after playing through an hour-long preview build of the team’s next game, the fresly unveiled The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, I can already tell that this adventure is one of their most complex portraits yet. This time, folks, we’re dealing with divination, cosmic gods and sweet, sweet revenge.
Gord, the upcoming dark fantasy strategy game inspired by Slavic folklore, will now also be coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S as well as PC (via Steam). It is planned for release on all three of those platforms this summer. Check out the console announcement trailer above, which shows the first footage of the console version in action.
Gord was revealed exclusively on IGN in 2021. Its creators have worked on both The Witcher 3 and Frostpunk. The development team at Covenant.dev describes Gord’s gameplay as such: “[Players] will need to oversee their citizens’ hunger, disease, and trauma, nurture their faith and train them for battle, while also expanding their settlements – the titular ‘gords’ – and embarking on a variety of life-threatening quests.”
Gord’s survival/strategy gameplay promises to include building, a sanity system in which your townsfolk can totally lose it if you don’t take care of them, handcrafted quests alongside procedurally generated levels that aim to keep your experience fresh, and more.
Check out our 2022 interview with Gord’s director if you’re curious to learn more.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
RTS-FPS hybrids aren’t a new thing, but they also haven’t been the most historically successful ventures. Well, Arma 3 developers Bohemia Interactive are taking a punt at blending the two genres with Silica, in the hopes that you can both shoot and command things with equal levels of good. It’s the first project to hatch from Bohemia’s incubator program, which helps indie devs make cool games.
Silica is largely the work of one developer, Martin “Dram” Malicharek, who was previously the lead on Bohemia’s Take On Mars. Having given Silica a whirl for over an hour, I struggle to see whether the RTS, FPS hybrid can truly offer the best of both worlds. It does, however, make being a crab extremely good.
The Might & Magic series may have somewhat fallen by the wayside since Ubisoft acquired the rights to the franchise back in 2003, but Dotemu is striving to bring the RPG puzzler back as it’s developing a remaster of the 2009 DS game in Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition.
Announced today by publisher Ubisoft, the game is set to release this summer and provide all of the adventuring and puzzling that the DS original did, but with a fresh lick of paint and a good number of quality-of-life improvements thrown in for good measure.
We talk with Producer Yasunori Ogura and Director Masaru Yamamura about their vision for the upcoming Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon.
From dynamic battles to mech customization and thrilling boss encounters, Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon is shaping up to be the combat mech game for everyone.
Armored Core VI Fires of Rubiconwill launch on August 25, 2023, and is available for pre-order today on the Microsoft Store for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One (with Smart Delivery support).
Since its surprise announcement during The Game Awards this past December, we’ve been eager to learn more about FromSoftware’s upcoming Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon, the first new Armored Core game in nearly a decade. Since the last entry in the franchise was released, the studio’s reputation for delivering high-quality and challenging games has only blossomed thanks to a string of commercial and critical hits like Dark Souls II & III, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and last year’s Elden Ring.
Now that I’ve had a chance to talk with Producer Yasunori Ogura and Director Masaru Yamamura about their vision for the upcoming Armored Core VI — launching for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One (with Smart Delivery support) on August 25, 2023 – we’ve been able to get to the heart of some of our burning questions, in particular if Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon is shaping up to be more of a Souls or Armored Core game; turns out it’s a little of both.
Because of the studio’s recent reputation, it’s safe to say the collective gaming world takes notice whenever a new FromSoftware title is announced. Gamers have come to expect a certain level of challenge when you see the studio’s name on packaging and Yamamura talked about this expectation as well, in particular with regard to the boss fights that we’ll encounter in Armored Core VI — and to not expect those to be as straightforward.
“What we are aiming to create with AC6 is a new mech action game as a product of what the current day FromSoftware can output.”
“In our approach to difficulty, let’s say, for example, that a certain boss is giving you trouble with a devastating laser attack that sweeps across battle arena and it’s very hard to avoid,” Yamamura says. “One possible solution, in such a situation, could be to go back to the Assembly and reconfigure your mech with reverse jointed legs, which have excellent jumping ability. Or a booster with a powerful upward trust so the attack can be evaded vertically. An alternative approach could also be to use a high impact weapon like a bazooka to stop the enemy’s movement or before it attacks.”
It’s in this way that Yamamura is hoping players will “enjoy using their ingenuity and creativity,” both in terms of observing the enemy and their attack patterns, but also creating their own solutions with the game’s Assembly System to tackle these various threats across these intricately detailed maps.
“First and foremost, what we are aiming to create with AC6 is a new mech action game as a product of what the current day FromSoftware can output, based on the knowledge and experience we’ve gained from developing these recent titles,” Yamamura details. “But we also want to combine that with the original essence of AC, and that is the Assembly aspect and taking your assembled mech into battle and piloting it freely. So, in this process we placed a lot of importance on intricate 3D map design, combat design that allows players to observe enemy movements and deal with them accordingly, and the ability to overcome challenging situations with their own creativity and ingenuity.”
“These are things that FromSoftware action games have always tried to emphasize, and we of course developed AC6 with this in mind,” Yamamura continues. “However, as the basic format of Armored Core is completely different from games in the Souls lineage, there really aren’t any specific aspects of gameplay or mechanics that can be observed as-is. So, we’ve tried to incorporate this know-how and experience at points of the game where it can coexist and be easily digested in the sense of Armored Core, and without tainting those original qualities of what make Armored Core great. So, in this way, we believe we can offer that same underlying mech action goodness, as well as a more advanced game experience to both Armored Core fans and fans of our more recent [FromSoftware] titles.”
In talking with Producer Yasunori Ogura, he revealed that pre-production and conception of Armored Core VI began in 2017 and game prototyping began in 2018. At that time, it was just FromSoftware President (and Souls series creator) Hidetaka Miyazaki and a number of core team members on that initial development, who were scoping the basic concept as well as the game and map designs. The project was then handed over to Director Yamamura to take over the full game’s development.
“We’ve been cultivating a number of development staff both new and old throughout our experience with recent titles in recent years and there were many members of that staff, including Miyazaki and myself, who wanted to make a new Armored Core game for a long time, so it really wasn’t a question of if, it was always a question of when – and not making a new Armored Core game really wasn’t an option,” explains Ogura.
“It really wasn’t a question of if, it was always a question of when – and not making a new Armored Core game really wasn’t an option.”
“We’ve been using our development expertise to affect the timing to get the next AC right. We always have several projects going on at the same time within the company, and so there was a matter of getting the ideal balance of resource allocation and staff, which meant we kept players waiting longer than expected, but we’re happy to finally bring you a new Armored Core.”
Armored Core fans have indeed been patient — it has been nearly a decade since the last entry in the franchise, one that started nearly 25 years ago. Having been such a long time since the previous game, we asked Ogura if Armored Core VI could be considered a reboot of the series coupled with what’s expected in a FromSoftware title these days.
“I suppose you could consider it a reboot, in essence, but I just like to say that we try to incorporate our experience that we’ve gained across several game development projects over the years while simultaneously keeping the core aspects of what makes Armored Core great and combine those in a modern day FromSoftware game,” says Ogura.
That experience is being poured into the aforementioned Assembly System which will allow for a large variety of customization options for your Armored Core mech. Being able to construct and customize your own mech through a variety of arms, legs, heads, and weapons configurations is a defining characteristic of the series, allowing you to find a setup that not only suits your playstyle but one that helps you accomplish a task at hand in any given mission.
“I suppose you could consider it a reboot, in essence, but I just like to say that we try to incorporate our experience that we’ve gained across several game development projects over the years.”
“The main thing we focused on in AC6 was to make sure that this customization element is not just about the parameters going up and down and numerical values; we want to reflect these changes in customization in the way the game and action feel as much as possible,” explains Director Masaru Yamamura.
“For example, you obviously you have the head, core, arms, and leg parts of the AC. The leg parts in particular control the mech’s movement and so these will change the basic behavior of the AC depending what type they are. Like, tank-type legs will be able to perform drift turns. Weapons will differ in terms of how they fire, how much recoil they have, and how the projectiles behave. We’ve been conscious of how this all affects the game feel and the individuality of different builds.”
Armored Core VI takes place on the remote planet of Rubicon 3, many years after a cataclysmic event has left it, and the surrounding star system, engulfed in flames — thought to be the result of an energy source turning volatile, one that had originally helped advance humanity’s technological capabilities on the planet. Now this substance has reappeared many years later, and corporations and resistance groups are fighting over what they can find.
This is where you come in, as an independent mercenary who sells their skills as an Armored Core pilot without belonging to any specific company or faction. In this case, you’re not only an independent mercenary, but an augmented human who has been optimized solely for piloting a mech and now you have been thrust into this planetary conflict, taking on missions as they come.
Yamamura stressed to me that Armored Core VI will not be a game where every mission is supposed to be brutal and difficult. After all, part of the appeal of the Armored Core series has been found in a variety of mission types that can range from a mix of taking out many mechs that are vastly inferior to your own, or more strategic boss encounters.
“There are missions that focus on important boss fights at key points in the game. There are missions that focus on exterminating many smaller threats that are very exhilarating and very refreshing to play through, which are designed to give a nice change in tempo and pace,” explains Yamamura. “There are also the more large-scale cathartic battles with enormous threats and unmanned machines the player is tasked with destroying.”
Yamamura stressed to me that Armored Core VI will not be a game where every mission is supposed to be brutal and difficult.
In addition, there will be side objectives like data collection and wreckage scanning where you can uncover new information and parts, on top of the massive exploration aspects where you’ll be piloting your AC through vast, intricately crafted megastructures. Of course, you could also just fly around and take in the view of a decimated, post-apocalyptic world. That’s always fun.
The newest trailer for Armored Core VI shows many of these dynamic mechanics and mission types in action, and how different mech parts affect movement as well as some facets of world building. “The trailer also includes a preview of how we hope the actual gameplay will feel,” says Masaru Yamamura. “We hope that players will be able to watch the trailer and anticipate how these mechs will control and how it will feel to fly around the battle with these new Armored Cores.”
From what we’ve seen, it appears that Armored Core VI is looking to strike a great balance of accessibility, excitement, and rewarding difficulty that we’ve come to expect from this developer. Longtime fans who have been patiently waiting for a new AC game have only a few months to wait before they can drop onto the planet of Rubicon 3 and experience this for themselves, while new fans of the series can look forward to another high quality FromSoftware title.
“Thank you to everybody for waiting so long for this new AC,” Producer Yasunori Ogura says. “We’ve been anticipating it for a while as well and we’re just so happy to finally be able to release it to the world. We want this to be a game that the old fans can see and appreciate and to recall the best parts of Armored Core and what made them love this series in the first place.”
“We want this to be a game that the old fans can see and appreciate and to recall the best parts of Armored Core and what made them love this series in the first place.”
As someone who tends to prefer their mechs as slow, hulking beasts that can withstand a nuclear blast or two, seeing the swift and furious action of Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon‘s has me incredibly intrigued to experience this intense (and gorgeous looking) level of combat for myself. After everything I’ve learned recently, I not only feel like I’ll be able to handle this level of exhilarating mech combat, but I think I’ll be able to excel at it as well.
With everything from dynamic battles to deep mech customization and thrilling boss encounters, Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon is shaping up to be the mech combat game for everyone on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. August 25 can’t get here soon enough.
Pre-order now to receive the following bonus content:
MELANDER C3 G13 Special Customization “TENDERFOOT”
• MELANDER C3 parts set (Early Unlock)*
• Exclusive Emblem
• Exclusive AC Decal
* Early Unlock: The parts set can also be obtained by progressing through the game.
The Deluxe Edition includes:
• Full game
• Exclusive Digital Artbook & Original Soundtrack
Allows players to view concept art and listen to in-game music.
Combining FromSoftware’s longstanding expertise in mech games with their signature action gameplay, ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON brings a brand-new action experience to the series.
Dynamic, Omni-directional Battles
Players will pilot their mech in fast-paced, omni-directional battles, taking advantage of massive stages and their mech’s mobility on land and in the air to ensure victory.
Customized Parts for Individual Battle Styles
Customize Armored Core parts to suit a large variety of playstyles. Selecting different parts not only changes the mech’s attacks, but also directly affects its movement and battle style, so each mission can be approached with a unique mech strategy.
Thrilling Boss Battles
Deploy a wide variety of offensive and defensive tactics at close and long range to take down powerful enemy bosses.
Pre-order now to receive the following bonus content:
MELANDER C3 G13 Special Customization “TENDERFOOT”
• MELANDER C3 parts set (Early Unlock)*
• Exclusive Emblem
• Exclusive AC Decal
* Early Unlock: The parts set can also be obtained by progressing through the game.
Combining FromSoftware’s longstanding expertise in mech games with their signature action gameplay, ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON brings a brand-new action experience to the series.
Dynamic, Omni-directional Battles
Players will pilot their mech in fast-paced, omni-directional battles, taking advantage of massive stages and their mech’s mobility on land and in the air to ensure victory.
Customized Parts for Individual Battle Styles
Customize Armored Core parts to suit a large variety of playstyles. Selecting different parts not only changes the mech’s attacks, but also directly affects its movement and battle style, so each mission can be approached with a unique mech strategy.
Thrilling Boss Battles
Deploy a wide variety of offensive and defensive tactics at close and long range to take down powerful enemy bosses.
FromSoftware is one of the most beloved developers around, creating modern classics like Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring that have enchanted and engrossed players worldwide. But let’s go back in time–back to 1997, when FromSoftware released the cult hit Armored Core on the original PlayStation, and players were enthralled by its mix of intense mech fighting action and strategic customization. The series has been cherished in the eyes of fans since, garnering multiple spin-offs and sequels over the years. Now, 25 years after players first built their custom Cores and 10 years after the last entry, Armored Core returns August 25–and it’s packing plenty of heat.
We sat down with FromSoftware to get a first look at the gameplay of Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon and learn about the latest in mech action.
Engage in high-speed mech combat
Those whose primary experience with FromSoftware comes from games like Bloodborne or Elden Ring might be curious about what to expect from Armored Core VI.
You play an augmented mercenary piloting a huge, customizable mech. Yet while the pace and structure of mech-piloting action fundamentally differ from other games in the studio’s catalog, players can rest assured that the smooth, responsive controls they’ve come to expect in FromSoftware games is still here–just in a different context. Think giant, heavily equipped robots with the ability to zip around across ground and air, reacting at lightning-fast speeds to attacks and threats while trying to one-up dangerous foes with even more firepower at their disposal.
Rubicon, the ruined planet
Armored Core VI is a new story that takes place on the planet Rubicon, where a powerful energy source called “Coral” has been discovered. But this isn’t stuff that looks pretty in aquariums–Coral is extremely volatile, and it’s already caused a massive disaster that nearly turned all of Rubicon to ash many years prior. But those futuristic megacorps just can’t resist the siren song of Coral and continue to war for it to this day.
The various areas of Rubicon are filled with contrasts, as the hollowed-out industrial ruins from the aforementioned disaster smolder beneath a shiny shell of state-of-the-art mining constructs encasing the planet.
“It’s an intricate and multi-layered world, brimming with mega-structures and enormous underground facilities built by its former inhabitants. These structures cover a planetary surface wracked with extreme cold and contamination in the aftermath of the great disaster, and the player will be exploring these various environments as they proceed,” says game director Masaru Yamamura.
The expansive environments will deliver an incredible sense of scale, maintaining the quality we’ve come to expect from FromSoftware’s world-design maestros. And with your Armored Core’s (AC for short) advanced movement skills, you’ll be able to explore these large, open spaces to your heart’s content. You’ll be encountering lots of different scenery and objectives as you advance through the game’s mission-based progression structure (like previous entries).
“There will be missions where you’re fighting across sweeping battlefields–very combat-oriented,” Yamamura explains. “But you’ll sometimes be recovering data logs from wreckage and doing other side objectives too.”
Combat features
Assault Boost: One of the biggest new features in Armored Core VI is an instantaneous switch between long-range gunfighting and close-range melee, thanks to a button-activated movement skill called the Assault Boost.
“Assault Boost is an offensive action that helps close the gap between enemies and lets you quickly go from long distance to close range,” Yamamura tells us. It will also provide some incredible chain abilities when fighting, as he describes vividly: “Say you activate Assault Boost to make your approach while using machine gun fire and a missile salvo to stagger the enemy, then use your pulse blade to score a direct melee hit once you’re up close.”
Stagger: Another addition to the series’ combat is a “stagger” element: if an AC takes too many hits over a short period of time, its Attitude Control System will be overloaded, making it vulnerable for a short time. Both continuous hits and big, powerful strikes will cause stagger damage, encouraging you to keep up the pressure on the opponent. The damage inflicted to an enemy’s stagger gauge varies from weapon to weapon. It can also be affected by factors like distance, adding additional strategy in equipping and using these armaments in combat.
We asked Yamamura how the pace and feel of the game compares to previous entries.
“The average movement speed across the game is somewhere between Armored Core 3 and Armored Core 5,” he replies. “But Armored Core VI has been developed to bolster the changes of tempo and combat. With instantaneous bursts of speed and sudden changes of tempo, combat can often reach the dizzying heights of say, Armored Core 4.”
Fight challenging bosses
The series’ big boss encounters are back, and the metal monstrosities you’ll encounter look bigger and more intimidating than ever.
“There will be a rich variety of powerful enemies of all shapes and sizes,” says Yamamura. “Huge combat helicopters, heavily armored mobile turrets, and unmanned heavy demolition machinery that’s programmed to indiscriminately crush intruders. Armored Core VI will offer a number of explosive battle experiences that challenge players to fight against the odds and overcome these ginormous, more abnormal mechs.”
In addition to these larger bosses, you’ll even fight against other ACs and humanoid mechs in high-octane duels. And in grand FromSoftware tradition, it may take several attempts and some experimentation with your AC’s equipment to fully learn and adapt to a boss’s quirks. So better prepare yourself, as Armored Core VI will offer numerous cathartic explosive battles that’ll truly test your skills.
Build the perfect AC
Customization is a key part of the Armored Core experience. You have access to an assortment of parts to upgrade and fine-tune the power of your AC. Four slots for holding weaponry–one in each hand and two on the back–give you a lot of space to experiment with custom loadouts.
What kind of weapons are we talking about? Bazookas, gatling guns, split missiles, plasma rifles, and all the perennial favorites. There are a bunch of new close-range weapons, too.
“One aspect we focused on in Armored Core VI is melee weapons, exclusively equipped to the left hand,” Yamamura continues. “These can include a cluster bomb thrower, a chainsaw or pulse blade, lances, and other more idiosyncratic weapons. Since the main weapons are firearms, the melee weapons are more focused on that strength of individuality.”
Add in custom paint jobs and liveries and you’ll be able to create a unique AC that’s all yours.
The Arena is back
There’s more good news for longtime Armored Core fans. The Arena, a much-cherished mode where you can fight a series of battles against a wide array of specially customized mechs, makes its return in Armored Core VI as a “combat aptitude evaluation program” (simulated training exercise).
“There are a lot of different AC frames and a lot of colorful characters to fight in the Arena, so we hope the players confront them all and aim for the top rank. You can even encounter the real version of these opponents while out on missions. These are more formidable than their simulator counterparts, and will confront the protagonist with their own ideals and motives in the heat of battle.”
Perfecting your combat skills won’t be the only reason you’ll want to return to the frontline: there will be multiple endings to Armored Core VI’s narrative, with new paths opening up on subsequent playthroughs, giving players plenty of incentive to explore the world and story thoroughly. What will be the ultimate fate of Rubicon? That’s all up to you.
With the pedigree of FromSoftware and a long-running series behind it, Armored Core VI is going to be one to watch for fans of intense, challenging action games. Prepare for a mech action-packed end of summer when Armored Core VI launches for PS4 and PS5 on August 25.
In most 4X games, the achievements of your past civilizations only live on in animated discussions with friends over drinks later. Your Gandhi from a previous Civilization 6 campaign isn’t going to come through a portal to save the day in a later one, with the scars of a nuclear war against Alexander the Great still marking his slender frame. That would be rad though. And it’s a big part of why I’ve been coming back to Age of Wonders 4, as the rulers I led to victory actually do ascend to a mighty pantheon and become a recurring cast for future adventures. That’s only the icing on top of a well-crafted fantasy strategy game with varied tactical battles and a near-perfect pace.
Rather than telling the story of many alternate earths or distant galaxies, starting over on a fresh map is baked into the story of Age of Wonders 4, where powerful Sorcerer Kings teleport between many different realms in their quest for power and glory. And the way this encouraged me to think about a given run as a more digestible, if not exactly bite-sized, six- to twelve-hour sprint helps to build the sense of lasting investment in the progress of my pantheon. It’s a great way to do account-level progression that doesn’t feel forced, artificial, or over-monetized. At least in the review build, I didn’t spot any sneaky microtransactions. The tendency lately to add them right after launch has put just about everyone on notice for me, but so far so good.
Along the way, you can unlock neat new stuff from ruler cosmetics to functional combat items, to challenge maps like a frozen wonderland ruled over by a Chronicles of Narnia-esque ice queen that I really liked. And in addition to being very respectful of your time, these themed, story-based realms feel significantly different from just dropping into a standard 4X map with conquest, development, and research-based victory conditions – which you can also do, with tons of interesting customization options. Often, the victory condition in a story realm is to complete a series of quests culminating in a showdown with a memorable antagonist. I had such a good time with these, I almost found it hard to go back to the more traditional style of play.
The other thing that had me planning two or three campaigns every time I started a new one is the in-depth, freeform empire creation tools. It’s probably the most customization of this kind I’ve seen in a purely fantasy game, and I was especially excited by how it let me play against stereotypes. You can make noble orcs in shining armor who march dutifully to battle with holy words on their lips, or bloodthirsty cannibal elves who live for destruction.
Want to make a race of feline necromancers who ride around on giant spiders? Go for it.
The visual aspect is mostly just cosmetic – it comes with some suggested racial traits that fit the classic fantasy version of each race, but you can of course change those out. Lanky dwarves who live above ground and love magic? Sure. Feline necromancers who ride around on giant spiders? Go for it. Your culture pick – Barbarian, Feudal, Mystic, and so on – defines most of your starting roster and how your empire’s economy works. And there are only six of those. So if I were being harsh, I could say there are only really six playable civs with a lot of little bells and whistles to swap out. But the magical progression system that carries you through the ages does a lot to alleviate that feeling.
Rather than technological ages, Age of Wonders 4 has five tiers of mystical tomes unlocked through research, each providing increasingly powerful units, spells, and campaign mechanics. They’re divided into six alignments – Astral, Materium, Chaos, Order, Nature, and Shadow – with two tomes per alignment per tier that might be very thematically different. Within Chaos, for instance, you can focus on fire magic or revelrous, aggressive infantry like berserkers. Doubling down on one affinity or mixing and matching are both very viable, creating a practically absurd number of combinations for what your race might become by endgame. I especially love the racial transformations at certain tiers, which might turn your people into plant hybrids who can move much easier through forests, or frostlings who can build farms on snow. The cold never bothered them anyway.
This amount of customization doesn’t always come without some hitches, though. Remember that cool ice queen map I mentioned? I made a badass race of wolf-riding frost vikings to tackle it, but I found that its provinces were often affected by a modifier called Arctic Blizzards that isn’t visible in any way on the map, and it blocks your units from healing even if they’re parked in your capital city. You have to actually mouse over a unit to see if they have the modifier, meaning I was constantly marching my armies around in the snow to find a safe province where they wouldn’t freeze to death.
That’s a pretty big oversight for such a punishing mechanic. And even completing their final transformation into beings of pure ice didn’t remove the penalty! I found more strange edge cases like this the more tweaking I did with my campaign setups. Sure, you can play on a Dune-like desert world where everyone’s capital starts underground, then infest it with Cthulhu monsters, but you might find the mechanics haven’t really been fine-tuned for all the possible, weird combinations yet.
The tactical battles, which take place on their own maps, aren’t quite as exemplary as the strategic core of Age of Wonders 4, but they are just as fast-paced and can offer some seriously satisfying challenges. The bestiary is huge, with everything from ogres to astral monstrosities to demons spawning as neutral or hostile NPC factions, in addition to the forces of your rival civilizations. The one place it feels like kind of a letdown is when you’re assaulting a major enemy city. It doesn’t really feel like an epic struggle through the streets of a vast metropolis. At most, it’s a scuffle over the outer defenses protecting what looks more like a village. But I did love seeing some of the bigger engagements that are possible with multiple armies on each side.
I definitely have to applaud the graphics and UI as well. The balance Age of Wonders 4 strikes between realistic and stylized is just about perfect for me. Every unit, from a proud elven archer to a snarling wolf, is readable at a distance and projects a strong personality. The maps all look great, whether you’re starting in a serene meadow or on some alien-looking astral plane. There’s quite a bit of customization for your leader and units as well. And all the interface panes are well-organized, nice to look at, and easy to navigate. Nested tooltips make it easy to get just as much information as you want. And sometimes figure out what the hell the narrator is talking about when they bring up some lore concept from other games in the series you may not have played.
I don’t feel very strongly about Age Of Wonders 4. But I’ll be fair; it’s definitely good.
I’ve enjoyed most of my time with it, and the parts I didn’t were probably down to caning it too hard in too short a time. Such is that reviewz lyf. Played less intensely over a longer period, I imagine more of its intricacies becoming clear, and more custom playstyles emerging to encourage more replays and challenges. As it stands though, its generally high quality and interesting systems just haven’t captured my imagination.
It is not unimaginative, though. Some of its playable races are the usual elves and goblins, but most have a twist, like the cannibalistic dwarves, gold-obsessed necromancers, or the “cursed toadlings” I picked almost reflexively: a people transformed along with their warrior Queen Charming. Each comes with a starting hero and traits for their cities units, plus a set of spellbooks that determine what research you’ll have access to upfront.
“Why am I so slow”, complains my partner, minutes into being cajoled into playing Dota 2 for the very first time. “Ah, you’ll need to buy boots,” I say, with the hard earned wisdom of someone who’s spent over 4,000 hours clicking on wizards. “I have boots,” she says, somewhat indignantly. “Those are slippers,” I reply. “What?” she asks, somewhat more indignantly. “They don’t give you move speed,” I respond. I see a flicker of anger in her eyes, as well as maybe, just maybe, a spark of interest.
A new Dota patch came out last week, and it’s a biggun. Is it a good time for lapsed players to jump back in? Yes! Is it a good time for entirely new players to dip their toes in, while experienced players are still befuddled by a map that’s 40% bigger, featuring dual Roshan pits, new minibosses and a host of other changes? Perhaps! It’s certainly a good opportunity to test your relationship.
