Developer Triumph Studios has also done a marvelous job of making its turn-based clashes between little Goblins and giant Dragons play fast and smart. One of the chief joys of the tactical battles is that each unit can feel quite different. While there are a few troop types like pikemen copied between races, even simple units can have major differences. For instance, each race has a cheap ranged unit, but where the Elven longbowmen are more expensive and deadly, the Goblins may have “swarm darts” who are weaker but have poisoned missiles that do much more damage to unarmored, living enemies.Battles are surprisingly fast to play, especially given that they're turn-based, and they stay interesting whether it's a confrontation between a hero and a powerful demon, or a massive siege with multiple armies in the mix, wizards throwing fireballs and trebuchets destroying walls. And, of course, if a battle is too much of a mismatch, it can be skipped to save time.
Unfortunately, far too many battles are mismatches, because the strategic layer just isn't up to the standards of the tactical battles. Age Of Wonders III is filled with decision points: a map filled with resources to gather and dungeons to explore, spells and abilities to research, different buildings and units to produce in cities. But a crucial part of creating interesting choices is that something has to be sacrificed in order to choose a different path, but here every building takes a maximum of four turns to build (and usually one or two), which makes almost everything too easily accessible. Rather than make challenging calls about what to build, blindly building everything always seemed like the best choice.
All costs are paid from an empire-wide pool instead of being based on an individual city's production, so there's very little that differentiates one city from another, except for their racial inhabitants, which are locked in once a city is built/conquered. The ability to load up city queues with units and buildings regardless of whether you can afford them, and have them build automatically as the money comes in is certainly convenient, but it further degrades what little value strategic choice has in the first place.
What’s more, it can take seconds to process clicks on the world map, which never happened to me in battle. This makes playing the strategic layer of Age Of Wonders III feel like a chore compared to the impressive, fast-paced tactical layer. What should be an effective conveyor belt pushing evenly matched armies into epic confrontations, can too often make such clashes irrelevant. Age of Wonders III is at its worst when victory is based on dominating opponents economically, bringing as many powerful units as possible to overwhelm numerically instead of winning battles intelligently.The issue is exacerbated in campaign mode, with its too-huge maps and insta-fail conditions if certain heroes are defeated in battle. Even the larger random and scenario maps suffered from the issue. However, once I started playing on small, crowded maps that forced more tactical battles, I started enjoying myself significantly more. There’s a sweet spot where Age Of Wonders III can be the game it promises to be, it just takes some time and energy to find.
Verdict
The quest for the ultimate fantasy strategy game will continue for a while longer, as Age of Wonders III only partially fits the bill. Still, it's a fairly successful return for a game series and style that seemed undeservedly buried. I have no doubt that the strength of the tactical combat will help find a strong niche, but for me, that just makes the relative weakness of the strategic side of gameplay all the more disappointing.
