An immersive, customizable, and strategic 4X role-playing game | Full Review - Age of Wonders 4

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In Age of Wonders 4, players take on the role of a leader of an extremely customizable faction in the game and strive to conquer the land in various ways, participate in diplomacy, combat, research, and empire management gameplay to create a deeply immersive and strategic gameplay. Players will be able to customize their armies, heroes, and cities, as well as explore a vast and dynamic world filled with hidden treasures and powerful artifacts.

🟩Pros

+Extreme faction and map customization

+Immersive empire building and roleplaying mechanics

+Engaging diplomacy and tech trees

+Postgame progression system

+Controller Support, unheard of in strategy titles

🟥Cons

-Minor UI selection issues

With updated graphics and refined gameplay mechanics, Age of Wonders 4 promises to be a worthy successor to the critically acclaimed Age of Wonders III, offering players even more depth, complexity, and replay value than ever before.

Extreme faction and map customization

Age of Wonders 4 starts off with the faction and realm creator, both of which are highly immersive elements that further enhance the role-playing aspect of the game. While players can definitely choose from one of the many options, they can create their own based on their playstyle or role-playing needs, and the options given are abundant. It is a game in itself that completely surpassed my expectations and gave me plenty of options in shaping my desired faction to play with and realm to play in.

Players can freely customize their faction, starting from a selection of physical form; the looks, even the physique and army colors are customizable. Players can also choose between different culture types like being a barbarian or a feudal society, society traits to further personalize the race, a start “Tome” which is basically the magic tech tree to define your factions alignment, and finalize it with the faction Ruler customization.

The Ruler is even more customizable, and it functions like a RPG character creator where you can just about change any aspect of its physical appearance.

Not only that, but the realm you choose to play in is incredibly customizable. Again, premade realms are already built-in for players to choose, but you can definitely customize your own depending on your role-play needs and the challenge you're looking for.

A flat continental map filled with fertile land, a lush forest filled with mountains and ancient wonders, or maybe a lava-filled world populated by huge creatures. Not only the landscape, but also the traits of the realm can be finetuned: Make everyone immortal, fill the land with demons, or make random tiles warp from one form to another, among many other options. Realms are generally composed of a ground level map and an underground level as well to effectively double the playground.

Gameplay Analysis

As for the actual gameplay, players start off with a city, which they can build upon to expand to other surrounding land, which are grouped into provinces. As the population expands, so does the city. Along the way, they will meet other factions, and smaller factions called Free Cities, engaging diplomacy in various ways. The diplomacy is very well done; it's comprehensive with all the logical options you would expect from a diplomacy system and adds another layer of strategy and immersion of being a leader to the game.

You can engage in treaties, engage in friendly talks, or start a war; justified or unjustified. If you’re friendly or powerful enough, you also have the option of vassalizing the Free Cities, or integrating them into your empire. Although it will take more effort, even the other main factions can be approached in this manner.

There are various resources that are in play: Gold for general use, Knowledge for researching Tomes, Mana to cast spells, and Imperium for Empire related actions. Each city also has its own granular resources for individual development, food to expand the population, production for building, and draft for army recruitment. Even though there are various resources, every one of them is straightforward and easy to understand and there are no overly complex resource systems in place.

Deep and complex game mechanics

For the research, there are two main research trees. 'Tomes' that are dynamically changing choices, which affect your empire's affinity and spiritual alignment. 'Empire Development' which is also directly tied to affinities and gives instant bonuses once activated. They can be both done separately and concurrently, and have widely different mechanics of being utilized which adds a lot of depth to the overall progression.

Age of Wonders 4 offers a wide variety of units and structures, each with their own unique abilities and strengths. Each city will have their own unit line-up for players to build and it is predominantly determined by the race-type of the city. Heroes — starting with the faction Ruler — can lead cities and armies, and more can be recruited to your empire as you play.

These heroes are treated like an RPG character, with equipable weapons, leveling system, and skill tree progression. Players can also summon magical beings, recruit them from Free Cities, or even come across the opportunity to recruit them via random events and quests.

Roleplay to your heart’s content

There are random events and quests which constitute a big chunk of the role-playing aspect. With random encounters, events, giving players the option to approach it in various ways. These choices matter and will affect how your empire is shaped, both directly and indirectly. From simple rewards and resource benefits, to more affinity and faction-relation changing consequences. These well written events that the player encounters while exploring the world and building his/her empire add so much flavor to the gameplay.

Casting spells on the overworld map

Speaking of flavor, you can also cast spells not only in battle, but in the empire overworld. Allowing you to cast unlocked 'world spells' using Mana and reap the benefits. Some passive spells may improve the durability of all your units, enhance them in sieges, or just outright increase their damage output. Some spells are actively casted: spawning Ethereal Warriors, teleporting friendly units, or terraforming the land.

The combat is another game of its own

Battles between units can be approached in two different ways. It can be auto-resolved, or done manually. When in manual mode, the combat system is another separate game of its own, with a switch to a tactical layout of the hex tile they’re in, and these different units and heroes can use different abilities to defeat their enemies. Players will need to carefully consider the strengths and weaknesses of each unit, as well as the terrain, flanking, and other factors (such as being in a city siege), in order to come up with a winning strategy.

The combat system is highly engaging and rewards tactical thinking and careful planning, making battles another highlight of the gameplay experience, but an optional one, as larger battles can take considerably long. I highly commend the included 'watch replay' option to allow you to watch the battle at “full speed” without pauses, as well as the ability to watch the battles play out by itself even if you had just auto-resolved it.

The AI is highly formidable and challenging, while still being fair. In my experience, it didn’t find any issues playing with or against it. All aspects are well-built, in the diplomacy side, tactical combat, or even with their city management. In fact, you can even leverage this very AI and automate your own cities to automate production and expansion.

Winning is only the beginning

The winning conditions are defined by the player, either by military where you need to defeat all factions; expansion where you need to take over a huge portion of the map; magical prowess – which is basically researching enough tech and completing the objectives; or achieving the highest score when the game's predefined turn limit ends. Every condition caters to a certain playstyle and benefits players of all types.

After you win, the game is still not done, as Age of Wonders 4 offers a post-game skill tree that is designed to keep players invested in their overall time with the game with the ability to affect subsequent playthroughs one after the other. Offering players to unlock and discover new ways to play.

As a first time experience, the whole learning curve is very accessible. Even though Age of Wonders 4 is extremely complex and has many different layers to it, the tutorials are nicely done and enhance the whole initial starting experience instead of annoyingly interrupting the player. It also helps that the game is straightforward when it comes to the logic behind the resources, diplomacy, and warfare. Players also benefit from the super detailed in-game tooltips complete with hoverable words that can display an additional tooltip to explain that word, again and again, Talk about tool-tip-ception.

My only minor gripe comes from the selection of units, units on top of hex tiles and provinces can be hard to click sometimes. Speaking of game controls, while Age of Wonders 4 is optimally designed with keyboard and mouse (as with all strategy games), the game also properly supports controllers with the right UI elements baked in. Even the manner of how you select units and UI navigation are all integrated.

Conclusion:

Age of Wonders 4 is an excellent turn-based strategy game that offers extreme customization, deep gameplay mechanics, and an immersive fantasy role-playing experience. While the game's complexity may be intimidating to some players, those who invest the time to master its mechanics will be treated with a rewarding and captivating experience.