I spent a lot of time playing Age of Empires II in my early teen years, and whilst I don’t remember spending a heap of time with Age of Mythology, or many of the latest AOE games for that matter, I quickly remembered why I used to love RTS games in my younger days.
It’s probably pretty evident from the title, but Age of Mythology differs from Empires in the sense that you play as characters that have godly powers, so right from the get-go, it feels a little bit more accessible as you’ve got some pretty over the top powers that can save you when things get too hectic.
In this demo, my main goal was to take down Kronos, with the demo really highlighting that you can go about it a number of ways, taking on camps that are more aggressive with less defensive support, or squads that are less aggressive, but have really strong bases that you need to contend against.
Within this demo, I was able to utilise four god powers, two of which were defensive/healing and two which would bring utter chaos to the world as I knew it. I left the demo super eager to see what other gods and powers there will be in the game, and can’t even begin to imagine how chaotic they’ll get.
Restoration which quickly heals units, building and ships, Bronze which improves the armour of your units and ships, Lightning Storm which causes deadly bolts of lighting to strike an enemy army and Meteor rain which takes out buildings and crushes enemies in its path.
Given this was only a short demo, and it’s been a little while since I’ve had time with an RTS game, I definitely was focused in trying to brute force my way through the demo without a heap of resource building, and I feel I was able to do that thanks to the godly powers which slowly unlocked one by one.
In a brief presentation, we were treated to some comparisons (which you an also see below) which highlighted how the game looked at a much smaller resolution in comparison to how it looks now, and the updated visuals do wonders for bringing this world to life, making the godly powers feel that much more devastating.
The game is launching simultaneously on Xbox as well as PC, which is a big deal, and whilst I didn’t get to play the game with an Xbox controller, admittedly, I was a little daunted walking up to the mouse and keyboard, but I picked it up super easily and was able to make my way through the demo.
As mentioned, given this demo felt like it was designed to show off the godly powers and the visuals, I didn’t really get a huge taste for our resourcing and crafting the perfect army play out, and how accessible that will be to newcomers, but I can really see this being a hit amongst audiences both on console and PC, and why wouldn’t you get amongst it on Game Pass when it launches on September 4th.
The author of this article was flown to the Xbox Games Showcase as a guest of Xbox.
