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Welcome to Ancient Greece. A time of legends - when you couldn’t move for would-be heroes traipsing off to gain riches and glory by slaughtering some poor deformed creature who’d just happened to steal a few sheep. And what about the gods? Bastards the lot of them. Bored of the endless toga parties and fighting among themselves, they meddled in the affairs of men, until those mortals raised their fists to the heavens and defied them - whereupon they gleefully descended upon the earth bringing with them torture methods involving endlessly shifting boulders up a hill or having some of the squashier parts of ones anatomy repeatedly plucked out by the local wildlife.

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In fact the Greek gods aren’t the only ones getting the Age Of treatment, as the game also revolves around two other eras of gods and mortals, the Norse and the Egyptians. And what better mythical times for the setting of Age Of Mythology, the latest title from Microsoft’s world famous, award-winning RTS series and its first 3D strategy outing?

Single-Minded

I have to admit in Age Of Empires II: The Age of Kings, I only took a passing interest in the single-player campaign. It was solid but standard fare, and multiplayer proved to be much more of an interesting training ground. But in AoM things are very different. For a start there's much more of an absorbing storyline to the massive 36-mission campaign (divided up into the three eras), akin to the quality storyline in Warcraft III. This was frankly the last thing I expected to see in a Microsoft RTS. Gameplay they do well, but a quality storyline always seemed something that was previously left on the cutting room floor.

• Uploader: cnquistador. A complete musical overhaul of AoM, Music of the Ages changes all of the music in the game to Egyptian themes, while maintaining the feel of AoM's original soundtrack. Multiplayer-safe and compatible with all versions of AoM.
• Age of Mythology The classic real time strategy game that transports players to a time when heroes did battle with monsters of legend and the gods intervened in the affairs of mortals. Use mythological creatures like Minotaurs and Cyclopes to bolster your armies' strength.
• The beloved monk from Age of Empires II finally gets its Age of Mythology counterpart in the monk hero unit, which can convert enemy units and heal friendly ones. New Campaign (fully voice-acted in English): With Yin and Yang shattered and China in chaos, General Jiao-Long must find a way to restore Yin and Yang and bring peace to the empire.
• Age of Mythology is a mythology-based, real-time strategy computer game developed by Ensemble Studios, and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released on November 1, 2002 in North America and a week later in Europe.

Age of Mythology. The classic real time strategy game that transports players to a time when heroes did battle with monsters of legend and the g ods intervened in the affairs of mortals. Use mythological creatures like Minotaurs and Cyclopes to bolster your armies' strength.

In fairness, they have far better story-based material to work with this time around, considering that Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology is full of rich and enthralling tales. In Microsoft’s interpretation, the single-player campaign starts with the Greeks being called upon to face down a number of threats to their lands. Initially the danger comes from local pirates, but later you get to participate in the Trojan Wars and end up in pursuit of a mysterious maniacal Cyclops.

After the main Greek heroes pursue the Cyclops into Hades and subsequently get stranded, they traverse the underworld and end up emerging in Egypt, and this seamlessly leads on to the second part of the campaign, and subsequently onto the last Norse section. While there isn’t exactly character 'development’ going on, there are key players throughout the story whose adventures you follow, and there are times when you could almost fool yourself into thinking you were playing an RPG.

Old And New

Much of the underlying gameplay of AoM will be familiar to fans of the series, as a lot of the basic structure is taken from the previous two games. Food is still gathered from berry bushes, farms, wild animals and fish. Wood is chopped from surrounding forests, gold is dug up from mines and stone is no longer part of the economic equation. The main economic buildings are still town centres, archery, stables, barracks and blacksmiths - the usual stuff.

Age Of Mythology Mods

But Ensemble Studios has made a conscious effort to make AoM's gameplay much more distinguishable from previous titles (they’ve even included a map editor) and for the most part it achieves it in a way that Warcraft III didn’t fully pull off. There may only be three main sides, but much more effort has been put into making those sides as diverse as possible, both through giving the civilisations their own unique hero units, and by making the way each side plays and evolves, different.

The Greeks are the easiest to get to grips with, because they play more like the original sides in Age of Kings, and require a balance of all resources to produce buildings and units, and adopt a similar style of gathering and upgrading. The Egyptians take a bit more time to learn, as they don’t need wood for their basic structures, so things like houses, markets and drop sites are free. However they are slower to construct buildings than the other sides, although faster at creating units.

The Norse are probably the most unique side of the three. Their gatherers do just that - gather food. Dwarves can do the same as gatherers, only slower, but they’re very fast at collecting gold. Building structures is left to the military units, which means the Norse will make an awesome rushing side.

Ye Gods!

Rather than opting for multiple civilisations with predetermined strengths and weaknesses, the way a side develops is now reliant on your personal choices to a certain extent.

This is mainly achieved by the introduction of gods and worship. The three main civilisations are divided into three sub-groups, rather like factions. For example, when you play as the Norse you get a choice of your major god of worship, Odin, Thor or Loki. While the Norse as a whole share basic units and buildings, each god comes with their own benefits and powers. So this in effect means there are nine possible civilisations in the game, although they’re not as easily defined as those in Age Of Kings. But it doesn’t stop there. As you advance through the ages you get a choice of several minor gods to worship, which each bring their own advantages. The Norse have nine minor gods in all and with two being unlocked at a time as you advance through each age, although which two you get to choose from will depend on which major god you start with.

It sounds complicated and it is at first, because it's much more of an innovative way of developing your civilisation than before. One of the problems with Age Of Kings, particularly in multiplayer, was that the seasoned player would see what civilisation their opponent was playing and automatically know what units and strengths they had to defend against. In AoM you’re never entirely sure just what you're going to face, which makes multiplayer that much more interesting, and we'll be testing that out fully next month in our online review.

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Ensemble Studios has obviously had a lot of fun developing the godly powers of each deity. The gods you use as your major and minor objects of worship will determine the unique mythical units your side can create, bestow innate benefits to your side such as faster building or cheaper units, and also give you powerful spells that can be activated once in a game. These powers can do widespread damage to units and buildings such as the Meteor Storm power, help benefit your units in battle by channelling them with health or armour, as well as aiding things like speedier farming or faster mining.

A New Age

What AoM does have by the bucketload is an unparalleled sense of atmosphere for an RTS game. This is not so much down to the graphics, which while still head and shoulders above Empire Earth, pale in comparison to Warrior Kings and only really come into their own when there’s loads happening on screen. In the wilderness around your camp, deer, bear and rhinos roam; above birds and bats circle the air, while sharks prowl the surrounding waters and seaweed waves in the shallows.And the detail isn’t just confined to the landscape. Your troops look their best when in the midst of a good battle, and the new 3D engine that Microsoft is so proud of really starting to pay off. Egyptian Sphinxes rear up onto their hind legs, savagely mauling any unfortunate units that come near them with their front claws, Minotaurs and Cyclops toss their enemies through the air, breaking the trees all around them - it’s an impressive sight.

Age Of Mythology contains everything you would expect from an award-winning design team with such an impressive pedigree. I went in expecting good all-round and accessible gameplay, and I got that. But what I didn’t expect, was to be surprised by so many features, and as many a jaded reviewer will tell you, surprise is an all too rare quality to find. The storyline is great, the gaming longevity is endless and there’s an impressive level of detail throughout, from the environments, to the movements of the individual units.

While the visuals in Age Of Mythology might not be up to today’s standard, with games like Warrior Kings and Medieval shining brightly, the gameplay and especially the depth of detail is every bit as entertaining and challenging. Ensemble might not be the kings of RTS anymore, but the genre they helped to pioneer is all the better for Mythology and hopefully you’ll be able to see past the screenshots to the beauty within.

Mything Link

Call On The Gods To Bless You With Storybook Creatures To Fight By Your Side

Mythical units provide some of the game’s strongest and most entertaining features. You gain the ability to build them by accumulating favour points through worshipping the gods. Each side has a different way of doing this; Greeks send their villagers to worship in a temple, Egyptians build monuments to the gods and the Norse gain favour by engaging in hunting and battle. Myth units are very strong and can only really be effectively faced down by heroes. The type of mythical units you create depend on the god you choose to worship, but some of the more interesting include Hydras, which grow more heads the longer they fight and Medusas which turn other units to stone. Combine this with mythical units like the Colossus, Cyclops, giant lions and Minotaurs and battlefields start to look like an explosion in a Ray Harryhausen workshop.

The game that transports players to a time when heroes did battle with monsters of legend and the gods intervened in the affairs of mortals.

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Age of Mythology

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