Retro Revival, Part #13 - Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (2010, Impulse/GOG.COM)

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Demiath

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Published on October 9, 2010 4:15:25 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iipQ0LrhJfM

Game:

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (2003)

Duration: 11:34

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All the recent Bioware/Black Isle RPG additions over at Good Old Games have been good news indeed, but it's important not to forget the other major re-release of the last month; Triumph Studios' awesome Age of Wonders series. In particular, Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne and the stand-alone sequel/expansion hybrid Shadow Magic featured in this video are among the best strategy games of all time, and given that these titles are not at all easy to find in stores it was really about time that they appeared in affordable digital download versions.

Although the obvious reference point for genre nerds is Microprose's classic Master of Magic (1994), Age of Wonders is perhaps most easily described to a general audience as a mix of the city-building and empire-expanding gameplay of Civilization on the one hand and the RPG elements and tactical combat of Heroes of Might & Magic on the other. Aside from being characterized by the same extremely addictive quality which those series are known for, Age of Wonders greatly expands the scope and scale of the isometric battles from the limited chess-like framework of HoMM to something which is a lot closer to a fully fledged turn-based war game (the city sieges in particular can get impressively large). The multi-layered gameplay and huge maps ensure that playing AoW is a truly epic experience which is matched by few other strategy games.

At the time of writing, GOG has only released the first Age of Wonders while the whole trilogy is already available for purchase (together or individually) over at Impulse. At less than 15 bucks for all three games, you sure get amazingly good value for money when picking up the AoW Trilogy.

Impulse (All 3 games):
http://www.impulsedriven.com/explore/search/age+of+wonders

GOG.COM (AoW1 only):
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/age_of_wonders/

Unofficial Patch 1.4:
http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=661

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