Yeah, OG Arkantos really worked because he's a somewhat jaded man in his 40s, and he sounded the part with that "done with this" snark at being sent on a missing he felt was below his pay grade.
Also, one of the best things about them is their focus on real history or mithology in this case, even if not perfectly accurate. I have learned more about those topics playing the campaigns than in regular lessons, which I love.
@@fennisdembo34 Civilization does a great Job, but with an overall history focus. Not as specefic as in AoE, where you more look at specific scenarios or campaigns happend in the real world. Especially in AoE2 it is more like a rough version of the real stuff. But for me as a kid it was enough to drag me into the stories, which could be real, and raise my interest. (Not like in AoE3)
4:20 It has to be a warm feeling, for you to get called to reprise your role as a voice actor, because the community felt that it wasn't the same without it.
As a (mid skill) player: - opponent can't check out your profile and counter pick - I don't get nervous when I see the opponent being higher rank As a stream enjoyer (of pro players): - less queue dodging
I feel like they have done an amazing job with this remaster, changing enough to make it feel fresh and new, while retaining enough to keep that nostalgic vibe. Also have been impressed by the human vs ai community that is forming. Very friendly and helpful for newbies to learn, and the new ai is great for all levels!
Hey Spirit, on the topic of the AI art, some of the particular accusations were about the fact that Osiris had an extra finger, some of the abs on the Greek Gods being rather weird-looking, especially from the side, and perspective wonkiness especially with columns.
I get what what you're saying some parts of the old artwork looked weird, but weird looking drawings have been around way before AI (look up "Rob Liefeld can't draw feet" or his infamous Captain America with muscles on muscles and weird perspective). Maybe I don't have an eye for AI, but I'm a little more hesitant to automatically peg everything a little "off" as AI art considering it's possibly a career-ending accusation in today's climate.
Calling it accusations whens it's not a crime is wild to me. Y'all wanted AI, there you have it. Computers replace jobs, that's nothing new, now it gets rid of many artists. Sucks but it's reality. Better get used to it. I wish it wouldn't happen, but considering the world is completely fucked up by American culture and American culture only values money, there will be no saving artists.
About the art and voices. I want to believe that those were placeholders for the betas, and they were already working on the release versions, if not, it's an incredible job. And about the AI allegations, they posted a timelapse of the Freya portrait to show these new ones are 100% human made.
@@benlewis4241 Yeah the 2 obvious ones to look at are: Leto (6:20) the fingers on each hand end up connecting and Osiris (6:45) he has 6 fingers + thumb on his right hand
I don't think the beta art is artificial. I kind of think they were trying to mimic the "cheap fantasy" style that you saw back then. Having played the OG AOM and stuff like Magic: The Gathering back then, this was the sort of "bad art" we had.
@@esb422 How do you explain the multiple extra fingers and the misaligned backgrounds then? The backgrounds are particularly damming as any human artist would draw them as a separate layer
@@tomppeli. I love the original and was very worried about the Remaster, but personally, I'm enjoying the new Arkantos, the new voiceover gives me a Legends of the Galactic Heroes feeling that I think suits him.
@@cheesypotatoes5075and the best! It is unimaginable how much of an impact these voice actors had on us that we simply refuse to play without having their original voices 😂 But it is to be expected, after playing AOM on and off for 20 years we cant accept anything else,they i would watch the campaign cutscenes on youtube for fun , because it felt like a movie, thats how good the cutscenes and the voice acting was!!!
Holy crap, props to the team for redoing the god art! And bringing back OG arkantos voice actor! I genuinely am surprised they did that, but perhaps my standards are just too low these days. All the same, credit where it's due: they did a good job responding to the biggest pain points in such a short time. (Really, the updated god art is much, much better imo; I think one of the issues I had with the previous iteration was inconsistent levels of detail, or something. Sometimes it just felt like there was way, way too much detail (esp realistic detail), like in the case of that cat head lol. Things feel much more consistent now, just at first glance anyway, stylistically as well.)
The new God portraits are a major improvement from the beta, but one small thing is still bothering me: Athena's owl in both her new portraits is a great horned owl, a species native to the AMERICAS. There are dozens of different owl species native to Europe and Greece, and they decide to pick a species that doesn't even live on the same CONTINENT? In reality Athena's owl should be a little owl (the species which is literally called Athena's / Minerva's owl in many languages AND has Athene in it's Genus). Impossible to get wrong if you just Google "Athena owl" and check the first results. Other than that I've really been enjoying Retold. The new voices were very distracting, but thankfully there are already mods that change back the original voice lines. I just hope they don't start pumping too many paid DLC packs like Freyr that end up becoming must buys in order to compete in the meta.
I understand, but not that much of a problem and even logical from a certain point of view. We talk about gods, they create mythical creatures. If Athena wants an owl from far away I doubt it would be a problem to take it or even create something close.
@@MrMorvana Yeah I get that, but the Owl of Athena is very important to the culture and mythology of Greece / Rome and obviously to the mythos of the God herself. It even has it's own Wikipedia article. I think it's a big missed opportunity to just change the species for seemingly no reason.
On the bright side they at least gave Odin Gungnir proper, and a few other portraits also seem to match things a little better. Athena is also a bit odd for not having her classic shield, the aegis.
Have you seen her helmet? Her famous, uh, Roman helmet? That is similar to how they draw her in California (though even the Californian seal doesn't have the red brush). Maybe this is not Pallas Athena, but her cousin -- Pallas Angela. (Compare 'Los Angeles'.)
The artwork changes were impressive, new ones are way better. As a single player/coop RTS player, AoM and Company of Heroes 1 were the best RTS around for a long time.
I still don't agree with some of the new campaign voiceover choices. I don't understand why it's even necessary at all. But I applaud the devs for listening to the feedback and changing what they could, for the better. It's still disappointing, but at least it was clearly not done by malice or ignorance. By far the easiest way to please everyone would be, imo, a toggle in the options between the old and new version for cutscene voices. It's not like we have to save disk space these days, we can handle 1GB of additional audio with the old voices.
i'd assume the reason for it is like. Legal rights and what not? but i am not an expert in voice over laws and such. it might just have been part of remastering the game for the devs.
I mea, a major thing is some of the factions got their gameplay overhauled, so those at the very least needed re-recorded. There's some higher standards of pronunciation nowadays, so that would have pushed them towards re-recording. And they probably want to reuse the characters from the base campaign in future campaigns, and in that case they HAVE to recast characters, so better to rip off the bandage now. That said, on the whole, I do think the original voices for the campaign is better. Mostly Gargarensis and a few old men characters. Just much more interesting voice qualities in the classic game than in the remake. Regardless, it's pretty minor overall since you can just mod in the original voices from the in game mod menu in like 2 minutes.
6:25 Here you can definitely tell this one is at least AI assisted because Osiris has an extra knuckle. What this means is not necessarily that the devs were trying to fool people with AI, but most likely that whoever they commissioned to do some of the portraits (and based off of style it seems to be at least 3 separate artists), at least one of those artists was using AI as an assistant or worse. Based off of the new portraits, it seems like they've settled on one artist to keep the style consistent--or hired a few artists that can mimic this style, because they all seem to be the same sort of aesthetic.
The new ones may just as well be AI assisted or generated too (not saying they are), since that sort of clean-looking, past decade concept artist style is one that most models are particularly profficient at. Buuut, at least it doesn't all look weird, so most people can let it slide.
@@Elvalley yeah it has enough plausible deniability that the only reason why I think it's AI it's because I no longer trust Microsoft to actually source human art and pay human artists well, but it could go either way.
@@Elvalley They remade all the arts within one month? Considering how long (and how many revisions) and art piece like this normally takes, I feel even more strongly that they used AI. Unless they had a large team of at least 10 artists work on the new art, but I'll only believe that if we get the names of the artists (which I can't find online).
@@peperoni_pepino Not necessarily one month. The AI accusations started all the way back in April when they first revealed the Bastet god portrait because her face just looked too much like a regular cat. There were so many complaints that the AoM twitter even tweeted that all the portraits were all hand-painted after the complaints started piling up, and that tweet got deleted very recently. The complaints only skyrocketed when the beta came out with all the portraits.
I heard a lot of noise about how the voice acting was bad, but I bought it anyway and jumped right in and while playing the campaign I thought to myself "this is exactly as I remember... no idea what they were complaining about" Now, after watching this video I know that they changed that. Good call on the team. Also, the option for auto-queue military units is better than simply removing autoqueue or force implement. There are some things that they need to change. 1) The main one is that it's hard to deselect units, for example, you select 10 hoplites (spearman) and 10 toxotes (archers). You wanna micro toxotes by double clicking them, but it still keeps your hoplite selected, so you have to deselect everything to micro your units everytime. Same goes for heroes, siege, etc... I find myself constantly trying to micro and making things worse because I keep sending unwanted units to fight the wrong targets. 2) Another thing is the camera movement. I tried a lot of configurations, but it's still either too fast or too slow. It also has some acceleration, and it feels horrible to adjust, but maybe that's on me. 3) I think we dont have the right click or rally point on minimap, like, I cant rally point a building somewhere using the minimap, so I have to select the building, move my mouse around the map and select a rally point or right click
AI on water maps completely fails. e.g. on Vinlandsaga or Team-Migration the AI just does not migrate over to the main island. This is something they need to fix, as it feels like the AI just does not understand how certain maps function. Similar thing goes for the campaign: sometimes the AI just does small stupid things -> like parts of attack waves hitting at tifferent times (Phoenixes arriving before the main attack and beeing picked off easily). But that's just a minor thing, and should be fixable quite easily, hopefully.
That's not a bug that's a feature from the original and EX 😆 All of the original AoE titles, AoM and even the GENIE engine spinoff Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds always had terrible naval AI, its just always been this way lol.
@@Drakon0Blade well, in OG AoM and AoM-Extended I both could play Vinlandsaga against an AI that migrated to the main island and put up a fight... REtolad (as of now) is not capabale of doing that...
It's been SO much fun. Something I wasn't expecting to like so much are the maps. They feel pretty balanced and are always so much fun to explore when its your first time playing it. 10/10 game for me ESPECIALLY for $30.00
Me likes game very much. One thing feels bad is enemy myth units in some campaign missions being mega buffed by enemy having decorative wonders. Feels oversight.
May be. But I think its made up by the AI not seeming to take advantage of god powers being recastable (while me, well lets just say i decided just one plenty vault wasnt enough on the map when you have no gold in your base)
IMO this is up there with the Resident Evil 2 remake in terms of properly remaking a game. It still looks and has the feel of the original with a fresh coat of paint and lots of new toys, I love it
It's also just not very good. A lot of the god powers and myth units are effectively just reskins of existing ones, and the coding is so bad that even the "Learn to Play" video would softlock.
@@gregoryhayes7569 Even the Main Charakter is a nerfed reskinned Arkantos. Some of the powers didn't even Work. Like the Golden Lion. The amphibian creatures not only where able to walk on Land and water they can climb over Mountains. I lost a campain because they just ran around my defences.
Sign of the times, alas. It's been like this with all of the new AoE titles, afaik. People suspect it's to get around Chinese censorship rules wrt skeletons. Also would explain why minions have been changed from skeletons into zombies.
@@rioplats It's just a big shame, I loved seeing the battlefield littered with bodies. Especially in AoM as the myth units left distinct skeletons, creating a grounded, realistic feeling in the otherwise mythical world. A sense of "Even these things can bleed and rot away". I'd like to see transparency from devs regarding this rather than having to do this sort of guessing game.
There was def some AI weirdness going on, extra knuckles on the hands, abs on abs, weird poses, odd limb length, non-sensical backgrounds (pillars, stairs). Some beta portraits were ok (a select few even better imo like Oranos), but most of the new ones are way better and don't have AI weirdness going on.
1:44 Tiny is not a new map, but a custom scenario made by the community and quite popular for over a decade. Similar to Blizzard when declaring ownership on Warcraft's Dota map, Microsoft decided to capitalize Tiny as one of their official maps. 😷
Ok, this review seals the deal. It happens rarely that a buy a game for full price nowadays, but these developers really deserve it for the work they've put in. Also, this game is one of my all time favorites.
Biggest problem right now is the inability to use any mods (even purely-visual mods) in ranked. So no putting the resources in the bottom left even if you want to.
6:20 Osiris literally have 6 fingers on his one hand haha. The reason why it looks like AI artwork is because AI uses very specific shading and color choices as well as stitches images together to make sense of things. Old Zeus' head doesn't match the lighting or look of his body. It could be potentially AI generated images that were then edited to look cleaner and make more sense.
Obvious not every old VA could return Ajax's VA passed away after the titans Also there is new dialogue from time to time wit in the campaign especially with the cinematics that give you a summary of what the Egypt, Norse and Atlantean civs do and given how much they're been changed compared to the OG it makes sense While I'm still not a fan of some of the new voices I do however understand why their isn't a switch in the setting to change back to the old voice it's not a simple fix
think that most of the voices had issues due to lack of direction rather than the VA's being bad. You can tell how much the delivery changed with the arkantos scene alone
It's a simple fix, lol. They're just .mp3 and .wav files. If they exist in the directory they overwrite the default audio files in the .bar archive. That's how the current mods work. In fact, it's exactly like how they implemented the Legacy portraits - it's just switching to a different .bar archive. They could easily do the same here for the campaign. Only slight issue is some of the mechanics have changed so the tutorial lines don't work exactly the same, such as how Atlanteans gain favour.
This is a brilliant review, I love the summary of what you'v done here Spirit of the Law. You're one of the main reasons I still keep up to date with AOE content. I can't wait for the mods and single player campaigns/DLCs that will come with it.
Great review! I feel like the community can see game companies these days as soulless greedy corporations. While sometimes this is true, a lot of good humans are going to work every day to make a good game, and I am blown away by the time and money they spent to make some of these last minute changes. 8:22 Respectfully, I would strongly disagree that it is "understandable" for people to negatively review a game based on beta and not full release. We should aspire to be better, and could stand to put a few hours into the full release before reviewing it. To me, this game looks amazing! Can't believe how good of a job they did with this remake.
some of the beta artwork was DEFINITELY AI, as some mistakes (like Osiris having one knuckle too many, Anubis having his sword clipping inside his ear or Apollo apparently forgetting how to use a bow as the arrow is resting on neither the bowstring nor his hand on the opposite side) are stuff a human artist would never have done. And besides these obvious ones, there was thing like Bastet looking like her head was a housecat head photoshopped on a human body and musculature on Zeus being off (serously, he lookes like he had a 20-pack). Overall, my opinion was this was DEFINITELY AI art to at least some degree, though my biggest gripe with it (besides the big mistakes being all I see as soon as I notice them) is that they then denied any AI was used when there was clear evidence of it.
To be fair, human artists also consistently mess up how bows and archery work too. Hands doing crazy stuff, the arrow being in a whack position, the bow not even being bent while it's drawn, etc. It's actually kinda rare to see it done properly haha the AI is trained off of artists who also don't have experience
Most likely the portraits were outsourced to freelancers or something, so if some of the artists used AI tools to cut corners, they may have just been unaware of that. Or the AI ones were always intended to be placeholders during the beta until final art was completed.
@@JD-qq8fz Wrt the bow, the fact that the bowstring and the arrow end/nock didn't match to the same finger is pretty much the smoking gun, as far as I'm concerned. No one who deigns to draw a bow, much less render it out fully, would do that. Amateurs may make mistakes with musculature or anatomy, bad angles or forgetting to bend the bow instead of the string, but this is a basic logical failure that's not been reconciled from concept to sketch to lineart to rendering. For that to happen with a professional commission is unthinkable, imo. It's what you get when an algorithm is mimicking the general impression without understanding the specifics.
@@rioplats Yeah, right? Telling an AI to make something that people already mess up is just asking for it haha it's just going to compound the errors and make it even more obvious
I normally agree with Spirit's insights and takes, but here I'm left wondering if we're even looking at the same images. Some of these are so obviously AI'd, Bast looking like every single AI cat gen on your grandma's facebook page, or Osiris' six fingers.
I played a skirmish mode with my son on Saturday against a few AIs. We had this game “back in the day” when he was just a little kid. I followed Isis, and he did Freyr. I was impressed. I thought it was a ton of fun. Looking forward to revisiting all of this. My AoE rankings: 1-AoE II 2-Age of Mythology 3-Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (100% needs a reboot) 4-AoE III 5-AoE IV 6-AoE
Kinda wild that they managed to redo all of the art AND re-record one of the principal character's voicelines with a new VA in a month. That's putting in work.
Whilst I find the re-done voice lines better than the beta, I still find the originals to be the best. They have emotion behind them, where as the new ones feel like they're just accented.
What I'm hoping for most is fourth major Gods and more civs. Greece: Demeter Egypt: Hathor (since Sobek replaced her) Norse: Freyer (I know its coming) Atlantean: Iapetus And Japanese (Ameterasu, Zukuyomi, and Susanno), Mayan (Kukulkhan, Chaac, and Ix Chel), and Yaruban (Olorun, Yamoja, and Anansi) civs. I think it would also be dope to add a Hebrew "pantheon": Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel as major "gods" with Phanuel, Raphael, Raguel, Jeremiel, Saraqiel, Raziel, Hezekiel, Barakiel, and Lady Wisdom as minor gods. Hebrew civ would only be able to build one temple. It would be stronger with more hit points than other temples. They would gain favor by sacrificing clean heard animals (cows and goats) and unclean animals would deplete favor (pigs). The Hebrews would have an animal husbandry building to breed more herd animals (garrison at least two of the same kind onto the building). Hebrew civ would have the same myth units for every age regardless of major god and minor gods. •archaic: Malakim, stance switch units. Grounded: melee but retains the myth advantages against mortal units and have resistance to hero damage. Flying: ranged retains myth advantages over mortal units but hit for extra damage against heroes. •classic: Ophanim, flying invisivle large range-of-sight scouts. Cannot attack •Heroic: Seraphim (six-winged flying snakes). Fast flying ranged units with a slow-rate fire-beam attack; devistaing to buildings and units) •Mythic: Cherubim. Four-faced, four-winged, satyr-giants. Slow moving crushing melee damage. Each one's line-of-sight functions the same as Isis's monuments by preventing the cast of god powers. Heroes would be OP AF but you would only be able to have one at a time. You'd get the same list regardless of Major and minor god choises and each one would have different functions. •Enoch: stand in one place and slowly increases line-of-sight until the whole map is exposed. Doubly effective against Atlantean myth units. •Noah: same function as Poseidon's god power; wild animals gravitate toward him (no combat function) •Jacob: increase max pop by 12, and boost animal husbandry building. No combat function •Moses: convert enemy mortal and myth units (cannot convert heroes). Has a timed special ability that triggers a random god power on small scale. Doubly effective against Egyptian myth units. •David: extra resistant to mortal units. Can switch between range and melee. Doubly effective against Norse myth units (cuz they have all the giants) •Joseph (technicolor dream coat). Funstions like a Pharaoh and can boost resource production (no combat function) •Samson: an extra durable, extra strong brawler with a bash/throw ability. Extra weak to mortal units •Gideon: Arkantos shout power empowering mortal units •Deborah: functions like a Pharoah and can boost military production. No combat function. •Solomon: functions like a pharaoh and can boost technology research. •Elijah: provides extra defense, especially against heroes, to all allied myth units in line-of-sight •Daniel: provides extra damage, especially against mortal units, to all allied myth units in line-of-sight. •Maccabeus: hero unit with bonus damage and resistance to mortal units. Doubly effective against Greek myth units. Overall weak mortal units, crappy cavalry (only doney riding melee units), worthless navy, and more dependant on myth units and hero unit than other civs. Lemmie onow what you think
There's some interesting questions in AoM: Retold that would make great content for future SotL videos. For example, does trading with an ally still generate more gold than trading with yourself? It used to, but now it does not say that in the game tooltips, and there's game-design reasons to suspect they changed it so that trading with yourself is just as profitable as with an ally (since AoM doesn't have gold-less trash units, so perhaps they want to give players a decent late game gold source even in 1v1, to avoid awkward stalemates where nobody can produce anything) Another example: which things affect Titans? Does everything that affect myth units affect them as well? There's Sekhmet's tech that gives Myth Units lifesteal that looks good on paper for Titans...
I loved the original AOM from 2002, and even bought the HD version a few years back with widescreen support and some remastering, but this new one is amazing and takes it to a new level.
When i played the game back in the 2000's the campaing was the most amazing thing because it was completely dubed in my language (Brazilian Portuguese) and, at the time, a game in your own language and not english was something out of this world and really changed my experience because i didn't knew english as a kid. In retold, they also made a Brazilian Portuguese voice over, but it is sooooo bad. I restarted the Campaing in the english version because i don't want to ruin my childhood memory with the retold version . The game is amazing. It is completely new at the same time that it holds to its 2000's roots. Can't wait to see more of the future DLCs
6:16: "I never bought the idea that these were AI" Meanwhile Mr Six-Knuckles at 6:26 and the archer who doesn't know how to pull a bow string at 6:31. Honestly there's a million tells in the artworks that they were created using AI and possibly retouched ever-so-slightly to get rid of the most obvious and egregious misses. From details that don't make any sense at all to the way the AI draws animal heads that clash hard with the style of the rest of the piece, it's just flat-out beyond any doubt. And if the turnaround time for the new art was fast as well then that still raises suspicion since it's possible they just used a different (and better) model to create the new ones.
@@Yeldibus the difference is big, but I'd still be concerned about whether they used AI to make the new stuff since they already used it before. It'll take artists uploading pictures of the art process to dispel the doubt, but with AI evolving the way it is, it'll only be another year or two before process videos of art creation can be faked convincingly enough to trick the vast majority of people.
i wouldn't say obvious but still plausible Other great contenders for a full pantheon could be Japanese or Hindu one maybe, i'm not versed in them at all but i just know they are well furnished with plenty of gods and mythologic creatures
As an artist myself who's seen AI art EVERYWHERE for the last months, a chunk of the god portraits that they showed on the Beta had far too many tells of AI art to say it wasn't at the very least AI-assisted. Odd numbers of fingers, strange deformities, background elements that made no sense, it was the right call to redo all of that, but it boggles my fucking mind they even thought it would get a pass to begin with. That along with redoing the voices gets my purchase, NOW it's presentable and side-to-side, stands on its own feet to the previous remaster release from like, 10 or so years ago.
I tried the extended edition maybe a year back and found that I really missed some of the more modern RTS features of like a starcraft 2. I've been playing retold over the last few days and I don't feel any of those same pain points. Able to make my hotkey groups, bounce around the map, etc. Also auto queuing units is a lifesaver and really makes it a lot easier to keep growing economy in the background while I focus on maneuvering my units - feels like it enables me to play on a higher level without feeling like I'm cheating. 1st RTS I've noticed that feature, but it's the right level of assist for me. Still making all the decisions, I just don't need as much brain power/muscle memory to split my attention. Big props to them for fixing the artwork and voice by release as well. I never had a problem with AI, I just contest that it is 1st draft quality not final draft quality, so when it seemed like there was 6 knuckle Osiris and such it really made me question their quality control - but I've put those concerns to rest as it seems to me like it's all pretty good now. Having a blast with the game. Total nostalgia fest.
I appreciate they redid the VOs after the Beta but to me, the original is still better - and yes, I'm biased. I wasn't gonna bother but this short review actually got me excited to try and replay this game again after over 20 years. So many memories. Exciting to think about all the new civs (Celts, Hindu, Maya, etc.) that could come in the future.
Welp. I'm definitely gonna have to get this. I never played the OG Age of Mythology, but always wanted to. For whatever reason, I just never purchased it (maybe due to a lack of money back when it was new), but some of my friends had it and played it and it always sounded so cool. I've spent many hours on AoE II and the DE, though.
Just to replace those AI placeholders for more AI placeholders? The "new and improved" ART is still clearly AI art, if not heavily AI assisted, they were just more cautious on what they were willing to accept.
@@khankhomrad8855 this is our new horrible future then I guess. I've been playing a ton of Sins of a Solar Empire II and there's a ton of AI art assets in it, primarily for the research icons but a few other things as well.
@@khankhomrad8855 I truly wonder how much money they had to devote to it and what the size of the team is... Most of the audio sounds like it's from the first game, as do the assets. Seems like a port to an updated engine, using AI for art assets and texture resampling, all while calling it a sequel. Yet I'm still playing the hell out of it because it runs better than 1...
I hope they paid you for this video because it's excellent advertising. I would not have gone for retold without your videos and the notice that they at least fixed the Arkantos voice acting.
I've also been really loving the game. A few minor settings that are lacking (being able to determine the autosave interval, being able to set brightness) aside, it's everything I hoped for. Also: I gave the 69th like. Nice.
I hadn't been following this, so this is basically the first I've heard of the remake. Someone mentioned it at work a week or so ago, but I didn't have any details. I really hope they redo the Chinese civ from scratch, as apparently it was pretty bad originally. I am looking forward to seeing new civs follow in future DLC as well. The list of civs I want to see added includes Mesopotamians, Celts, Indians, Japanese, Aztecs and/or Mayans and/or Incas, any of a number of African options, any of a number of pre-Christian European options. A civ based on modern myths and urban legends would be kind of funny. Imagine getting Mothman, the chupacabra, or Big Foot as myth units. Or, you know, Slenderman or SCPs.
The beta artwork really looks AI generated, especially how the light reflects on the bodies, probably they used AI to make them and then they made some modifications over it
ok but whos pyramid shemeing tech bros idea was it to make the old god portraits only available for sale at 6 euros ??? leaves a bitter taste and makes me wonder how else they wanna squeeze nostalgia money out of this.
Thanks for doing such a good job trying to boost sales with your vid. I wasen't sure if I'd be buying before I saw this video due to the AI art thing souring it all for me but I'll definitely buy the game now. I'm also confident, with your new info about the modding support, that modders will add back in all the old voice acting, so I can't say no anymore. It really does look great!
I genuinely preferred the more historically accurate accents of the early beta. I don't need every character in a fantasy world sounding like a Disney protagonist about to burst into song.
Honestly, even if those weren't done with AI, they sure as hell felt like it. Basic poses and uninspired looks. These are bronze age gods! Show me that they are these impossibly powerful beings
Been playing the game a lot and making my way through the Fall of the Trident as I go. Overall I'm definitely loving it; it looks and feels great. I really like the Freyr god pack, I think it's a great way to expand the game and would LOVE to see more god packs released as time goes on. $6 is also a pretty fantastic deal imo, but maybe that's just cuz everything else is so expensive nowadays. The new portraits do look great, which leaves the voice acting as my only remaining criticism. Arkantos is definitely better now, but the rest of the performances are still so lacking and it is killing me inside a bit. Gargarensis used to be sinister, subtle, and terrifying, now he's just loud and flat. Amanra was wrathful, competent, and decisive, now she's just sorta calm and taciturn and boring. I'm trying not to let nostalgia cloud my opinion, but in my head I can HEAR the original voices playing over the new ones, and the new performances are just lacking so much of the emotion, character, even just the proper intonation to make the lines hit. I'm in the Norse portion of the first campaign rn, and very specifically I can point to two lines that were great in the original and now fall completely flat: Gargarensis's opening speech before the avalanche: "gone is all the innocence of anger and surprise" In the original he pauses before "surprise" and says it with relish because he was about to drop an avalanche on our unsuspecting heroes. In the new version he just reads the line as it is, no emotion, no indication that hew even knows something is about to happen. Second, when Reginleif tells you about Folstag's banner and you leave with her, she says "you can leave the banner here." In the original she emphasizes the word "banner" because she just revealed that it's a trick by Loki and that it isn't helpful at all, so she's being sarcastic and disdainful, a little tongue-in-cheek "oh yea, the banner you thought was gonna be so helpful? leave that garbage behind." Now she just says "you can leave the banner here" as any other instruction. Again, no emotion, no use of the context to heighten the performance. Aggghhh, it's so painful
6:17 Oh yeah no, there definitely wasn't any AI used at all. Osiris didn't suddenly grow a sixth finger because of an AI mistake, it was just an undocumented art design shift that they undocumentedly went back on. You literally have the image at 6:25. Edit: I'm not saying it's a bad thing they resolved the issue or anything of the sort, but the fact of the matter is that it happened, and will happen in other games in the future.
I enjoyed this early access very much, but I hope they fix things like how the information boxes (when reading the tech tree) pop partially out of screen, make locking cursor to window default for borderless (why would you want your cursor on your 2nd screen when trying to move your camera around) AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, fix the pathing/targeting of the units, a wall/gate can single handedly make your units stand idle until they die or you manually command them to do something they can do in their range. Units should attack a wall/gate if commanded with an attack move and it's the only thing they can reach while there is no other path forward, which I guess is an issue because they want to avoid having your troops attack every single wall in their way, still this pathing issue is not only present around walls, even world terrain will make them take long turns and stuff.
I played early access and for anybody that decided against to buy, you will regrett it if you don't buy it. It is just as fun as it was in my childhood. This is a gem, don't miss out!
(At minimun) the american spanish dub has some problems, with audio being very low for cutscenes and dialogue, and some voice lines still being in english. Bilingual Athena is quite amusing, but it has to be fixed
The old god portraits had bad anatomy, backgrounds that made no sense and 6 fingers, they were clearly AI traced. Other than that I like what they did with the game (I don't like how you can't enlarge the map with a hotkey like before though, it was a good way to spot relics)
That OG Arkanthos had PATHOS. I need my VULOME at maximum power so the neighbours can enjoy some proper PROSTAGMA.
PRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOSTAGMAAAA
Yeah, OG Arkantos really worked because he's a somewhat jaded man in his 40s, and he sounded the part with that "done with this" snark at being sent on a missing he felt was below his pay grade.
ETIMOS
@@loneirregular1280 Fritomus
MALISTA
The Age Of series does something modern rts dont do.
Which is put a HUGE amount of single player content in the game.
Also, one of the best things about them is their focus on real history or mithology in this case, even if not perfectly accurate. I have learned more about those topics playing the campaigns than in regular lessons, which I love.
@@manuelcorvobelda1831 ehh... theres many games that does that better.
But yes.
@@ethribin4188honest question here.. which ones?
@@fennisdembo34 the nintendo ds version of age of mythology for example
@@fennisdembo34 Civilization does a great Job, but with an overall history focus. Not as specefic as in AoE, where you more look at specific scenarios or campaigns happend in the real world.
Especially in AoE2 it is more like a rough version of the real stuff.
But for me as a kid it was enough to drag me into the stories, which could be real, and raise my interest. (Not like in AoE3)
4:20 It has to be a warm feeling, for you to get called to reprise your role as a voice actor, because the community felt that it wasn't the same without it.
your*
@@freakfreak786really? You’re gonna correct that but leave “reprise” and “role”?
If you’re going to comment on someone’s spelling, why half-arse it?
@@plackt I was gonna say 😂
@@freakfreak786 thanks for your relevant contribution.
@@plackt some people just don’t put the effort, you know how it is.
This is how you remake a game, not how WarCraft 3.
Not only that
If yoi wanna play the original, you can
Not like warcraft 3
@@fabriziocossio Very true. Some people will always prefer the original so still having the original on Steam is perfect
Too soon.
I felt a tiny bit of hype for WC3RF even drew out a map I wanted to make.
Didn't even buy it.
@@informitas0117 That map would've belonged to blizzard too lol
why did you remind me!!!!
FUCK!
As a AoE4 ranked player I love that in AoM Retold you neither see your opponents name nor their rank before loading in.
What makes you prefer that? (not disagreeing, just curious)
As a (mid skill) player:
- opponent can't check out your profile and counter pick
- I don't get nervous when I see the opponent being higher rank
As a stream enjoyer (of pro players):
- less queue dodging
@@TonysRacing600 Makes sense. It's probably enough to only show the opponent's rank after the game (or during it at the earliest).
Looks like O CANADA is back on the menu boys
Forkboy and the flying Hippo vs the new Football playing Giants.
WUV WOO
I feel like they have done an amazing job with this remaster, changing enough to make it feel fresh and new, while retaining enough to keep that nostalgic vibe.
Also have been impressed by the human vs ai community that is forming. Very friendly and helpful for newbies to learn, and the new ai is great for all levels!
Hey Spirit, on the topic of the AI art, some of the particular accusations were about the fact that Osiris had an extra finger, some of the abs on the Greek Gods being rather weird-looking, especially from the side, and perspective wonkiness especially with columns.
Bast also felt very AI to me. That housecat head on human torso with no cohesion is something I've AI generate A LOT.
Can't tell which is AI or people whose brain is so fried that a shadow looks like AI to them 😂.
Waiting for reviews
@@masafromhell hey man thats the dumbest shit i ever read, hope you get better
I get what what you're saying some parts of the old artwork looked weird, but weird looking drawings have been around way before AI (look up "Rob Liefeld can't draw feet" or his infamous Captain America with muscles on muscles and weird perspective). Maybe I don't have an eye for AI, but I'm a little more hesitant to automatically peg everything a little "off" as AI art considering it's possibly a career-ending accusation in today's climate.
Calling it accusations whens it's not a crime is wild to me.
Y'all wanted AI, there you have it. Computers replace jobs, that's nothing new, now it gets rid of many artists. Sucks but it's reality. Better get used to it. I wish it wouldn't happen, but considering the world is completely fucked up by American culture and American culture only values money, there will be no saving artists.
About the art and voices.
I want to believe that those were placeholders for the betas, and they were already working on the release versions, if not, it's an incredible job. And about the AI allegations, they posted a timelapse of the Freya portrait to show these new ones are 100% human made.
The old ones were sus though, some of the fingers were very strange
@@benlewis4241 Yeah the 2 obvious ones to look at are: Leto (6:20) the fingers on each hand end up connecting and Osiris (6:45) he has 6 fingers + thumb on his right hand
Personally i love the old bast one, though i do feel like all of them needed a touchup.
I don't think the beta art is artificial. I kind of think they were trying to mimic the "cheap fantasy" style that you saw back then. Having played the OG AOM and stuff like Magic: The Gathering back then, this was the sort of "bad art" we had.
@@esb422 How do you explain the multiple extra fingers and the misaligned backgrounds then?
The backgrounds are particularly damming as any human artist would draw them as a separate layer
Arkantos went from Scottish-Greek to British-Greek in the redub beta to redub final
Just FYI, Scotland is British
I honestly enjoy the original VA a lot more
Something about being much more vibrant and greater-than-life sounding
@@tomppeli. but that is Arkantos' original va
@@tomppeli. I love the original and was very worried about the Remaster, but personally, I'm enjoying the new Arkantos, the new voiceover gives me a Legends of the Galactic Heroes feeling that I think suits him.
@@giteausuperstar no its not?
At 6:31 you can clearly see where he's pulling the bowstring that the AI generator didn't know where to put the string and his fingers.
Original voices mod 🙌🙌🙌🙌
The only mod I downloaded for my campaign playthrough 🔥
This comment i made is so based that i feel the need to give it a like myself.
@@cheesypotatoes5075and the best! It is unimaginable how much of an impact these voice actors had on us that we simply refuse to play without having their original voices 😂
But it is to be expected, after playing AOM on and off for 20 years we cant accept anything else,they i would watch the campaign cutscenes on youtube for fun , because it felt like a movie, thats how good the cutscenes and the voice acting was!!!
original voice mod works only in cutscenes sadly
@@TheKajnyoh that’s a damn shame… so in game they still have the new voices?
smiting idle villagers is such a funny cheat code
I think this will be the first time where a cheat code has improved my gameplay
Holy crap, props to the team for redoing the god art! And bringing back OG arkantos voice actor! I genuinely am surprised they did that, but perhaps my standards are just too low these days. All the same, credit where it's due: they did a good job responding to the biggest pain points in such a short time.
(Really, the updated god art is much, much better imo; I think one of the issues I had with the previous iteration was inconsistent levels of detail, or something. Sometimes it just felt like there was way, way too much detail (esp realistic detail), like in the case of that cat head lol. Things feel much more consistent now, just at first glance anyway, stylistically as well.)
Especially that upgraded Bast portrait is gorgeus
Tolkien didn't come up with Mirkwood. It's part of Norse mythology along with dwarves, elves and magic rings.
Never knew this. Interesting
@fedrick1connery607 it's actually a real place: the black forest in Germany.
Yeah also "Midgard," as in the AoM map, translates to "Middle Earth"
@@laluzdelsol7587 that too!
The new God portraits are a major improvement from the beta, but one small thing is still bothering me: Athena's owl in both her new portraits is a great horned owl, a species native to the AMERICAS. There are dozens of different owl species native to Europe and Greece, and they decide to pick a species that doesn't even live on the same CONTINENT? In reality Athena's owl should be a little owl (the species which is literally called Athena's / Minerva's owl in many languages AND has Athene in it's Genus). Impossible to get wrong if you just Google "Athena owl" and check the first results.
Other than that I've really been enjoying Retold. The new voices were very distracting, but thankfully there are already mods that change back the original voice lines. I just hope they don't start pumping too many paid DLC packs like Freyr that end up becoming must buys in order to compete in the meta.
I understand, but not that much of a problem and even logical from a certain point of view. We talk about gods, they create mythical creatures. If Athena wants an owl from far away I doubt it would be a problem to take it or even create something close.
@@MrMorvana Yeah I get that, but the Owl of Athena is very important to the culture and mythology of Greece / Rome and obviously to the mythos of the God herself. It even has it's own Wikipedia article. I think it's a big missed opportunity to just change the species for seemingly no reason.
On the bright side they at least gave Odin Gungnir proper, and a few other portraits also seem to match things a little better. Athena is also a bit odd for not having her classic shield, the aegis.
Have you seen her helmet? Her famous, uh, Roman helmet?
That is similar to how they draw her in California (though even the Californian seal doesn't have the red brush).
Maybe this is not Pallas Athena, but her cousin -- Pallas Angela. (Compare 'Los Angeles'.)
Obviously it’s Rick Riordan’s Athena
/s
I really like the change that allows heros like thesus to attack air units. Subtle but great effect.
The artwork changes were impressive, new ones are way better.
As a single player/coop RTS player, AoM and Company of Heroes 1 were the best RTS around for a long time.
I still don't agree with some of the new campaign voiceover choices. I don't understand why it's even necessary at all. But I applaud the devs for listening to the feedback and changing what they could, for the better. It's still disappointing, but at least it was clearly not done by malice or ignorance. By far the easiest way to please everyone would be, imo, a toggle in the options between the old and new version for cutscene voices. It's not like we have to save disk space these days, we can handle 1GB of additional audio with the old voices.
i'd assume the reason for it is like. Legal rights and what not? but i am not an expert in voice over laws and such. it might just have been part of remastering the game for the devs.
I feel like they could have done something similar to Halo MCC, where original graphics and sounds can be toggled between the two in-game
Because it's a remaster, if you want everything the same then go play the old one
Legal rights, probably. They own the code, but not the V.A voices.
I mea, a major thing is some of the factions got their gameplay overhauled, so those at the very least needed re-recorded. There's some higher standards of pronunciation nowadays, so that would have pushed them towards re-recording. And they probably want to reuse the characters from the base campaign in future campaigns, and in that case they HAVE to recast characters, so better to rip off the bandage now.
That said, on the whole, I do think the original voices for the campaign is better. Mostly Gargarensis and a few old men characters. Just much more interesting voice qualities in the classic game than in the remake. Regardless, it's pretty minor overall since you can just mod in the original voices from the in game mod menu in like 2 minutes.
6:25 Here you can definitely tell this one is at least AI assisted because Osiris has an extra knuckle. What this means is not necessarily that the devs were trying to fool people with AI, but most likely that whoever they commissioned to do some of the portraits (and based off of style it seems to be at least 3 separate artists), at least one of those artists was using AI as an assistant or worse.
Based off of the new portraits, it seems like they've settled on one artist to keep the style consistent--or hired a few artists that can mimic this style, because they all seem to be the same sort of aesthetic.
The new ones may just as well be AI assisted or generated too (not saying they are), since that sort of clean-looking, past decade concept artist style is one that most models are particularly profficient at. Buuut, at least it doesn't all look weird, so most people can let it slide.
@@Elvalley yeah it has enough plausible deniability that the only reason why I think it's AI it's because I no longer trust Microsoft to actually source human art and pay human artists well, but it could go either way.
@@Elvalley They remade all the arts within one month? Considering how long (and how many revisions) and art piece like this normally takes, I feel even more strongly that they used AI. Unless they had a large team of at least 10 artists work on the new art, but I'll only believe that if we get the names of the artists (which I can't find online).
@@peperoni_pepino You'll find it in the credits when the game comes out
@@peperoni_pepino Not necessarily one month. The AI accusations started all the way back in April when they first revealed the Bastet god portrait because her face just looked too much like a regular cat. There were so many complaints that the AoM twitter even tweeted that all the portraits were all hand-painted after the complaints started piling up, and that tweet got deleted very recently. The complaints only skyrocketed when the beta came out with all the portraits.
Quality is back in gaming once again ! Hallelujah !
Can a brotha get a "Prostagma" ?
I heard a lot of noise about how the voice acting was bad, but I bought it anyway and jumped right in and while playing the campaign I thought to myself "this is exactly as I remember... no idea what they were complaining about"
Now, after watching this video I know that they changed that. Good call on the team. Also, the option for auto-queue military units is better than simply removing autoqueue or force implement.
There are some things that they need to change.
1) The main one is that it's hard to deselect units, for example, you select 10 hoplites (spearman) and 10 toxotes (archers). You wanna micro toxotes by double clicking them, but it still keeps your hoplite selected, so you have to deselect everything to micro your units everytime. Same goes for heroes, siege, etc... I find myself constantly trying to micro and making things worse because I keep sending unwanted units to fight the wrong targets.
2) Another thing is the camera movement. I tried a lot of configurations, but it's still either too fast or too slow. It also has some acceleration, and it feels horrible to adjust, but maybe that's on me.
3) I think we dont have the right click or rally point on minimap, like, I cant rally point a building somewhere using the minimap, so I have to select the building, move my mouse around the map and select a rally point or right click
AI on water maps completely fails. e.g. on Vinlandsaga or Team-Migration the AI just does not migrate over to the main island.
This is something they need to fix, as it feels like the AI just does not understand how certain maps function.
Similar thing goes for the campaign: sometimes the AI just does small stupid things -> like parts of attack waves hitting at tifferent times (Phoenixes arriving before the main attack and beeing picked off easily). But that's just a minor thing, and should be fixable quite easily, hopefully.
That's not a bug that's a feature from the original and EX 😆
All of the original AoE titles, AoM and even the GENIE engine spinoff Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds always had terrible naval AI, its just always been this way lol.
@@Drakon0Blade it will be fixed
@@Drakon0Blade well, in OG AoM and AoM-Extended I both could play Vinlandsaga against an AI that migrated to the main island and put up a fight... REtolad (as of now) is not capabale of doing that...
This is issues for all of Age of Empires franchises to be honest. AI doesn’t work at water map
@@Drakon0Blade The EE AI understood team migration until they dropped the Chinese DLC. Never got it to work again.
It's been SO much fun.
Something I wasn't expecting to like so much are the maps.
They feel pretty balanced and are always so much fun to explore when its your first time playing it.
10/10 game for me ESPECIALLY for $30.00
Me likes game very much.
One thing feels bad is enemy myth units in some campaign missions being mega buffed by enemy having decorative wonders. Feels oversight.
May be. But I think its made up by the AI not seeming to take advantage of god powers being recastable (while me, well lets just say i decided just one plenty vault wasnt enough on the map when you have no gold in your base)
This is a great catch! Maybe they could resolve this with asset naming shenanigans?
IMO this is up there with the Resident Evil 2 remake in terms of properly remaking a game. It still looks and has the feel of the original with a fresh coat of paint and lots of new toys, I love it
Huge props to them listening to the feedback. I thought the previous art was fine already but the new ones look absolutely awsome.
Just as a note, the Chinese faction is being reworked heavily because in HD it's a balance nightmare.
It's also just not very good. A lot of the god powers and myth units are effectively just reskins of existing ones, and the coding is so bad that even the "Learn to Play" video would softlock.
@@gregoryhayes7569 Even the Main Charakter is a nerfed reskinned Arkantos. Some of the powers didn't even Work. Like the Golden Lion. The amphibian creatures not only where able to walk on Land and water they can climb over Mountains. I lost a campain because they just ran around my defences.
Why isn't there corpse decay though? Look at 7:46, the bodies just swooze right into the ground, looks really silly and bad.
Sign of the times, alas. It's been like this with all of the new AoE titles, afaik. People suspect it's to get around Chinese censorship rules wrt skeletons. Also would explain why minions have been changed from skeletons into zombies.
@@rioplats It's just a big shame, I loved seeing the battlefield littered with bodies. Especially in AoM as the myth units left distinct skeletons, creating a grounded, realistic feeling in the otherwise mythical world. A sense of "Even these things can bleed and rot away". I'd like to see transparency from devs regarding this rather than having to do this sort of guessing game.
Wait for the mod to patch it up
There was def some AI weirdness going on, extra knuckles on the hands, abs on abs, weird poses, odd limb length, non-sensical backgrounds (pillars, stairs).
Some beta portraits were ok (a select few even better imo like Oranos), but most of the new ones are way better and don't have AI weirdness going on.
1:44 Tiny is not a new map, but a custom scenario made by the community and quite popular for over a decade. Similar to Blizzard when declaring ownership on Warcraft's Dota map, Microsoft decided to capitalize Tiny as one of their official maps.
😷
It had A.I. Look at the six fingers.
People had 6 fingers back then
Osiris isn’t a Nephilim
Ok, this review seals the deal. It happens rarely that a buy a game for full price nowadays, but these developers really deserve it for the work they've put in. Also, this game is one of my all time favorites.
This is really good news! I look forward to playing this someday (hopefully soon) once I can afford it.
Biggest problem right now is the inability to use any mods (even purely-visual mods) in ranked. So no putting the resources in the bottom left even if you want to.
6:20 Osiris literally have 6 fingers on his one hand haha.
The reason why it looks like AI artwork is because AI uses very specific shading and color choices as well as stitches images together to make sense of things. Old Zeus' head doesn't match the lighting or look of his body. It could be potentially AI generated images that were then edited to look cleaner and make more sense.
It wasn't AI. Just saying it looks like AI and not providing the proof makes you look like a complete fuking idiot.
I still think Sobek’s background, especially the cloud, looks AI made
Though I asked in a discord for AI stuff and they disagreed, oddly enough.
That first cat head is freaking hilarious.
Obvious not every old VA could return
Ajax's VA passed away after the titans
Also there is new dialogue from time to time wit in the campaign especially with the cinematics that give you a summary of what the Egypt, Norse and Atlantean civs do and given how much they're been changed compared to the OG it makes sense
While I'm still not a fan of some of the new voices I do however understand why their isn't a switch in the setting to change back to the old voice it's not a simple fix
think that most of the voices had issues due to lack of direction rather than the VA's being bad. You can tell how much the delivery changed with the arkantos scene alone
It's a simple fix, lol. They're just .mp3 and .wav files. If they exist in the directory they overwrite the default audio files in the .bar archive. That's how the current mods work.
In fact, it's exactly like how they implemented the Legacy portraits - it's just switching to a different .bar archive. They could easily do the same here for the campaign. Only slight issue is some of the mechanics have changed so the tutorial lines don't work exactly the same, such as how Atlanteans gain favour.
Tbh it is that simple
And there is already a mod that changes back to original voices
@@fabriziocossioso want happens with that new dialogue ?
@@MegaMaster1021 i would rather have Ajax play mute in the cutscene with the new dialogue than see him speak the way he does now
Wow, I’m never this early on a Spirit of the Law video.
Me neither!
This is a brilliant review, I love the summary of what you'v done here Spirit of the Law. You're one of the main reasons I still keep up to date with AOE content. I can't wait for the mods and single player campaigns/DLCs that will come with it.
When it comes to auto queue, I would like to see a full measure. Either enable both auto queues OR disable both AQs. No half measures
After StarCraft, AoM was probably my most played game as a kid.
Great review! I feel like the community can see game companies these days as soulless greedy corporations. While sometimes this is true, a lot of good humans are going to work every day to make a good game, and I am blown away by the time and money they spent to make some of these last minute changes. 8:22 Respectfully, I would strongly disagree that it is "understandable" for people to negatively review a game based on beta and not full release. We should aspire to be better, and could stand to put a few hours into the full release before reviewing it. To me, this game looks amazing! Can't believe how good of a job they did with this remake.
my favorite little thing is how they restored the worship, farming, and build voicelines for villagers
some of the beta artwork was DEFINITELY AI, as some mistakes (like Osiris having one knuckle too many, Anubis having his sword clipping inside his ear or Apollo apparently forgetting how to use a bow as the arrow is resting on neither the bowstring nor his hand on the opposite side) are stuff a human artist would never have done. And besides these obvious ones, there was thing like Bastet looking like her head was a housecat head photoshopped on a human body and musculature on Zeus being off (serously, he lookes like he had a 20-pack).
Overall, my opinion was this was DEFINITELY AI art to at least some degree, though my biggest gripe with it (besides the big mistakes being all I see as soon as I notice them) is that they then denied any AI was used when there was clear evidence of it.
To be fair, human artists also consistently mess up how bows and archery work too. Hands doing crazy stuff, the arrow being in a whack position, the bow not even being bent while it's drawn, etc. It's actually kinda rare to see it done properly haha the AI is trained off of artists who also don't have experience
Most likely the portraits were outsourced to freelancers or something, so if some of the artists used AI tools to cut corners, they may have just been unaware of that. Or the AI ones were always intended to be placeholders during the beta until final art was completed.
@@JD-qq8fz Wrt the bow, the fact that the bowstring and the arrow end/nock didn't match to the same finger is pretty much the smoking gun, as far as I'm concerned. No one who deigns to draw a bow, much less render it out fully, would do that. Amateurs may make mistakes with musculature or anatomy, bad angles or forgetting to bend the bow instead of the string, but this is a basic logical failure that's not been reconciled from concept to sketch to lineart to rendering. For that to happen with a professional commission is unthinkable, imo. It's what you get when an algorithm is mimicking the general impression without understanding the specifics.
@@rioplats Yeah, right? Telling an AI to make something that people already mess up is just asking for it haha it's just going to compound the errors and make it even more obvious
Or stick to truth. I don't know.
I normally agree with Spirit's insights and takes, but here I'm left wondering if we're even looking at the same images. Some of these are so obviously AI'd, Bast looking like every single AI cat gen on your grandma's facebook page, or Osiris' six fingers.
Who cares honestly
Obviously a lot of people. Do you even try to think before you type?
I played a skirmish mode with my son on Saturday against a few AIs. We had this game “back in the day” when he was just a little kid. I followed Isis, and he did Freyr.
I was impressed. I thought it was a ton of fun. Looking forward to revisiting all of this.
My AoE rankings:
1-AoE II
2-Age of Mythology
3-Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (100% needs a reboot)
4-AoE III
5-AoE IV
6-AoE
Galactic Battlegrounds would be a wonderful reboot!
"Titan puts up a decent fight" Me over here having to try on hard D;
Kinda wild that they managed to redo all of the art AND re-record one of the principal character's voicelines with a new VA in a month. That's putting in work.
Whilst I find the re-done voice lines better than the beta, I still find the originals to be the best. They have emotion behind them, where as the new ones feel like they're just accented.
What I'm hoping for most is fourth major Gods and more civs.
Greece: Demeter
Egypt: Hathor (since Sobek replaced her)
Norse: Freyer (I know its coming)
Atlantean: Iapetus
And Japanese (Ameterasu, Zukuyomi, and Susanno), Mayan (Kukulkhan, Chaac, and Ix Chel), and Yaruban (Olorun, Yamoja, and Anansi) civs.
I think it would also be dope to add a Hebrew "pantheon": Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel as major "gods" with Phanuel, Raphael, Raguel, Jeremiel, Saraqiel, Raziel, Hezekiel, Barakiel, and Lady Wisdom as minor gods.
Hebrew civ would only be able to build one temple. It would be stronger with more hit points than other temples. They would gain favor by sacrificing clean heard animals (cows and goats) and unclean animals would deplete favor (pigs). The Hebrews would have an animal husbandry building to breed more herd animals (garrison at least two of the same kind onto the building).
Hebrew civ would have the same myth units for every age regardless of major god and minor gods.
•archaic: Malakim, stance switch units. Grounded: melee but retains the myth advantages against mortal units and have resistance to hero damage. Flying: ranged retains myth advantages over mortal units but hit for extra damage against heroes.
•classic: Ophanim, flying invisivle large range-of-sight scouts. Cannot attack
•Heroic: Seraphim (six-winged flying snakes). Fast flying ranged units with a slow-rate fire-beam attack; devistaing to buildings and units)
•Mythic: Cherubim. Four-faced, four-winged, satyr-giants. Slow moving crushing melee damage. Each one's line-of-sight functions the same as Isis's monuments by preventing the cast of god powers.
Heroes would be OP AF but you would only be able to have one at a time. You'd get the same list regardless of Major and minor god choises and each one would have different functions.
•Enoch: stand in one place and slowly increases line-of-sight until the whole map is exposed. Doubly effective against Atlantean myth units.
•Noah: same function as Poseidon's god power; wild animals gravitate toward him (no combat function)
•Jacob: increase max pop by 12, and boost animal husbandry building. No combat function
•Moses: convert enemy mortal and myth units (cannot convert heroes). Has a timed special ability that triggers a random god power on small scale. Doubly effective against Egyptian myth units.
•David: extra resistant to mortal units. Can switch between range and melee. Doubly effective against Norse myth units (cuz they have all the giants)
•Joseph (technicolor dream coat). Funstions like a Pharaoh and can boost resource production (no combat function)
•Samson: an extra durable, extra strong brawler with a bash/throw ability. Extra weak to mortal units
•Gideon: Arkantos shout power empowering mortal units
•Deborah: functions like a Pharoah and can boost military production. No combat function.
•Solomon: functions like a pharaoh and can boost technology research.
•Elijah: provides extra defense, especially against heroes, to all allied myth units in line-of-sight
•Daniel: provides extra damage, especially against mortal units, to all allied myth units in line-of-sight.
•Maccabeus: hero unit with bonus damage and resistance to mortal units. Doubly effective against Greek myth units.
Overall weak mortal units, crappy cavalry (only doney riding melee units), worthless navy, and more dependant on myth units and hero unit than other civs.
Lemmie onow what you think
I am so glad they listened and fixed the voices and art! The voices on the original are amazing and I feel they did a lot for the immersion.
There's some interesting questions in AoM: Retold that would make great content for future SotL videos.
For example, does trading with an ally still generate more gold than trading with yourself? It used to, but now it does not say that in the game tooltips, and there's game-design reasons to suspect they changed it so that trading with yourself is just as profitable as with an ally (since AoM doesn't have gold-less trash units, so perhaps they want to give players a decent late game gold source even in 1v1, to avoid awkward stalemates where nobody can produce anything)
Another example: which things affect Titans? Does everything that affect myth units affect them as well? There's Sekhmet's tech that gives Myth Units lifesteal that looks good on paper for Titans...
I loved the original AOM from 2002, and even bought the HD version a few years back with widescreen support and some remastering, but this new one is amazing and takes it to a new level.
When i played the game back in the 2000's the campaing was the most amazing thing because it was completely dubed in my language (Brazilian Portuguese) and, at the time, a game in your own language and not english was something out of this world and really changed my experience because i didn't knew english as a kid. In retold, they also made a Brazilian Portuguese voice over, but it is sooooo bad. I restarted the Campaing in the english version because i don't want to ruin my childhood memory with the retold version . The game is amazing. It is completely new at the same time that it holds to its 2000's roots. Can't wait to see more of the future DLCs
Wc3 moment where the French voice is absolutely horrendous so I switched to English.
Its a little thing but, you ca pick your color now! So happy!
are you planing on doing more retold videos, because id love to see more, especially breakdowns of gods and techs like you do with aoe2 civilizations!
Cool looking game! Never played the first one but V interested in the Retold. And that Tiny map looks hilarious.
My friend grew up with AOM and is looking forward to this game. I’m sure he’ll be happy to know the A you gave it
LETS GOOOO they brought back OG Arkantos!!! I've heard enough, 100% buying now if I wasn't before.. hypedd
6:16: "I never bought the idea that these were AI"
Meanwhile Mr Six-Knuckles at 6:26 and the archer who doesn't know how to pull a bow string at 6:31.
Honestly there's a million tells in the artworks that they were created using AI and possibly retouched ever-so-slightly to get rid of the most obvious and egregious misses. From details that don't make any sense at all to the way the AI draws animal heads that clash hard with the style of the rest of the piece, it's just flat-out beyond any doubt. And if the turnaround time for the new art was fast as well then that still raises suspicion since it's possible they just used a different (and better) model to create the new ones.
The beta art looked "good enough" until we saw the revised art. Holy shit, the differnece is night and day!
@@Yeldibus the difference is big, but I'd still be concerned about whether they used AI to make the new stuff since they already used it before. It'll take artists uploading pictures of the art process to dispel the doubt, but with AI evolving the way it is, it'll only be another year or two before process videos of art creation can be faked convincingly enough to trick the vast majority of people.
Looking forward for the Aztecs/Mayans as a new pantheon civ
such an obvious choice, surprised they didnt do it before the chinese in the original hd release.
i wouldn't say obvious but still plausible
Other great contenders for a full pantheon could be Japanese or Hindu one maybe, i'm not versed in them at all but i just know they are well furnished with plenty of gods and mythologic creatures
@@sniperloic2904 its obvious by how easily you could add a sacrifice mechanic in for favor generation.
As an artist myself who's seen AI art EVERYWHERE for the last months, a chunk of the god portraits that they showed on the Beta had far too many tells of AI art to say it wasn't at the very least AI-assisted. Odd numbers of fingers, strange deformities, background elements that made no sense, it was the right call to redo all of that, but it boggles my fucking mind they even thought it would get a pass to begin with. That along with redoing the voices gets my purchase, NOW it's presentable and side-to-side, stands on its own feet to the previous remaster release from like, 10 or so years ago.
I tried the extended edition maybe a year back and found that I really missed some of the more modern RTS features of like a starcraft 2. I've been playing retold over the last few days and I don't feel any of those same pain points. Able to make my hotkey groups, bounce around the map, etc.
Also auto queuing units is a lifesaver and really makes it a lot easier to keep growing economy in the background while I focus on maneuvering my units - feels like it enables me to play on a higher level without feeling like I'm cheating. 1st RTS I've noticed that feature, but it's the right level of assist for me. Still making all the decisions, I just don't need as much brain power/muscle memory to split my attention.
Big props to them for fixing the artwork and voice by release as well. I never had a problem with AI, I just contest that it is 1st draft quality not final draft quality, so when it seemed like there was 6 knuckle Osiris and such it really made me question their quality control - but I've put those concerns to rest as it seems to me like it's all pretty good now. Having a blast with the game. Total nostalgia fest.
I appreciate they redid the VOs after the Beta but to me, the original is still better - and yes, I'm biased.
I wasn't gonna bother but this short review actually got me excited to try and replay this game again after over 20 years. So many memories. Exciting to think about all the new civs (Celts, Hindu, Maya, etc.) that could come in the future.
Welp. I'm definitely gonna have to get this. I never played the OG Age of Mythology, but always wanted to. For whatever reason, I just never purchased it (maybe due to a lack of money back when it was new), but some of my friends had it and played it and it always sounded so cool. I've spent many hours on AoE II and the DE, though.
6:06 My guess is the devs used AI assets for placeholders during beta while they were wrapping up the actual art for release.
Just to replace those AI placeholders for more AI placeholders? The "new and improved" ART is still clearly AI art, if not heavily AI assisted, they were just more cautious on what they were willing to accept.
@@khankhomrad8855idk about that tbh
But i supposie everyone is now skeptical about the artwork
@@khankhomrad8855 this is our new horrible future then I guess. I've been playing a ton of Sins of a Solar Empire II and there's a ton of AI art assets in it, primarily for the research icons but a few other things as well.
@@DocSmouse love Sins 2 but the Art is quite bad. I'm hoping that if we make a big enough fuss right now this won't become another decade long trend.
@@khankhomrad8855 I truly wonder how much money they had to devote to it and what the size of the team is... Most of the audio sounds like it's from the first game, as do the assets. Seems like a port to an updated engine, using AI for art assets and texture resampling, all while calling it a sequel.
Yet I'm still playing the hell out of it because it runs better than 1...
I hope they paid you for this video because it's excellent advertising. I would not have gone for retold without your videos and the notice that they at least fixed the Arkantos voice acting.
I've also been really loving the game. A few minor settings that are lacking (being able to determine the autosave interval, being able to set brightness) aside, it's everything I hoped for.
Also: I gave the 69th like. Nice.
Here's to hoping it's like the old command and conquer games a proper RTS is that so much to ask for
The new Horus art is prob my fav, radiates "come with me if you want to live".
That Mount Olympus map looks sick!
The new art cooks so hard omg
The voices in the Beta made me think immediately of the narrator's voice in the William Wallace campaign in AoK.
I'd love to see either the original voices as a toggle or all the campaign voices redone with the OG actors
It would be fun to see not just the OG Arkantos voice actor, but all the voice actors coming back to AoM to re-record their lines. ❤
I hadn't been following this, so this is basically the first I've heard of the remake. Someone mentioned it at work a week or so ago, but I didn't have any details. I really hope they redo the Chinese civ from scratch, as apparently it was pretty bad originally. I am looking forward to seeing new civs follow in future DLC as well. The list of civs I want to see added includes Mesopotamians, Celts, Indians, Japanese, Aztecs and/or Mayans and/or Incas, any of a number of African options, any of a number of pre-Christian European options.
A civ based on modern myths and urban legends would be kind of funny. Imagine getting Mothman, the chupacabra, or Big Foot as myth units. Or, you know, Slenderman or SCPs.
those new portraits look amazing! very big fan
The beta artwork really looks AI generated, especially how the light reflects on the bodies, probably they used AI to make them and then they made some modifications over it
ok but whos pyramid shemeing tech bros idea was it to make the old god portraits only available for sale at 6 euros ??? leaves a bitter taste and makes me wonder how else they wanna squeeze nostalgia money out of this.
Thanks for doing such a good job trying to boost sales with your vid. I wasen't sure if I'd be buying before I saw this video due to the AI art thing souring it all for me but I'll definitely buy the game now. I'm also confident, with your new info about the modding support, that modders will add back in all the old voice acting, so I can't say no anymore. It really does look great!
There's already a mod that restores the old voice acting.
@@gregoryhayes7569 Heeey excellent!!
I genuinely preferred the more historically accurate accents of the early beta. I don't need every character in a fantasy world sounding like a Disney protagonist about to burst into song.
Love all the AOM content recently! Keep it up!!
I wasn't much a fan of Aoe2 but Aoe3 and age of myth were some of my fav games ever as a kid, I am so glad to play them again
Great review me and my buddy’s are gonna grab this
Feels like a fairytale that devs so quickly respond to community feedback and make changes before release.
I hope they put a lot of focus on the campaigns. Unlike AOE2 where I like RM (vs AI or human), AoM has always been a campaign focus for me.
The only thing missing is the intro. I wish they had done is the CGI intro remade... instead they just removed completely.
Nice video, I'm pretty convinced to try it
Honestly, even if those weren't done with AI, they sure as hell felt like it. Basic poses and uninspired looks. These are bronze age gods! Show me that they are these impossibly powerful beings
Yah I felt this was a fantastic redo. 100% within a few days, I just couldn’t help myself!
Wow Another video without mentioning the Japanese from Age of Empires 2! Awesome!
Been playing the game a lot and making my way through the Fall of the Trident as I go. Overall I'm definitely loving it; it looks and feels great. I really like the Freyr god pack, I think it's a great way to expand the game and would LOVE to see more god packs released as time goes on. $6 is also a pretty fantastic deal imo, but maybe that's just cuz everything else is so expensive nowadays.
The new portraits do look great, which leaves the voice acting as my only remaining criticism. Arkantos is definitely better now, but the rest of the performances are still so lacking and it is killing me inside a bit. Gargarensis used to be sinister, subtle, and terrifying, now he's just loud and flat. Amanra was wrathful, competent, and decisive, now she's just sorta calm and taciturn and boring. I'm trying not to let nostalgia cloud my opinion, but in my head I can HEAR the original voices playing over the new ones, and the new performances are just lacking so much of the emotion, character, even just the proper intonation to make the lines hit. I'm in the Norse portion of the first campaign rn, and very specifically I can point to two lines that were great in the original and now fall completely flat:
Gargarensis's opening speech before the avalanche: "gone is all the innocence of anger and surprise"
In the original he pauses before "surprise" and says it with relish because he was about to drop an avalanche on our unsuspecting heroes. In the new version he just reads the line as it is, no emotion, no indication that hew even knows something is about to happen.
Second, when Reginleif tells you about Folstag's banner and you leave with her, she says "you can leave the banner here." In the original she emphasizes the word "banner" because she just revealed that it's a trick by Loki and that it isn't helpful at all, so she's being sarcastic and disdainful, a little tongue-in-cheek "oh yea, the banner you thought was gonna be so helpful? leave that garbage behind." Now she just says "you can leave the banner here" as any other instruction. Again, no emotion, no use of the context to heighten the performance. Aggghhh, it's so painful
6:17 Oh yeah no, there definitely wasn't any AI used at all.
Osiris didn't suddenly grow a sixth finger because of an AI mistake, it was just an undocumented art design shift that they undocumentedly went back on.
You literally have the image at 6:25.
Edit: I'm not saying it's a bad thing they resolved the issue or anything of the sort, but the fact of the matter is that it happened, and will happen in other games in the future.
I enjoyed this early access very much, but I hope they fix things like how the information boxes (when reading the tech tree) pop partially out of screen, make locking cursor to window default for borderless (why would you want your cursor on your 2nd screen when trying to move your camera around) AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, fix the pathing/targeting of the units, a wall/gate can single handedly make your units stand idle until they die or you manually command them to do something they can do in their range. Units should attack a wall/gate if commanded with an attack move and it's the only thing they can reach while there is no other path forward, which I guess is an issue because they want to avoid having your troops attack every single wall in their way, still this pathing issue is not only present around walls, even world terrain will make them take long turns and stuff.
I played early access and for anybody that decided against to buy, you will regrett it if you don't buy it. It is just as fun as it was in my childhood. This is a gem, don't miss out!
(At minimun) the american spanish dub has some problems, with audio being very low for cutscenes and dialogue, and some voice lines still being in english.
Bilingual Athena is quite amusing, but it has to be fixed
I need to see Athena codeswitching, sounds hilariously bad
The soccer playing giant lmao.
You should make new vídeos with age of mythology as well. It looks like the moment to hop in the game as well.
The old god portraits had bad anatomy, backgrounds that made no sense and 6 fingers, they were clearly AI traced. Other than that I like what they did with the game (I don't like how you can't enlarge the map with a hotkey like before though, it was a good way to spot relics)