The original release way back was my first true foray in to PC gaming. At the time, like many others my age, we were enamored with things like PS1, N64, PS2 and much much more. I had played a tiny bit of Doom at a friends house, years earlier, but only a bit, before their parents made them shut it off, too violent (how far we've come!) and had heard of what a "Starcraft" was.

But I remember going through the games section at a local walmart, seeing this on the shelf and at the time, and I still do, love [J]RPGs, so I looked at the back of the little booklet case and thought foolishly enough, as a child, that it was an RPG, as I had little knowledge of the RTS genre at the time, being mainly a console player. But when I popped that game in to our family computer I was blown away at the complexity and the things on display. I get to play as gods, and heroes that I've read about in school?! Build entire civilizations and destroy others? I was hooked. From then on, I was a PC gamer.

This game, Age of Mythology Retold is excellent. It gives me all of those same feelings I had, around 20+ years ago, but with a new, modern coat of paint while also innovating in new ways (including the other Age of Empire remasters!) pushing the genre steadily forward. I can't wait to sink dozens of more hours in to this game, like I had all those years ago, albeit nowadays with a bit more knowledge of what I'm doing. The graphics, the interface, the game play, the mod support is going to make this an amazing journey for old fans and new alike and hopefully hooks many more, as I had been.

Slightly biased review as I grew up playing the original on my Dad's PC.

This is a remake done incredibly well, it feels like a modern game release and not just some HD remake put out for money. It both looks and plays really well. I loved playing through the campaign's, there was lots of nostalgia. And I very much enjoyed the additional 'Mythical Battle' which was added too, I'm hoping we get to see more of these (I would love for more of this type of content).

I can't comment on the PvP side of things, as I prefer to play at my own pace vs AI so you won't see me touch online play 😆

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what the two expansions will bring. I've heard that there will be a new pantheon added in each expansion, but I'm hoping that they'll bring story content alongside them too.

Prostagma?

I recommend this game, but there are some things that I'm not a fan of that I wish got changed.

Short backstory: I've played AoM religiously since 2002. It is my favourite Age of Empires games by a decent margin. I have over 600 hours on AoM:Extended Edition, which doesn't count non-Steam hours I put into the game originally. I know the game like the back of my hand, so if something's slightly changed, I feel it.

I know this affects my opinion of Retold a lot, since things are quite different from AoM, but I'd also like think the majority of players of this game will be in a similar boat as me.

I'm just going to list Upgrades and Downgrades, since gameplay wise, the game is near-identical to AoM.


- God Powers can be reused at a growing cost of Favour: THIS IS MASSIVE, and probably the biggest QoL improvement to the game. This changes lots of things, because not only are good powers significantly better, but it also makes Favour much more impactful.

- Favour no longer stops gathering after 100: another big change, which makes favour gathering a lot easier to do, requiring less micro-managing. Since you need more of it thanks to the above improvement, having no ceiling allows you to stockpile it, which is great. It does make certain Civs weaker than others (Egyptians are notably nerfed for this, since their gathering process is much more limited than the others), however.

- Myth Units are now more impactful: They did a good job of making myth units much stronger than before, while also improving weaker myth units. Sub-par ones in the past, like Centaurs and Trolls, now have better special attacks, which makes needing heroes much more necessary.

- Wonders no longer start a win-condition, and instead massively buff you: This is another massive improvement, as it changes the Wonder strategy significantly. I found Turtling in AoM:EE very easy, especially with 1-use only powers, so changing Wonders to be a doubler of military and eco basically means that you SHOULD win, rather than you definitely win.

- Greeks have less hero limits: having the ability to train more than 4 heroes (when every other CIv had limitless heroes) is a huge buff to them.

- Norse are more balanced military-wise: The Norse were my favourite, and they get a nice upgrade in having a more balanced military. With separate military buildings for infantry and cavalry/heroes, and an added anti-cav unit and ranged hero, they are generally more useful to play as.


- The UI is messier, dustier, and generally uglier: I really don't like the UI. Things feel less clean and more brown, and aren't as impactful as AoMs deeper colours. Things blend in more now, and units are hard to distinguish from another via icons. This could just be my overwhelming familiarity with the original, but I'd like to think that the UI could be generally brighter and more colourful.

- The whole game is generally murkier and less colourful: I took two screenshots, one of AoM:EE and one of AoM:RE, and is distinctly different: Greens are green in EE, whereas they are brownish green now. Units are less different looking, as they are less colourful and more brown, which blends in with the brownish grass. This is either a mod I'd like to work on or find, or ask the devs to really change, because the game just looks kind of ugly now.

- Clicking and selecting are distinctly worse: A big gripe of mine is selecting and clicking specific things. Muster points are now very difficult to tell whether they're selected or not, and if the villager will start gathering from the tree/bush/gold or not. Fishing is also significantly downgraded in this matter, since fishing boats won't auto-move to an unoccupied fishing spot (sometimes), and even so, you can't tell if you've set the muster point right.

- You can't queue tasks well: In the past, if you held shift and right clicked, that'd add a queue of tasks for units. It was extremely valuable to use when queuing Citizens, since you could make them queue from Gold Mine to another, without wasting time idling. Now, that doesn't seem to work anymore. I'd highly recommend it gets fixed.

- Units stop going towards a target when their initial target's destroyed: this makes moving armies kind of annoying, since once the original target is destroyed, the rest of the army will auto target whatever enemy's closest. This is ok when your whole army's next to the target, but if your army's split in two areas, the military away from the target will get distracted and start auto attacking walls and houses that aren't around the target, meaning that I have to micro-manage my armies more closely. It's very annoying.

- Atlanteans are weaker: Since other civs now have repeatable god powers, the Atlanteans mediocre god powers now look significantly worse. They also need a good 10 seconds to upgrade to heroes, which is a massive debuff to their usefulness. Their Citizens are significantly cheaper to train, but I get the feeling they gather slower than before.

- Siege Ships are useless: Siege Ships are a complete waste of resources, since they deal around 10 damage to buildings per volley, have the same range as towers, and deal almost nothing to everything else. In the past, they'd deal around 80 damage per volley to buildings and could be upgraded to have longer range. I had 2 siege ships fighting 2 non-flaming arrows archers, and THE SHIPS LOST. This really needs to be fixed, imo.

- Voice Acting is off: While I can definitely chalk this to having such a love for the originals, the voice acting feels significantly downgraded to the original. Arkantos is definitely the strongest (and it surprised me that it wasn't the original VA, considering how near-identical he sounded), but most of the others sound like they're reading lines off of paper, and don't really have any emotion. Skulk and Gargarensis are notably downgraded. Amanra and Regenlief are pretty good, but their audio fluctuates between louder than others to CLIPPING. The audio mixing on the voices is all over the place.

- Standard speed's too slow, yet Fast is too fast: There needs to be a speed between Normal and Fast: Fast goes at 2x speed, while I'd really appreciate a 1.5x speed: standard speed feels like it 0.8x the original speed.


There's a lot that I hope gets fixed or changed, because I do really want to like it and move from Extended Edition to it. However, at the moment, the game's got a lot of things that make it weaker than the original, and I'll either be hoping for updates or mods to fix this.

I'd still recommend it, because a lot of my gripes are probably because I'm so used to the original. However, I'd also recommend you try the original to feel what I'm talking about.