Reviews from

in the past


Age of Wonders 4 is absolutely fantastic and should be a more-than-welcomed return to form and modern realization of the franchise, after a misstep in Planetfall. Paradox poured all of their knowledge and charm from their existing franchises and bolstered the edges of a wonderful 4x IP. In the end what you get is best of all the parties involved in refreshing this classic series.

Right from the start we get our now bog standard Paradox opening menu, Age of Wonders 4 looks like CK3 or Vicky 3 or Stellaris. And Age of Wonders takes a fantastic cue from Stellaris as well giving us not only a variety of world making tools but completely customized races. You can take different races and mix up all their traits and histories in a format similar to creating species in Stellaris. This on its own will keep the game infinitely fresh and provides an impossible amount of modding potential.

Once you're done fiddling with your unique world and brand new custom species, you're thrust into the game world which is highly reminiscent of Civ or Endless Legend or Age of Wonders 3. The world is fanciful and magical and full of all types of wonderful ideas. The most quixotic of which is that there's an entire map underground as well for underground civilizations. Most of the game plays out similar to major 4x standouts and you won't feel a lot of radical departures or game changing elements.

Except for the bits that make Age of Wonders, Age of Wonders. You get a number of fun and fancy and playful mechanics like spellcasting on the overworld and spawning units. You have a number of quests and several different empire-spanning skill trees. You have randomized events a la Crusader Kings that force you to make tough choices or pick up new quests and events. There are engaging city state mechanics where empires battle to gain the favor of these free cities. You also get a collection of spellbooks that become stronger as you level up giving you more and more spells you can cast in battle and on the overworld delivering increasingly powerful effects.

The whole game is gorgeous and engaging and just plain fun. It never stops being fun. And by the time you will inevitably finally feel like you've seen everything there is to see, Paradox will be ready to pump out DLC. One thing I would really like to see are playstyles that feel more pleasing to play as right now the game is heavily combat oriented. And the real time combat can get tedious in long wars. You can do your best to play peacefully and expand and avoid combat, but a lot like Civ it just ends up feeling like the best playstyles involve healthy amounts of conflict. I hope there are more PvE style elements like the end game crisis in Stellaris or some more involved pop-management elements like Stellaris.

In all, Age of Wonders 4 is one of the best 4x releases in the last several years. And it is a standout in the Paradox lineup. It's a delightfully complete experience at release and you'll easily get a couple hundred hours out of the base game before you could get bored.

Like Civ but fantasy and also unfinished but still fun

Definitely an improvement on some of the mechanics from Planetfall. Does improve with the DLC, and the latest patch fixed several problems present from the start.

I am far from an unbiased source on this one as I've been playing these since forever. Expect this to remain a favorite once the final set of DLCs drop in 2024.

A very solid fantasy grand strategy/tactics hybrid. Is perhaps a little repetitive, with a little less variations between playthroughs than I would need to be engaged long term. Could revisit though after some more updates drop and see myself raising this rating.

This is a game I didn't know I needed in my life.
I had never heard of this series before, and it wasn't on my radar at all, but all of a sudden all of the Civilizations channels I follow started talking about this game so I gave it a try. So very worth it.

This game is the perfect love child of Civilizations and Heroes of Might and Magic, with a bit of Total War thrown into the mix. It takes only the best parts of all of those games and mixes them together to create a gameplay loop that is at the same time familiar to fans of those franchises, yet unique enough to be its own thing. City building and diplomacy aspects of Civilization 6 are on display, but combat is much more like the HoMM, which is fantastic in my opinion.

Customization is also king here. Thanks to all of the incredible customization options in this game, I can't even really tell you how many factions there are because every game your units, skills and traits are determined by what you choose to pick, both at the race creation screen but also throughout the game. The first game I played, I was using a race of molemen who used Earth magic to create golems and eventually turn themselves into a race of golden gods. The next game I played a Druid/necromancer hybrid of cat people who's concept was that they descended from Egyptian gods who utilized all beasts, living and dead, to further their goals of conquest. Now I'm playing a race of assassin halflings that's elevated themselves to Angels of despair, being experts in deception, mental manipulation and deadly strikes.
All of this comes from decisions made mid-game, and that really makes you feel in complete control of the direction your civilization is taking.

I'm just raving, so I'll wrap this up. The game is excellent. If you're on the fence, just look up some of the excellent youtube videos and see if this is your type of strategy game. If you do feel even remotely interested after that, take the leap. You won't regret it.


Sehr interessantes Fantasy-4X Spiel, dass Potential großartig sein könnte, nur überzeugen seine Einzelteile weder für sich noch in der Summe. Am schwersten wiegte bei mir ein Kampfsystem, dass theoretisch sehr komplex sein könnte, aber in der Wirklichkeit sehr repetetiv und unspektakulär daherkommt. Die scheinbar unendlichen Möglichkeiten in der Entwicklung seines Reiches sorgen nie dafür, dass man seine Taktik komplett umwerfen und anpassen muss, dass man auf ganz unterschiedliche und vielfältige Armeen und Kämpfe stößt. Es handelt sich, und das zieht sich durch alle Bereiche des Spiels, um sehr minimale, sehr glatte, wenn man so sagen möchte, Unterschiede. Nach 5 versch. Partien hatte ich zum größten Teil das Gefühl mit ein und der selben Fraktion gespielt zu haben. Technologien, Helden, Städte, Karten, Gegner, Quests, etc. Alles gleicht sich zu sehr. Das finde ich sehr schade und hat bei mir für eine fortwährende Ernüchterung und dann Langeweile gesorgt.

Sehr viel Spaß hatte ich am Rassen-Editor und seiner Einbindung in das Spiel. Das hat mich ein wenig an Spore erinnert, und visuell so wie im Gedanken kann man sehr unterschiedliche und einzigartige Völker erstellen. Nur, im Spiel selbst fühlt man davon wenig.

Ich werde mir dieses Spiel sicher noch einmal in 1-2 Jahren anschauen. Schafft man es die Balance zu verfeinern, durch DLC und Patches vielfältigere und interessantere Spielweisen zu ermöglichen, könnte dieses Spiel sehr gut sein. So empfand ich es in der Vanilla-Version als ein steriles Spiel, das mehr vorgibt zu sein als es ist.

62/100

It’s a pretty solid high fantasy 4X with a lot of different spells and troops with several different faction types. It’s also very customizable from creating factions to creating maps. Despite this, every run with the game sorta feels the same. It’s a shame because there’s sort of a meta progression where you get unlock points for different cosmetics for finishing a game.

This game has probably the best multiplayer experience of any 4X strategy game I've played. The fact that you take your turn simultaneously with your fellow players AND that you can play asynchronously makes this game feel respectful of my time.

In the 4X genre, I find it's hard to get through even a single multiplayer game when you're playing with friends who are adults with full lives and a lot of other responsibilities. The way multiplayer works in AoW4 lets me make the most of the little time I have to play games with other people.

Neat Diablo/Civ/Tacitcs hybrid

O jogo é bonito e é isso.
Tem uma boa questão estratégica mas que confesso que não dominei.
Mas não há nenhuma estória de jogo.
Para mim foi um jogo generico de tantos outros desse estilo.
Nada surpreendente.

The empire costumization seems impresive at first however once you try to make more than like 6 different empires the shallowness of the system becomes very aparent though you can cosplay as sauron which is pretty cool

ehh obviously unfinished, probably get this idea from its publisher paradox, this game has an excellent frame that needs at least 4 DLC to be complete.

I am having an absolute blast with this! I’ve adored the previous entries in this series and this one is essentially just a complete and total improvement over the everything that’s come before!

What I love most is the art style: the units and world look so so so cool, with lots of different styles of unit. My civilization has bird people, lizard people and rat people and when you recruit units they’re all represented!

I fully dig this, it’s super duper rad! If you like 4X you absolutely need to give this a shot!

This is a more open, more complex Civ.
It's a fun sandbox to explore, and it's well made.
Sometimes I wish the choices felt more meaningful, though, no so many percantage-based little buffs and interactions.