Watching reviews of the new Age of Wonders and reading comments on it, I came to the conclusion that most players only know about the series from the third part. Somehow it happened that the modern gamer bypassed AoW 2, which became the founder of most interesting ideas and features. What does this mean? And this means… tu-turuu-tu… it’s my time to talk about another forgotten masterpiece. The story began when two friends, Lennart Sas and Arno van Wingerden, decided to team up and create something of their own based on their love for strategy games. This is how the Triumph Studio company appeared in 1997, and a couple of years later their brainchild, Age of Wonders, was published. It was a turn-based strategy, firmly reminiscent of the gameplay of the heroes, and the second part. Let me remind you that the legendary and unique third was released in the same year. Naturally, you shouldn’t blame the developers and their first game. Not only was it a debut, but they were able to stand out from their competitors with cool gameplay features and gain a fan base. All these twenty-odd years they have been polishing the series making it better and more interesting. History ultimately decided who would be more tenacious and stay afloat.
However, my story will not be entirely about the second part, it will tell about the stand-alone addition Shadow Magic. Because that’s where all the best in the series came together. Before getting to the point, the reader will probably want to know about the history and setting, about the creatures that inhabit this wonderful world called Atla and their destinies. They have long been familiar to you: these are pointy-eared elves who live under the protection of ancient trees, low dwarves who mine ore underground, cheerful halflings whose life is endless fun, and people who are always creating problems. This is Tolkien’s world, to which several new races have been added, such as the short northerners – the Frostlings and the mysterious followers of the light – the Archons. It was the latter that became a kind of root cause of all events on Atla. According to rumors, they travel across the stars, populating planets with elves and humans, teaching them virtues and enlisting their support in the battle against demons. But this time everything went completely wrong as planned: the elves forgot about their purpose, and people, driven by vices and greed, exterminate other races. These peoples were so carried away by themselves that they completely forgot that there are creatures in the world who benefit from the bloodiest wars. Undead. She raised her head and was ready to destroy everyone, and only the people and elves who came to their senses in time were able to unite and repel the threat.
A magic tower is the basis of any large city; it is a symbol of power that outlines the scope of magic. Besides her, only heroes and one of the demon units can do this.
After peace finally arrived and the creation of the throne of the wise, where the great magicians of the elements could decide important issues, a new crisis arose. Traitors among the mages have united to overthrow the lord of the circle and gain power. And only the young king of people Merlin was able to reason with them and show that even immortals can be defeated. After the victory, the hero renounced the world and nothing was known about him for a long time. But one day his image appeared before the elf queen Julia and other rulers. He warned that the world faces a new danger – shadow demons that come out to hunt from their world. They know no pity, they are always hungry, they cannot be controlled or negotiated, they serve the great mind of the All-Sinker, which demands new victims. And here our story begins, the plot of Shadow Magic.
I told only a small grain of lore, but it is so deep and huge, like the Silmarillion for the Lord of the Rings. Each hero or unit has its own tab, where our ward, his biography and features are described in detail. At the same time, reading all this is not boring, they are like small stories that allow you to delve into the setting and enhance the effect of presence.
During the course of the game, you can pass by some neutral squad of gnomes, and he will suddenly reveal what he actually forgot here or reward him with an interesting fact. A nomad will tell you with a grin about one-humped camels, and if he has three humps, then this means a nymph on a camel (well, you understand, yes). And then, somewhere in an inconspicuous part of the map, the leader and that same nymph are arguing, and you understand where this story came from among the nomads. Unlike the heroes, Age of Wonders is first and foremost a beautiful fairy tale that attracts you with its charming scenes. They are not always in a visible place, you will have to look for them carefully, but it is worth it.
At the time of the events of Shadow Magic, the people are ruled by immortal magicians who sit in their towers. These structures are not only a symbol of power, but also a conductor of magic, allowing it to be used over long distances. Most of them divided the continent of the Blessed Land into zones of influence, choosing biomes acceptable to their people. But do not be deceived by the supposed peace that has come, these rulers are powerful enough to change the climate of an entire valley, they are quite power-hungry to want and strive for expansion. Most don’t care about the world’s problems and are only busy with their own intrigues, but by being persuasive enough in diplomacy or by showing kindness to their tribe, you can enlist the support of these powerful creatures.
“Marinus, the halfling mage, mentions that one of their rulers managed to negotiate an extremely profitable deal. He traded the island for a kiss from the elf queen.”
Help with the enemy can be obtained not only from other races, but also from spirits. There are four of them: war, magic, order and nature. They agree to give their blessing to the hero and his faction, but in exchange they demand services, and for their failure to fulfill them they are cruelly punished, sending storms, storms and even entire armies. Building temples to all of them is a thankless task, the spirits hate each other and everyone only wants you to be their champion. The desires of these powerful creatures do not always correspond with your plans: the mistress of nature demands the destruction of mines that she hates, order awaits the end of the army of heretics, war is always happy when blood is shed, and magic asks for more temples.
Let me imagine, the spirit of nature, the mistress of life, increases population growth. Yes, in fantasy they don’t take Viagra, just build the right temple.
To win the campaign you will have to take on the burden of ruling for four magicians chosen by Merlin. The beautiful elven queen Julia will protect refugees fleeing from the demons of the shadows and the Phobius empire, the leader of the nomads will help the Sirons, slaves of demons, regain freedom, the dark elf Meandor, Julia’s brother, will lead an army of darkness to end the tyranny of people, and the leader of the Sirons Oneron will show his former masters how his fellow tribesmen know how to fight. For each one you will need to complete 3 missions and all progress regarding heroes and magic will be transferred to each subsequent one. What encourages careful study of each card.
This is something like what an ice cream stand looks like in this universe, but they won’t let us try it.
Each map is made with https://sistersitescasino.co.uk/casinos/paradise-8-casino/ attention to detail and almost always has several ways, often well disguised, to defeat an enemy or complete a task. For example, in one of the missions it is necessary to release Oneron from prison and transport him to his homeland. In theory, if a player has balls of steel, he can win by simply killing his opponents (there are many of them and they are evil), the second, more preferable, is to assemble a serious squad of proven fighters, sneak under the nose of the enemy armies, beat up the guards and kidnap the prisoner. However, in the first playthrough, not everyone suddenly decides to go not towards their goal, but in the opposite direction. Frostlings also sell ice cream there, but they prepared “Death” exclusively for us. ”. And in the long labyrinth of one of the caves you go to a sailor offering a spell to walk on water, and then you can follow the underground river to get to just the right place, bypassing the guards. I will also leave a brief retelling of one of the most epic battles so that you understand the maximum of what Shadow Magic is capable of.
On a huge map I play for all the forces of evil (the main character is just not completely negative) and against me are the remnants of an army of people and nomads. First of all, I distribute scouts and determine the frontier on which I will restrain the enemy. He identified two of the four heroes to defend him and allocated all more or less serious troops to this matter. During this lesson, I found a city of halflings in the north, they begged me not to touch them. The small ones reported that people forcibly took residents north along the river and made jesters out of them, mocked and humiliated them. In addition to information, they even provided a boat to punish the scoundrels. I decided that I would not touch this city until at least. Equipped the expedition from surplus, detached a third hero and sent it on a long voyage. My last hero was sent to explore the world of the shadow, there was information that through it you can penetrate behind enemy lines. There are no more units left for him, but the hero himself is quite strong. Having attached all available buffs to my ward and turned him into a terminator, I sent him to conquer the shadow spaces. 10% of the game has passed, and I was already fighting off hordes of enemies from three directions along the frontier and squeezing out all the resources I could.
I decided to hold the defense along this river and marked the frontier; the screenshot shows only a third of the first front.
At this time, the expedition along the river had already reached the first city, and even with a tower, and fortunately for me, the enemy left a not too large garrison there. I didn’t change the population to a more loyal one, people belong to a neutral worldview and perceive evil relatively normally, especially with the peacefulness perk, which improves the attitude of races towards you, and I had it. But I started churning out shooters so they could fight back while I continued to conquer nearby cities. Thus, the fourth front was opened and a long struggle for an important strategic point with a large supply of gold mines was opened. At this time, in the world of shadows, the hero was able to annex a couple of neutral cities to my empire and finally came to the surface, finding himself right behind enemy lines. Before me opened a view of a luxurious metropolis of demons, who agreed to do anything for me for a cosmic amount of dough. I laughed in their faces and ran on, capturing a couple more cities along the way and emerging into the pastures of the empire, full of money and opportunities. Thus opened the fifth front and a long battle for this region. It was restless on the frontiers, enemies were pressing from all sides, despite the successes behind enemy lines and the ever-new influx of money, there simply wasn’t enough of it to fend off ever-new waves of enemies. At one of the most critical moments, I had to spend a lot of mana to buff an entire army in order to fend off a massive attack. In addition, in addition to them, all sorts of little things scattered around the territory that needed to be caught before they encroached on the gold-producing buildings. The nomads cast a spell in which all possessions belonging to them and people cause periodic damage to my troops. You could forget about the counterattack on enemy settlements.
For an ordinary card, this is an epic mochilovo, for this one, it’s a standard day at the office.
At the other end of the map, the expedition had already gotten comfortable and began playing staring contests with neighboring cities. They had no way to knock me out, but due to the lack of mana, I could not advance further. The fourth hero began to explore the eastern region and suddenly came across the capital of the nomads. It was a chance! This only happens once in a lifetime. The garrison was serious, but the hero would have managed it, but the magic tower that is hitting me has become an insoluble problem, I urgently need to get rid of it somehow. After thinking a little, I discovered a circus nearby where zombies were sold. I don’t know who they were there, but now they will be targets. They are useless in battle, but their peculiarity is that they are reborn the next turn they were killed. And the tower really fell for them, the rest is a matter of technology. At the end of the battle, I not only deprived my enemy Phobius of a valuable ally, but also removed the fire aura from his possessions. Plus, new cities in the east mean only one thing – a new sixth front. Phobius was surrounded on all sides, his grip began to weaken, but the attacks did not stop. It was necessary to monitor six areas and correctly prioritize. On the fifth front, a small army had already built up and burst into the valley with mills (they give gold), but it was impossible to hold the cities in this region, so I followed the scorched earth tactics, destroying all the oncoming settlements along the way, in order to prevent the enemy from recapturing them again and building up fighters. People met this without enthusiasm, the cities that I did not change rebelled and I had to suppress the uprisings and replace the population with one more tolerant of me. The fourth front, which had not advanced anyway, was choked in these unrest and deserters. But the frontiers were finally abandoned and for a long time I was able to make a counterattack on the enemy position, while Phobius was trying to repel attacks in the north and east. The game is getting ready to end. Armies from the west and east met simultaneously at the human capital. A subordinate says that there is panic in the empire of my enemy, he is gathering his last reserves and preparing for a siege. The garrisons at key points do not even try to resist, but surrender en masse, hoping for the mercy of the winner. But I’m no longer interested in their existence. The last hope of my enemy was for reinforcements from the south, but they did not have time to arrive and were surrounded and destroyed by the scouts gathered together. After this the capital was taken. This was the end. A couple of cities and one of the best heroes of the Phobius empire resisted for a few more turns, but he has nothing to oppose against the warriors of evil, seasoned in battle. Thus ended one of the most epic games in AoW: SM. This is another plus of the game; no subsequent part will be able to achieve such a scale of combat and fun.
So what about the gameplay?? We are dealing with a turn-based strategy similar to Heroes or Disciples, but AoW is radically different from them. We have settlements in our possession, where we can also build buildings and order troops.
Cities have their own population, they grow and develop, increasing the flow of gold and production. The latter is very important for construction. As in Civilization, it is responsible for the speed of construction and recruitment of units. And if there are few of them, build cows, found new settlements, attack your neighbors, in general, do what you usually do in 4X strategies.
There are two main resources: gold and mana. And if the first does not need any introduction or commentary, then mana does not belong to each hero separately, but is common. There is a certain warehouse where this blue substance is stocked every day and it is spent by the faction leader on spells and their support and sometimes by an ordinary hero if he has the corresponding ability.
Eight spells are given to study at the same time, and a new one appears in place of the one learned.
There are a total of 15 races, each of which is unique not only in units, but also in worldview. An elven archer will always look askance at the orcs in the army, and if he is also alone, then there is a high probability that the pointy-eared one will leave the squad. Neutral halflings are more willing to join the player if he leads the same type of fighters (not forgetting to add a hefty price tag). And in diplomacy, the undead will always be able to come to an agreement with the dark elves, after all, the torture of fairies and unicorns is more fun with friends who share your hobbies. The capabilities of each warrior are determined by such parameters as
attack – accuracy modifier
damage – damage modifier
defense – modifier for evading physical attacks
resistance – magic evasion modifier
health points – no comment
movement points – the more there are, the further the unit moves
as well as a unique list of passive and active skills. Even the lowest dwarf has in his arsenal good vision in caves and the ability to climb mountains.
Frostlings are a rather weak and flimsy people, until they sit on mammoths, turning into one of the most formidable units of the third rank.
Magic deserves special mention. Before the game starts you are asked to make a choice. The assortment includes a gentleman’s set of elements: water, earth, air, fire, life and death, as well as space above them. The latter is rather the result of mixing spheres of magic. Yes, it is quite possible here to become a fire and water mage, but at the same time lose the most powerful spells of these spheres. The main feature of magic is that it is used not only in battle, but also on the world map. You see how the enemy army is crawling towards the walls of the city: plant a forest to make it take longer, create a firestorm, summon a strong monster to protect your walls, strengthen the garrison with buffs. But if you consider this approach to be the lot of losers, and real gods deserve more, use high-level global spells, flood the entire map with water, and let the enemies get out as they wish. Fence your domain with mountains and send your opponents to the dwarves for rock climbing courses. The possibilities and variety of magic are impressive and this makes the second part one of the best in the series. In subsequent games, this aspect of the gameplay became worse and worse, becoming only a pathetic imitation of Planetfall.
But before you can use spells, you need to learn them. To do this, select what you need in the book, allocate part of the mana, the amount of which can be adjusted, and wait for the required number of moves. In addition to spells, the list also contains enhancements for your faction. For example, having researched the “rogue” perk, troops will ask for a smaller salary for their existence, and the “scribe” will reduce the time for learning magic.
There is a limitation on the use of all these magic arrows and elemental summons, a limit on mana consumption for one day. And if the spell requires more, you will have to wait several turns to activate it. There are of course ways to increase it from 20 points to 80, but this process is not quick.
A simple global spell that turns the player’s lands into pastures.
A battle begins when an army attacks an enemy unit located on an adjacent conventional hexagon, and all neighboring units enter the fray. It turns out that up to seven armies and up to seven players can participate in one battle. How do you like this, Heroes of Might and Magic?! Hence all sorts of tricks like summoning units near the cities of their allies in order to help with their magic in the fight for the city if something happens. The maneuvers themselves take place in the standard mode, except that the map is huge and there is room to roam, and in the event of a siege, the entire city opens up in front of you. You can take it by storm from any side. It’s not that it’s impressive in size, but if you use a spell unsuccessfully and break the building, you can actually lose it. Well, why do you need a city now without a forge or a temple?? Another distinctive feature is that one unit move can be divided into 3 stages. That is, the swordsman had to run far to the enemy – he would hit at most once, and if the enemy was right in front of him, then all three. Range also affects the accuracy of shooters, so they are always faced with a choice: be accurate and dead or alive, but oblique.
And here we smoothly move on to horror, pain and suffering. The fact is that in AoW 2 there is a system of misses and hits and it depends on defense, attack and passive abilities.
Fun (actually sad) fact. In the first part there were no mistakes, in the second they screwed it up, in the third they unscrewed it back, receiving tons of hatred from reviews on AoW2, and in the fourth they returned it back, swearing that the same horror that was in the second part would not happen. Yeah, right now!
Siege! It’s hard to call it a city, but it’s all there in full view, and not just one of its parts, as in subsequent games.
For example, a dragon with 16 attack will almost always hit a halfling peasant with 4 defense, and the second one will almost never hit the dragon. However, there is another catch here: the randomness concerns not only the chance of damage, but also the value of the damage itself. The dragon can either send a peasant to the next world from its tail or chop him for 1 HP. The opposite is also true, a peasant can kill a dragon simply because the stars aligned. Theoretically, of course, this can be encountered once in your entire gaming life, but more often it turns out that one knight can kill two and a seemingly winning strategy led to defeat. Needless to say, this state of affairs leads to hatred and a reduction in computer service. But that’s not all, magic can also miss, as well as unit abilities and projectiles, turning the game into a branch of hell and randomness on earth. The situation gets worse as you move up the company; it becomes more complex and more demanding on the ability to predict, which has little correlation with the situation described above.
At one time, Shadow Magic received positive reviews from the press and players; it was given high marks and praised for its interesting features. And it was fair. Classic fantasy with all its attributes without dubious innovations, excellent plot, rich lore, great strategic possibilities, a little humor and cool tactical battles. At the same time, many problems of the original second part were corrected and new units and buildings were added. The game is incredibly addictive and plans for an hour in the evening can turn into tediousness until 4 am.
And also this painful choice of the sphere of magic before the start of the game. You sit and for about 10 minutes you can’t decide which element to take. Maybe life? There is healing and angels, the most effective conscript units. No, the ground is better, there is a stone skin – imba, it turns any asshole into an impenetrable asshole, and, God forbid, rockfalls will damage. And the air has a tornado that scatters enemies all over the map and a lightning shield stuns attackers. Fuck it, I’ll play through the campaign several times, I’ll try everything! This is how the game begins, and then epic battles and various multi-variant maps, next to which the third part nervously smokes on the sidelines with its straight-as-a-stick maps and micro-armies. I’m already silent about Planetfall with random generation.
As a bonus, I’ll tell you where many Planetfall reviewers might have gone wrong. The fact is that the latest part of AoW did not borrow anything from XCOM: the cover system, although in its rudimentary form, was already there (and before XCOM), misses and hits were observed, one move with a conditional division into sub-moves is present. Also, the fourth part took practically nothing from modern civilization; if there were borrowings, it was from the very beginning of the series. Satisfying neutral cities, for example, is a development of quests from spirits from the second part, and not a carbon copy of the fifth civ. So, when Age of Wonders is compared with XCOM and Civilization, this is not always true, at least in the chronological aspect.