thepremier's Full Review: Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic for Windows
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
Triumph Studios - 2003
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (AoW:SM) is a stand alone expansion/sequel to Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Thrown. It features several improvements over it's predecessors that make it superior and worth purchasing even now, 3 years after it was created. It introduces (or rather, replaces) a third world or level of play, the Shadow Realm, in addition to the overland and underground maps. It further differentiates the existing races and adds 3 new ones, for a total of 15 - each with their own unique art, specialties, unique units, and unique city buildings. And, it introduces the ability to generate random scenarios of various size, length, and difficulty.
Premise
You assume the part of a powerful wizard from one of the 15 races. Using your magical abilities, you must lead your people to victory by creating armies, building cities, capturing cities and objects on the map, and ultimately defeating the other rival wizards.
Story and Setting
War has decimated the wizards and their people. Fearful of the remaining wizards, the human emperor Phobius used that fear to seize power under the guise of regulating and controlling magic. The remaining wizards fled into exile. Meanwhile, strange things are happening elsewhere on the Blessed Continent. The landscape is changing, becoming other worldly and hostile. Mysterious demons emerge, feasting and killing anything they encounter. Phobius, no novice to the world of magic himself, further blames the wizards’ careless misuse of their powers as the cause of the rifts and voids - while simultaneously trying to harness the demons' power for himself.
Merlin, once leader of the Wizard Circle, has been trapped in the shadow realm, and using a sprite to communicate with the remaining wizards, must guide them to restore their power and influence, defeat Phobius, and once and for all, defeat the Shadow Demons.
The world of AoW:SM is best described as Tolkien. The "good" races you will encounter are the Archons, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings (hobbits?), and one of 3 new races, the Syrons, who are native to the Shadow Realm. The "evil" races are the Orcs, the new Shadow Demons, Goblins, Dark Elves, and the Undead. There are also neutral races who are the Humans, Draconians, Tigrans, Frostlings, and the new Nomads.
Each race offers a delight of differences and nuances in how you play the game, and offers different art. The Archons, for example, are loosely Greco-Roman based, and beings of pure holy justice and wield immense powers of life and rejuvenation. The Undead represent zombies and other necromantic beings and cause decay and death everywhere.
Gameplay
AoW:SM is one of the most engrossing turn based strategy games I have ever played. The graphics, while simple 2-D, are beautiful, and contain a rich palette of colors. The game is similar to the Civilization series, in which a culture's power is mostly measured by your cities. These are the most important resources on the map.
On that map, your wizard, while powerful in combat in his or her own right, is best kept in a city, preferably one with a tall Wizard's Tower. This tower greatly expands a wizard's "domain", which symbolizes the radius of his or her magical ability, allowing him or her to cast spells in their domain. While in a tower, your wizard studies various spheres of magic - wizards can be specialists in one sphere and have access to immense powers, or can study from two, or three, or even all six spheres, diluting but giving greater range of magics. Those spheres are air, earth, fire, water, life, and death and the available spells are linked to those elements. Oh, and if your wizard dies, he or she can be resurrected the next turn (at considerable penalty to reputation and resources) IF you still control a city with a Wizard's Tower.
For example, a wizard specializing in earth can cause earthquakes, cause mountains to form, even make roads move your units quicker. A wizard specializing in air can cause blizzards, interfere with the enemy’s missile weapons in combat, and can summon tornadoes to wreak havoc on armies on the map.
In addition to cities, there are other objects on the map that your units can fight over. Towers extend your visual range and give you a defensive advantage. Windmills and furnaces, and such give you extra gold per turn. Magical Nodes increase your mana income per turn.
Gold and Mana are the two resources you must manage each turn. Buildings and armies require gold to produce and maintain. The more towns, the bigger they are, and the more economic buildings you control increase your gold. Of course, there may be a magic spell or two that does that as well.
Mana is your magical resource. Each spell has a mana cost to it and each turn you are allowed a certain number of casting points, this regulates how much mana you can spend in a turn. If the spell’s mana cost exceeds your casting points, it will take more than one turn to cast that particular spell. Spells can be combat based - used only during a battle, or they can be global - and are in effect permanently until they are stopped by the user or "broken" by another wizard, or you run out of mana. Spells can also be used to enhance your units, and are called "enchantments". In addition, active spells and magical creatures you control require a mana upkeep.
Having only two "resources" may seem simplistic, but unlike a real time strategy game, keep in mind, you are limited to what you can accomplish in one turn.
Each race has access to a rudimentary unit - cheap and easy to produce but weak, and then there are 3 more levels of units, each more powerful than the last. Each race also has a special unit that is produced by each race's special building, which, surprise, surprise, has a special effect for that race.
For example, the Elven special building is the Secret Glade, which hides your city in a thicket of forest from enemy wizards, produces the Elven special unit of Treemen (Ents anyone?). Each race can also produce an advanced machine, like a canon, or repeater ballista, or even an airship.
Heroes are special units. They are able to radiate a wizard's domain (if the wizard is in a tower), they can use use armor, weapons, and items, and some can cast spells. All have useful special abilities and become stronger with experience.
The map also has different landscapes, like grass, desert, underground, shadow realm, wasteland, etc, and some races react better to one than another. The Shadow Realm causes Shadow Sickness to almost all non-native units, weakening them, unless some magic is applied.
What is most engrossing about the game is the battle system. When you engage in battle, the overland map goes away and you are taken to the scene of the battle (it could be open land, a city siege, in a crypt, there's lots of possibilities). Each unit has hit points (health), move points (how far it can move) an attack rating (the chance of striking) a damage rating (how much damage it will do) a defense rating (chances of deflecting physical attacks) and a resistance rating (chances of avoiding a magical attack).
There are units that are ranged, some that attack directly. Some can fly, some can swim, some can hover. Some can disappear and reappear. Hero units can use magic, can use special items, and can extend your wizards domain, letting you use your Wizard’s magic in a fight. There are many, many different attributes that units can have, and every unit has some. These can be basic, like "walking" allowing it to move across normal terrain, or "strike" allowing it to fight hand to hand. Then you get to things like "poison strike" or "fire strike" which deal special damage to enemy units, and the list goes on, and on, and you get words like “seduce” or “sabotage” making battles anything but boring as the permutations quickly add up.
Fortunately, information about each and every character is available by simply clicking it.
The fun of the game is having the ability to use different races and combine armies if you want. Races of the same "disposition" (good, neutral, evil) can more easily tolerate each other, so if you are playing Orcs and conquer a Goblin city, once you take it over, among other things, you can choose to keep the original race populated in the city instead of moving in your own. This will grant you access to that race's units.
Technical
In addition to rich colors and unique artwork, the game has an unobtrusive soundtrack perfectly crafted for the world and the task at hand. The sounds are accurate, complete with horses neighing for mounted units, magical effects, and arrows plunging into flesh.
The game has several campaigns to embark on, and one of the most thorough tutorials I have ever encountered. Once these have been achieved, the game has replay value in its random scenario generator. The advanced scenario generator allows you to tweak the customized and randomized scenario of your dreams.
In-game diplomacy allows wizards to align, or exchange gold, spells, structures, and other resources.
Multiplayer exists as well, and both single player and multi player have the ability for each wizard to complete their "turn" either simultaneously (much faster) or separately. You can even set time limits for the turn.
The game is devoid of cutscenes to get in the way, save the opening movie, and runs very smoothly
Finally
This is a great game that will keep you entertained for hours. The turn based play allows you to play all day, or for just half an hour. The world is rich, and the multitude of races, units, and magic make the game interesting almost every time. If you are a fan of the genre of strategy games, or of the sorcery and magic variety, you should definitely search this one out. Sometimes, it is just good fun to play as Orcs and bash the enemy senseless, or as Dark Elves and really mess up with the enemy's units.
When the ancient Order Of Wizards tapped into magic for their purposes, they unleashed an evil force that killed many people. The wizards became despi...More at Amazon Marketplace
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