Developed by the same people that bought Age of Empires and Age of Empires II to life Ensemble Studios have once again created another masterpiece. Age of Mythology has moved the genre of strategy games further by integrating the tried and tested 'Age of Empires' method of build and destroy along with the Black and White god worship angle. It also boasts a whole new 3D graphics engine which aims to recreate the different landscapes and worlds in extreme detail.

---

---

Game Play

In a similar way to Age of Empires you have to build up a town where you can train the infantry required to dispatch of the enemy. To do this you are required to gather resources which are used by villagers to build buildings which can either expand your civilisation through the technology tree or to build units. This essentially means you need to gather wood, gold, food and new to Age of Mythology favour. With these resources you obviously build your base up in an attempt to either complete the campaign or just to wipe out the enemy.

---

---

Just like in Age of Empires, your civilisation expands through different ages, gaining new technologies along the way. In Age of Mythology there are 4 ages. This is essentially the best part of the game. Instead of just expanding through the ages, you also get a choice of which god to worship. You get a choice of two during each age, and depending upon which one you pick determines what new units you can build. Each god also has its own advantages and special technological advances. Also each god grants you a special power which you can only use once. These are fantastic and can really help to turn a battle around. For example one of the powers is ceasefire. If you are in the middle of building up your base and are not ready for an attack you can use this power and all attacking enemy have to ceasefire for a set period of time. This maybe just the time you require to build some more guard towers or train some units to defend your base. These god powers can also grant more resources, devastate an enemy’s base or kill individual units.

---

---

The favour resource that I mentioned earlier has to be gathered in a different way depending upon who you are playing. The Greeks for example require villagers to worship at a temple to gain favour. At certain stages of the game you may require favour to be generated very quickly in order for you to train myth units which can be very effective against buildings and infantry. The problem with this is that you still have that annoying population limit which means while you can gain favour very quickly with a lot of villagers worshipping the gods, you do use more of your population for worshipping when you may need more for attacking units. The Egyptians have to spend resources building monuments which accrue favour over time. The Norse gain favour by fighting.

---

---

The Egyptians and Norse Vikings are very different to the Greeks and even gather resources differently. The thought that has gone into Age of Mythology really shows in this arena. They not only gather resources differently, but can have different technological advances, and train different units. As well as myth units Age of Mythology introduces Heroes. Similar to the main characters in Age of Empires, they are tough and can really make a difference in dispensing of the enemy. Age of Mythology takes the characters further by resurrecting the dead heroes when one of your other units is near the dead body. I remember many a frustrating campaign in Age of Empires where your main character would die and that would be the end of the game. Age of Mythology deals with this nicely with the resurrection idea, and it fits into the game nicely. When resurrected they only have minimal health.

---

---

Wrap all of the above elements into a corker of a campaign with a continuing story throughout and you will see how much potential this game has. The story in campaign mode is good enough to make you want to play the game from start to finish. It also adds enough originality with the landscapes and missions that you actually feel like you are progressing through the game. Age of Empires suffered a lot from repetitive levels, but Age of Mythology does not. Each level has been thought out well and the cut scenes in between each level help to progress the story to make the battles mean something.

---

---

There is a whole heap of game modes ranging from the single player skirmish where you can practice your skills again a Titan computer opponent, to online and network play. As an average player online play can be a mixed bag. I quite often either find myself against a bunch of friends playing online; when they see a new player they just team up and all attack the newbie. Also sometimes you can find yourself up against a complete crap player and win far too easily. This is why if not playing against friends I favour the skirmish mode which I just keep coming back to over and over again. The game has been out a while now, but it’s taken a while to write the review because I keep going back to play the skirmishes. Age of Mythology does have an online skill matching system which attempts to match your skills against people with equal skills. It tries its best, but as an average player I can play well, but sometimes I can also play badly.

---

---

There are a few downsides to Age of Mythology. Firstly the control of the units. If you have a mass of units ready to pounce, you can’t just select a load and send them to attack a single unit, because they end up tripping up over each other and become easy targets for the enemy. As in Age of Empires you can group units, but you quite often find yourself grouping small groups rather than large groups due to the crap attacking methods when in large groups. Also the population limit is far too small. You can obviously increase the limit by building more town centres, but in Age of Mythology this can only be done at certain pre specified sites. This means you find yourself having to go out to find these sites and spend precious resources on new town centres and defences for these new tow centres just to get a bigger population limit that you will need much later on in the battle. If you don’t do this the enemy often takes the town centres for themselves thus enabling them to build a lot more units than you. It does add to the strategy element, but it can be tedious sometimes. Although problem is that the speed the game runs at can’t be changed. In Age of Empires you could change the games speed so that in early stages of the game you could speed things up a bit to make the gathering of resources and the early stages of base building less tedious and time consuming. Why remove the setting when so many people find it useful.

---

---

On harder difficulty settings just feel like the enemy can build a shed loads faster than you ever could. If you play on skirmish and send a unit to watch over the enemy building a base when in Titan mode for example the buildings get build far faster than you can build, so instead of improved AI as it should be, they are just building and advancing though the technology tree faster. They also seem to gather resources faster. Although this does make the game harder, I would have liked improved AI instead.

Just a few minor gripes in what is such a great game. There are so many elements to this game, they can’t all be talked about in this review, otherwise I will spoil the game for you.

Graphics

The new 3D graphics engine is at first nothing special. Take a look at the screen shots and you will see what looks like Age of Empires II. Once you begin to take notice of the details in the landscapes you will see what a great engine it really is. For example the fish you catch in your fishing boats are represented by fish that look like they are swimming though the water.

The view point can now be rotated which means you have a fully rotatable 3D environment. This can especially help in selecting units behind trees or buildings. Interestingly thought there is an option that by default fixes the viewpoint in the familiar Age of Empires isometric viewpoint. You can only rotate the map when turning off the fixed viewpoint option.

---

---

Sound

The sound is just as good as any Age of Empires games, the same great sound effects with a whole new musical score that fits in well with the environment and theme of the game. The game could do with a few more musical tracks because some of the missions can go on for a while and the music does get a little repetitive.

Overall

Age of Mythology is one of those games that is difficult to rate. It is suce a fantastic game, great campaigns, graghics, and sound, but in the end it is so similar to Age of Empires. However there are enough new elements in Age of Mythology that make it one of the best strategy games of all time.