Age Of Wonders 2

Rating:
Summary: Good, but lacking
Review: After playing the original Age of Wonders (and becoming hopelessly addicted to it), I was ecstatic when AOW2 was released. I rushed right out and picked up a copy, hoping for great improvements to one of my now favorite games. Unfortunately that was not the case. While the graphics and audio are mildly improved, I felt gameplay took several steps back, at least in the single player campaign. The new units were nice and had a good variety between the different races. Unfortunately, the wizard/hero system that this game revolves around is terribly one dimensional - spell reasearch is your only real option, unlike the original where you had many different skills to choose from, so you could basicly make your leader/heros into whatever you envisioned them as being.
The single player campaign is fun to play through, the first time. After that it's gets pretty boring. Scenarios are fun, but I liked the campaigns of the first AOW, where you really had a choice in the direction the game went. You could start as good guy and end up on the side of evil, or vice versa. You be righteously good (as the Highmen), plain old good (as the Elves), run-of-the-mill bad (as the Dark Elves), or evil incarnate (as the Undead). This made for massive replayablity, which is lacking in AOW2 - You're Merlin and no matter what you do the game ends the same. The multi-player options are fine and might give more play options, if you like multi-player gaming (I don't, as I prefer to start a game and play at any time - not worrying about others schedules).
Overall, not a horrible game and fun for a while, just not up to the standards of the original.

Rating:
Summary: Good Turn Based Strategy Game
Review: Age of Wonders 2 is a turn based strategy game set in a fantasy world. The player plays an immortal wizard, and can control different races (Dwarves, Elves, Draconians, etc), each with its own special units. The player can learn specific spheres of magic (Air, Earth, Fire, etc). The main difference, in my opinion, between AoW2 and other turn based strategy games is that there is a story line. Basically, there are twenty episodes. Every three episodes are a part of a "Sphere" story, such as fire, air, water, and the character you develop continues in them. (If you learned X spells in episode one, you'll still know them in episode three). However, the story continues in all the episodes sequentially - episode four follows episode three. I'm not sure exactly how that makes sense (how can the player forget what he learned between episode three and four if the story continues?!), but that's how the game is. AoW2 is pretty much a "standard" turn based strategy game. However, the graphics and music are gorgeous. I've never played a strategy game with such richness and depth: all the units are animated, and are absolutely a joy to watch. Strangely enough, the tactical AI (I'm usually too lazy to actually do my own tactical combat, I like to use the 'Auto' feature and watch) is beyond terrible. I've seen times I attacked an enemy with ten of my units against seven and lost without killing a single enemy unit, and when I controlled the combat myself I won without any loss. This happens ALL the time. I've stopped using 'Auto' because of this feature. I wonder why AoW2 is so bad in this aspect.. never seen anything like it. Other than that, the game play feels pretty much like other games of the genre. The scenarios are somewhat repetitive, but it's such a refreshing idea to be "forced" into a situation, and the scenarios are different enough that you have to try different tactics.
Overall, I think AoW2 is really a great game. The AI could use a serious overhaul, but it's still a lot of fun.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting fantasy/strategy game with a poor interface
Review: Age of Wonders 2 is a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy world. You play a wizard set again a circle of other wizards, and must attack each one on their home turf. The formula is very familiar to games like Civilization or especially Heroes of Might and Magic. You explore the land and run into all sorts of NPCs, mini-quests, random monsters, and of course enemies. As you explore, you build or capture more towns in order to build more units and expand further. You build structures in each city, a la Civ, in order to access bigger and better units, or defenses, or city-bonuses. Heroes are "super-units" which you recruit and level-up RPG style. Your main character researches new spells and thus can summon new creatures, cast spells in combat, or area-effects on the main map. An underground cave network adds all sorts of way for your enemies to double back on you, and each map is littered with strategic locations for you to fight over. Individual battles are turn-based and take place on a tactical mini-map, giving you many tactical elements to exploit in an important battle. (again, more interesting here than in HOMM4) If you ever get bored you can always have the computer resolve a battle.

There are many different races, like orcs and halfings and dwarves and more exotic things, and the game tracks each races' feelings towards your character and adjusts accordingly. The graphics are amazingly rich and colorful, and perfectly capture that high-fantasy feeling of D&D or Lord of the Rings (and much better than Heroes of Might and Magic 4). Together this gives the impression of a large, breathing world with many people in conflict and friendship, and lots of good (or bad) work for your character to accomplish. Beware, though, you'll need 256megs to run the game effectively, and I have a strange flicking problem with my GeForce4, which is incredibly distracting. There is over 40 missions, half in a story-driven campaign, and half are individal scenarios. Each map is like a puzzle that you must figure out to beat it. The campaign is nice in that there are difficult side-missions if you want an extra challenge.

Still, I am finding myself getting bored too quickly with AoW2. Leveling your heroes is too simple, city-structures repeat too often, and differences between the races is more cosmetic than functional - we're talking more Age of Empires here than Starcraft. Most importantly, the interface is too cluttered, and there are hardly any keyboard hotkeys at all in the game! Being forced to drag the mouse over to each button 10,000 times in one game gets old fast. The interface doesn't offer some of the most basic options, such as restarting a level from the beginning. Perhaps you should check out Heroes of Might and Magic 4...

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing compared to the first AoW
Review: Age of Wonders I was certainly one of my all-time favorite games. Highly customizable hero with fantasy creatures under your control in a beautiful fantasy realms. It had high replay value and kept my interest for many months.

This sequel did not live up to my expectations. The leader customization revolved primarily around magic spheres, as compared to specific abilities, which was possibly the coolest feature in the original game. The magic sphere customization system was not reminiscent to the first game, and definitely not as fun.

This may be worth getting if you're just looking for another fantasy RPG/Strategy game, but if you're looking for a sequel, you will be very disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Turn-based Fantasy Fans: Be Advised! Check It Out!
Review: Age of Wonders is a turn-based strategy game that is very closely related to Disciples II or Heroes of Might and Magic IV; however with its own unique gameplay specifics. The previous reviewers, I think, have already described how the emphasis of this game is on wizards who, for the most part, reside in wizard towers and aid their subject heroes in battle by casting various spells ranging from simple healing to catastrophic fire blasts. For the most part, rival heroes lead small groups of soldiers throughout the Age of Wonders world searching for gold, mana, artifacts, and allies while battling hostile forces wherever they encounter them, eventually capturing their cities, resources, and killing the enemy wizard.

Generally, you play on a main world map in your troops move through colorful terrain seeking to capture mines, energy nodes, gold, and exploring ruins and caves. When you battle, you can choose to command your troops personally or have the computer automatically resolve combat. Combat is fought on a large tactical map in which you choose a target individually for any ranged units (e.g., archers, slingers, swashbucklers, etc.) and assign targets for your melee units. The battles are fought in sequential fashion (defender fires, attacker fires, repeat) and take into account magic spells, distance, height, protection, morale, etc. It is complex without being complicated.

I really enjoy Age of Wonders 2, and for the most part, would say that it is a relatively safe purchase for those players who like turn-based fantasy strategy games: it is not stunningly original but it is fun and almost a must for players of this genre and type.

I must beg to differ with some of the reviewers' comments about Age of Wonders:

1)You do NOT "need at least 256 RAM," to run AOW2. I use only 128 RAM on an 800 MHz Athlon and it runs well with no slowdowns of any sort.
2)The differences between races are not "more cosmetic than functional." There are real and important differences between the races that greatly affect the way a player commands them. Don't be misled by a superficial glance at the game manual and say, "Oh, each of the dozen races has 8 unique units, each of which has a counterpart in the other races." Not really true at all: no one has a counterpart to the Tigran's prowlers which are fast, pantherlike, and scale city walls like level ground. Only the humans have the swashbuckler who, being armed with pistol and sword, is tough on defense and offense. Each race has something that will change the way you play them. Elves are fast through forests and very good at concealment. Dwarves move through mountains easily and the Undead have large, cheap zombie armies capable of regenerating if not quickly beaten. Saying that the units are generic "Age of Empires" type units, I think, is completely inaccurate.
3)It is not true that the "interface is awkward and you must click 10,000 times" to do anything. No. No. No. It is simple to click once to find the next active unit, simple to learn how to detach a unit from a battlegroup, simple to access your stats. As for not having a "restart a level from the beginning button," I have to roll my eyes; all you need do is quickly load the original scenario.

So, am I simply an uncritical admirer of AOW2? No, there are things that I wish were included or different in the game:

1)I like random map generators but AOW2 doesn't have one. It's so much fun to just be able to quickly generate a map and play without concern about winning or losing since you can always create a new, unknown map. Still, there are about 20 huge maps in the campaign and over 20 individual scenarios, as well as player-designed and Triumph Studio designed scenarios to download, so I don't think I'll run out of maps anytime soon - if ever.
2)The story line (or plot, if you will) is not particularly compelling. Your task is to master each of the spheres of magic and once you master, for example, the fire sphere, you move on to the next and DON'T TAKE your heroes or new abilities with you.

Overall: A polished game, with interesting battles, spells, races, and a complex, but not complicated gameplay. I enjoy it and I'll be playing it for months!

Gameplay: Simple to learn, similar to HOMMIV or Disciples 2, very low learning curve and a simple interface. Tactical combats are turn-based and allow for thoughtful, contemplative decision-making. Should you concentrate your crossbowmen's fire on the manticore or take out the more vulnerable Tigran shredders? Is a powerful (but mana expensive) fire spell needed or only a less deadly but cheaper energy bolt? There's time to choose whether to fight or flee, to charge or move into better position.

Graphics: A matter of personal taste (of course) but I like them: they're colorful without being too busy or crowded, units are acceptably different and easily distinguishable (although don't zoom in!) and I think they fit well with the fantasy world of Age of Wonders.

Sound: Acceptable, even enjoyable. I don't mind the background music, in fact, I enjoy it for the most part. However, what's really cool is that I get easily use my "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings" soundtrack mp3s in place of the background music. I like the sound effects of combat, movement, and other events, but they're mostly of secondary importance.

I strongly recommend that you download the demo and find out for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, but flawed
Review: Building on the original Age of Wonders, it's an enjoyable fantasy strategy game.
Unfortunately, it suffers from graphical glitches with some graphics cards, mine included (GeForce 4 Ti4400, 30.82 drivers); the only remedy is to turn off DirectX acceleration, which costs a moderate amount of performance and eye candy.
Given that this glitch is still present after the 1.20 patch ... not so impressive.

Rating:
Summary: Great game.
Review: Great strategy games. One of the greastest strategy games ever made. You can choose between classic game play style where 1 person takes a turn at a time or RTS style where its all at once.
Other similar games: Populous, The Settlers Games, The Empire Earth Games, Civilization, Warzone2100, The Nations, and about every other strategy-empire building game out there that there is. I would definitely recommend it to everyone who owns a computer.

Rating:
Summary: Age of Wonders Beta Demo
Review: I am a big fan of Age of Wonders, so it's no surprise that I immediately grabbed the AoW2 Demo as soon as it came out. The game has better balance than the original, but seems to lack in the character customization area. Eye candy is way up and the game still has an AoW1 feel to it.

--BORING TECHNICAL POINTS:
1) Customization: In AoW1, you could assign specific ability upgrades to your heroes every time they leveled up. In the demo, you get to choose between three general areas of customization when your character levels up. This is disappointing because the freedom of hero customization was one of the key features of AoW1 that made it my favorite Strategy RPG. When you take away character customization, you move from "more RPG" to "more Strategy". It's a matter of preference I guess.
I suppose with all of the new abilities it would have been impractical to learn to upgrade your characters for new players, but old vets like me will spend hours looking through ability lists (gladly).

2) Balance: In AoW1, you could just customize your character with 10 defense and he could take on armies himself. In this game, you can't do that. That might change in the release version when you can customize initial characters.

--VERDICT
Overall, I loved it! I hope they improve customization features in the release version. I will definitely buy it.

Rating:
Summary: VERY buggy
Review: I am an avid fan of Turn-based strategy games. I also adored the original AOW. Naturally, I rushed to buy AOW2. Sad to say, it was a mistake. The game locks up, is very quirky on map transitions and the technical support from the website seems to consist of the phrase "Have you tried reinstalling?" Lest someone think I am playing on some esoteric, exotic machine, I am not. It is a 3 month old Dell Dimension that plays almost all of my games flawlessly and didn;t even quiver over Neverwinter Nights, which I am told is near miraculous... Anyway, I cannot recommend this game simply for the bugs, technical glitches, lock-ups and total invisibility of tech support.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, Can't play it.
Review: I immediately bought this upon it's release mainly due to a review on pcgamer.
What I was looking for was, of course, a updated master of magic; everything I had read was indicating that while not exactly the direct heir of MOM, it was close enough to be enjoyable.
So I bought it, installed it, checked it out...then uninstalled it.
The Random Map Generator which had been heavily praised on the pre-release version wasn't there; just standard scenarios. Gameplay-wise, If I wanted to play the standard scenarios, I would probably just whip out the AOW1 CD and play that. Sure the gameply is a little better, the graphics are a little cooler, but without the Random Map Generator, this is just a upgrade to AOW1, not the game at all I was lead to believe it was.
So, I check back to the AOW2 website occasionally, and look for the RMG....and as soon as it's available to download, I'll play the game; If they try to SELL it as a expansion, I'll probably sue them.
If you haven't played Turn based strategy before, ever, it's worth your time, I'm sure...But it's not the game they advertised it to be.