Man, you got straight to the points. No bs, saying it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You deserve way more views than you currently have. Just keep going. I'm 100% sure it will become a big channel in no time if you keep up with this kind of quality content.
From what I've seen thus far the naval combat is what rubs me the wrong way the most thus far. Would rather have it play out like in HoMM III with two ships connected by planks, but I will likely just try to avoid naval battles like the plague.
Were it up to me, I'd just have them take place on islands like in Total War and just treat them as land battles. That's functionally what's happening anyway but with the weird ship jank.
Aow3 and Planetfall both had dedicated aquatic only units, with good animations and stronger than the embarked terrestrial ones, is this not the case anymore?
Good review, keep it up. I hate it when "reviews" are more like an overview of what the game is, instead of a subjective judgment of said systems. I'm curious though, how does one with 1k subs bag a review copy for such a big title? You wouldn't see this happen from a publisher like Square Enix or EA.
Well, my RUclips is still fairly young and I'm honestly still figuring it out, but I've run a review website since 2018 that gets more traffic than my channel and is verified on Open Critic. Most of the time when I review something I do a written and video version, I actually use my written version as my voice-over script for the video version. But you would be surprised, I was granted review copies from companies like Ubisoft when I was even smaller on both sides. Sheer numbers certainly matter, but so do quality and professionalism to some degree.
A fair & detailed review. A really nice feature brought over from AOW: Planetfall is the ability to "retry" tactical battles if you don't like the results from the Autocombat option - this was a high-risk option in AOW3. From what I've seen in streams when players retried battles they got a similar result showing the tactical AI is quite good (it fails in certain situations though). I agree the naval combat is weak* and hopefully will be improved as Triumph has a proven history of improvements in patches as well as DLCs. *Planetfall went down this track well but doesn't seem to have migrated into AOW4 like many other systems have.
I'm so used to the retry feature in Planetfall that it never crossed my mind to mention it here. I feel like they learned a lot with Planetfall and then put that knowledge to good use in Age of Wonders 4. I'm definitely interested in watching the game expand with updates and DLC.
jone point i heavily disagree. in terms of starting unit roster and early unit variety. you point out that AoW4 early game units can feel a bit sameay between cultures because they don't play so different between two spearman for example and cite planetfall as a good example of being different. in planetfall you basically had the same unit types too, if you compare for example the assembly sniper and the syndicate sniper, they play almost identically, only having one subtle difference. the age of wonder series does this every time because they have a certain rock paper scissor mechanic and it would completely break the balance otherwise. also you can't have 36 types of units (6 unique units per culture) because there is only so much types (categories) of units you can create also while not making it confusing. especially in AoW4 they more uniqueness of the units comes with the tomes and their enchantments and transformations. so the difference in units is vastly different depending on the tomes used.
I don't think I've ever played the original. I used to play the heck out of Shadow Magic back in the day though, then of course Planetfall. This one is definitely a culmination of aspects that made them all great with more modernized additions and quality-of-life changes.
I hope this is as good or better then 2. Two was so much fun and simple to learn hard to master. 3 was ok but the class limit your play style to much once you pick the class.
You won't find any such restrictions here. The 6 cultures could be loosely considered classes, but there are just so many aspects that go into a faction, both during creation and during gameplay that there are tons of playstyles.
3 is also not balanced :/ Sorcerer is the best, next is Dreadnought etc. Don't know why they thought it is a good idea to make some classes better than others... also I don't like halflings luck in 3, it adds pointless randomness to battles.
its nothing like 2, 2, (Shadow magic) had 15 factions with much more high tier units to build than the 6 cultures in AoW4, it has the best magic system with its well designed and balanced magic spheres, AoW4s magic system of tomes and affinities feel very disconnected, the game did go full paradox with this title and isn't completed after several DLCs spread through 1-2 years a lot of changes point to Stellaris, like the faction creation, and its a bad change, since there is a huge lack of units to make it diverse and add replay value.(unlike Stellaris with its DLCs) Btw, happy 20th AoW2: Shadow Magic Anniversary.(25.07.2003)
Great review. Let's hope those technical issues are ironed out - I somehow don't think it will be all solved in a single day-one patch, but we will see. Thanks for doing an XBOX review - I've been looking for this exact thing. Cheers!
I'm not reviewing it ( I need to finish the first one) but Jedi Survivor looks really really good. Age of Wonders is definitely more to my personal tastes though.
It's great to see some Xbox gameplay for once! The UI looks great and very readable, I'm glad to hear you had a good experience with it. I certainly hope that the late game performance issues are fixed Day 1 as promised.
I'm pretty confident about it. It's really not uncommon for review builds to have issues, it's something I encounter a lot. Developers really do work on technical issues right up until release day.
@@anteep4900 That's dramatic, modern strategy games generally control very well on console. Heck, I reviewed Planetfall on PlayStation, but ended up playing most of the expansions on PC and still opted for a controller quite often just so I could lean back in my chair. It's a non-issue these days.
Glad I wasn't the only one that thought the naval battles were horribly animated. I suggested they need something that looks more nautical like rappelling ships with deck fighting going on. Cannons or Potion Launching ships would have more of a visual appeal as well. They need to totally redo the naval units and animations.
Or even going the total war route of having them take place on island battle maps. Pretty much anything would be an improvement over how it currently is.
@@GideonsGaming Yeah. Perhaps in a DLC they will do a replace of the units and maybe add new abilities like a Tome to summon Kraken tentacles or Storm Effects.
Very nice, balanced review, Gideon. I have been enjoying your channel for a while and it deserves many more views. Based on the popularity of Age of Wonders, it looks like this review is getting tons of well deserved views. Hopefully that will translate into a lot more people being aware of your channel!
If you like Planetfall I definitely think you will enjoy AOW4. There are a few aspects I like better in Planetfall, but I'd have a hard time going back to it after playing this.
Knowing this is a triumph/paradox makes feel okay about naval combat as it is now, as they have a habit of planning expansions even before base game release so the expansion team will say “ we need you to have a naval combat system because we want make a pirate or Viking expansion” so the main team will okay we will get a naval combat system working.
I read your review for this game on your website and you did a great job on it! Did the developer issue the performance patch for the Xbox that you had mentioned in your review?
I really enjoyed AoW Plantfall. I love they they brought the progression system from that game into here. I was kinda sad when they stop putting out content for Planetfall, their expansions really opened that game up. I hope if they are able to get multiple years of new expansion then 3 DLC and quietly working on the next game.
For the most part, strategy games control really well on consoles these days. I'll play Civ, X-Com, and pretty much anything else on them without much of an issue. I think RTS games still struggle to some degree, but it's been a long time since I've tried one on a console.
Man, you got straight to the points. No bs, saying it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
You deserve way more views than you currently have. Just keep going. I'm 100% sure it will become a big channel in no time if you keep up with this kind of quality content.
Thanks so much! That's definitely the style of review I'm going for!
From what I've seen thus far the naval combat is what rubs me the wrong way the most thus far. Would rather have it play out like in HoMM III with two ships connected by planks, but I will likely just try to avoid naval battles like the plague.
Were it up to me, I'd just have them take place on islands like in Total War and just treat them as land battles. That's functionally what's happening anyway but with the weird ship jank.
Aow3 and Planetfall both had dedicated aquatic only units, with good animations and stronger than the embarked terrestrial ones, is this not the case anymore?
@@starvation2907 There is actually a couple of dedicated naval units. But it doesn't help how awkward the whole thing comes off.
Good review, keep it up. I hate it when "reviews" are more like an overview of what the game is, instead of a subjective judgment of said systems.
I'm curious though, how does one with 1k subs bag a review copy for such a big title? You wouldn't see this happen from a publisher like Square Enix or EA.
Well, my RUclips is still fairly young and I'm honestly still figuring it out, but I've run a review website since 2018 that gets more traffic than my channel and is verified on Open Critic. Most of the time when I review something I do a written and video version, I actually use my written version as my voice-over script for the video version.
But you would be surprised, I was granted review copies from companies like Ubisoft when I was even smaller on both sides. Sheer numbers certainly matter, but so do quality and professionalism to some degree.
@@GideonsGaming Thanks for the response. I hope it didnt sound too demeaning, I was genuinly curious as I might want to become a reviewer myself :)
Excellent review. Thank you! o7
Thanks so much!
Bruh. That naval combat. lol.
Definitely the game's weakest point.
A fair & detailed review. A really nice feature brought over from AOW: Planetfall is the ability to "retry" tactical battles if you don't like the results from the Autocombat option - this was a high-risk option in AOW3. From what I've seen in streams when players retried battles they got a similar result showing the tactical AI is quite good (it fails in certain situations though).
I agree the naval combat is weak* and hopefully will be improved as Triumph has a proven history of improvements in patches as well as DLCs. *Planetfall went down this track well but doesn't seem to have migrated into AOW4 like many other systems have.
I'm so used to the retry feature in Planetfall that it never crossed my mind to mention it here. I feel like they learned a lot with Planetfall and then put that knowledge to good use in Age of Wonders 4. I'm definitely interested in watching the game expand with updates and DLC.
jone point i heavily disagree. in terms of starting unit roster and early unit variety.
you point out that AoW4 early game units can feel a bit sameay between cultures because they don't play so different between two spearman for example and cite planetfall as a good example of being different.
in planetfall you basically had the same unit types too, if you compare for example the assembly sniper and the syndicate sniper, they play almost identically, only having one subtle difference.
the age of wonder series does this every time because they have a certain rock paper scissor mechanic and it would completely break the balance otherwise. also you can't have 36 types of units (6 unique units per culture) because there is only so much types (categories) of units you can create also while not making it confusing.
especially in AoW4 they more uniqueness of the units comes with the tomes and their enchantments and transformations.
so the difference in units is vastly different depending on the tomes used.
The original from 1999 is my favourite and most played game. Very much looking forwards to this.
I don't think I've ever played the original. I used to play the heck out of Shadow Magic back in the day though, then of course Planetfall. This one is definitely a culmination of aspects that made them all great with more modernized additions and quality-of-life changes.
I hope this is as good or better then 2. Two was so much fun and simple to learn hard to master. 3 was ok but the class limit your play style to much once you pick the class.
You won't find any such restrictions here. The 6 cultures could be loosely considered classes, but there are just so many aspects that go into a faction, both during creation and during gameplay that there are tons of playstyles.
3 is also not balanced :/ Sorcerer is the best, next is Dreadnought etc. Don't know why they thought it is a good idea to make some classes better than others... also I don't like halflings luck in 3, it adds pointless randomness to battles.
its nothing like 2, 2, (Shadow magic) had 15 factions with much more high tier units to build than the 6 cultures in AoW4, it has the best magic system with its well designed and balanced magic spheres, AoW4s magic system of tomes and affinities feel very disconnected, the game did go full paradox with this title and isn't completed after several DLCs spread through 1-2 years a lot of changes point to Stellaris, like the faction creation, and its a bad change, since there is a huge lack of units to make it diverse and add replay value.(unlike Stellaris with its DLCs)
Btw, happy 20th AoW2: Shadow Magic Anniversary.(25.07.2003)
Great review. Let's hope those technical issues are ironed out - I somehow don't think it will be all solved in a single day-one patch, but we will see. Thanks for doing an XBOX review - I've been looking for this exact thing. Cheers!
I doubt everything will be ironed out, but I'm hopeful that the worst of it will be fixed. Fingers crossed.
I’ve bought it and the game crashes a lot in the endgame
You have me interested in purchasing this over Jedi Survivor.
I'm not reviewing it ( I need to finish the first one) but Jedi Survivor looks really really good. Age of Wonders is definitely more to my personal tastes though.
I'll play this one but, I'm waiting for an eventual Planetfall 2. I like fantasy but, sci-fi is where I live.
The color scheme of PF was puketastic.
I actually really like Sci-fi too. Hopefully Planetfall was popular enough to see a sequel someday.
Is it better then Master of Magic remake ?
I haven't played Master of Magic unfortunately.
@@GideonsGaming
It looks similar to this 1, but you can choose a faction to start with instead of always being goblins. Age of wonders type start
It's great to see some Xbox gameplay for once! The UI looks great and very readable, I'm glad to hear you had a good experience with it. I certainly hope that the late game performance issues are fixed Day 1 as promised.
I'm pretty confident about it. It's really not uncommon for review builds to have issues, it's something I encounter a lot. Developers really do work on technical issues right up until release day.
yea but i wouldn't play it on Xbox, its like trying to play with one arm missing
@@anteep4900 I have played 4X games for literally hundreds of hours with a controller. I have zero problems with it.
@@anteep4900 That's dramatic, modern strategy games generally control very well on console. Heck, I reviewed Planetfall on PlayStation, but ended up playing most of the expansions on PC and still opted for a controller quite often just so I could lean back in my chair. It's a non-issue these days.
Glad I wasn't the only one that thought the naval battles were horribly animated. I suggested they need something that looks more nautical like rappelling ships with deck fighting going on. Cannons or Potion Launching ships would have more of a visual appeal as well. They need to totally redo the naval units and animations.
Or even going the total war route of having them take place on island battle maps. Pretty much anything would be an improvement over how it currently is.
@@GideonsGaming Yeah. Perhaps in a DLC they will do a replace of the units and maybe add new abilities like a Tome to summon Kraken tentacles or Storm Effects.
Very nice, balanced review, Gideon. I have been enjoying your channel for a while and it deserves many more views.
Based on the popularity of Age of Wonders, it looks like this review is getting tons of well deserved views. Hopefully that will translate into a lot more people being aware of your channel!
Thanks! ♥
I did like Planetfall so maybe down the road I will try it out.
If you like Planetfall I definitely think you will enjoy AOW4. There are a few aspects I like better in Planetfall, but I'd have a hard time going back to it after playing this.
Knowing this is a triumph/paradox makes feel okay about naval combat as it is now, as they have a habit of planning expansions even before base game release so the expansion team will say “ we need you to have a naval combat system because we want make a pirate or Viking expansion” so the main team will okay we will get a naval combat system working.
Yep, Paradox stuff always have a long tail. I'm sure we will see improvements over time.
Hope it comes to GeforceNow
I read your review for this game on your website and you did a great job on it!
Did the developer issue the performance patch for the Xbox that you had mentioned in your review?
They did. From what I played yesterday performance is much better and I didn't experience any crashing. A definite improvement.
@@GideonsGaming Thank you!!!! And please keep reviewing for us Xbox folks. It’s much appreciated.
I really enjoyed AoW Plantfall. I love they they brought the progression system from that game into here. I was kinda sad when they stop putting out content for Planetfall, their expansions really opened that game up. I hope if they are able to get multiple years of new expansion then 3 DLC and quietly working on the next game.
Best review on RUclips right now. Subbed. Wishlisted.
Thanks so much! ❤
It runs very well on the Playstation 5 btw
That's good to hear!
Watching someone play a strategy game on a console is just looks painful. Cudos for managing to do it.
For the most part, strategy games control really well on consoles these days. I'll play Civ, X-Com, and pretty much anything else on them without much of an issue. I think RTS games still struggle to some degree, but it's been a long time since I've tried one on a console.
Yeah strategies like AoW4 don't really look that hard to control as you have all the time you need to make the precise move.
Really amazing review. Thank you!
Informative ❤
Thanks, I try to be! ❤
THx for being from wat sofar see as honest