Age of Mythology: Retold
- Game mechanics – 90%
- History – 90%
- Music – 90%
- Graphics – 90%
Summary
Age of Mythology: Retold is a clear journey through time, free of pretensions and full of creativity, where gameplay was the most important thing of all. This remaster fully fulfills its role in giving you enough hours of entertainment to not think about another game for months. Despite some glitches here and there, this remaster does its job and will make you believe that the classics will never die.
- Genre: RTS
- Platform: PC
- Release: 09/04/2024
- Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
- Developer: World’s Edge, Forgotten Empires, Tantalus Media, CaptureAge, Virtuos Games
The launch of Age of Mythology: Retold It’s certainly a strange one. Why did it take so long to bring it back? Well, to be honest, the original game still works fine, just look for it in a digital store and you’re bound to find it.
The point is that Age of Mythology: Retold It is one of those very particular cases where the joke is to adapt the game to the most modern equipment because perhaps the original title is no longer compatible or has many conflicts with new processors and screens. And it is not as if Ensamble Studios kept patching its creation.
Now, with the need on the table, we had to get down to work and bring back a game – or series if you prefer – to its former glory when playing on PC was a kind of niche with all its status quo. Today it is only the status, because it has nothing to do with niche. The number of people who play on computers is absurd.
With that in mind, the arrival of Age of Mythology: Retold It makes all the sense in the world and it is an opportunity that should have been taken by Microsoft Studios so that a “new generation” of players can enjoy this work again, although in reality it is those users who will fall for it who already have sore knees and long for those old times who will fall for it.
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Age of Mythology: Retold point by point
A classic with a concept that never gets old
The concept of RTS does not age. Even its continuous evolution and part of its idea lives on in the vast majority of MOBAs that are on the market. But for those of us who do not want to enter that dangerous world, we have the old ones Age of Empires that play the same or, failing that, have some adjustments in their combat mechanics to work better.
The thing about Age of Mythology: Retold It’s basically a remaster of the original game, bringing it into our current era of gaming. It can be argued that the product is the same, however, it has received its important touch-ups which are nice, but they don’t stop it from feeling very old.
The main idea of Age of Mythology: Retold is to keep playing Age of Empiresbut with a twist of “now we have gods in the equation.” Yes, you can play as usual, generating resources, building armies and fighting to the end, but things get really good when you add mythological creatures that change the execution of the strategy. Yes, it’s absurd, but that’s the point.
If the idea worked so well over a decade ago, why wouldn’t it work again? When it was reported that Microsoft Studios was looking to revive this series, people got excited and it was clear that the need was there. Now, from that news to this release, a very good time passed and at least we can say that the wait was worth it.
Quality of life adjustments
Age of Mythology: Retold It falls on a fine line where one side will make you say “this looks old” and the other “it feels so much better. What the heck am I talking about?” Well, it’s simple. The first few minutes of the experience will make you say “this thing is still the same”, but as you play, you’ll notice some changes.
One of those important adjustments is in the use of the powers of the gods. At the time, you could only use them once, but now they are used more often and with a cooldown (or cooldown for the more refined). This greatly adjusts the strategy in combat. But that is just one detail, because there is still much more to attend to.
Another detail of “help” to Age of Mythology: Retold is that your citizens gather resources in a plan-based way. Before, you had to send a small group for gold, others for food and the rest for wood. Now there are options with very marked aspects, such as advancing faster to an era on automatic.
This can be a bit of a contradiction, as it makes the experience easier, even though you don’t fall into a kind of – as they say in your office – micromanagement. The game does feel a bit more agile and clear. In other words, it’s functional in every aspect, which makes it very worthwhile. Thanks to that, it’s worth investing time in.
A more balanced experience
A detail that I really like about Age of Mythology: Retold You do feel the changes. Of course, when “riding a bike” it is something you learn and it sticks in your body’s muscle memory, however, you must consider that when your vehicle improves, you feel the changes.
For example, battles are not only more entertaining, you can tell that the gods are much more flexible and functional. As I mentioned, you can use their abilities on more than one occasion, changing your perception of the game a bit. This should adjust a bit the little or much competitive scene of Age of Mythology: Retoldbecause well, the multiplayer section is always like that.
Age of Mythology: Retold It has a main campaign, which is quite long, plus a couple of separate ones that feel a little shorter, but which fulfill their mission. Its level of replayability is high thanks to the fact that you can adjust the difficulty, so this is a section that will give you a lot of playing time.
The thing is, you can eventually fall into the clutches of multiplayer, which changes your overall view of the game a lot. The balance means that those who already knew where the meta can break will now have to adjust their strategies and thus have a different competition. Of course, when they find the key to how to take advantage of everything new, they will be dominating multiplayer.
Problems here and there
Age of Mythology: Retoldat the time of writing this review, is far from being a perfect remaster that runs like a well-oiled machine. And I’m not referring to the quality of life adjustments that the game itself has, but rather a few bugs here and there that will surely be fixed with some patches.
First of all, there are a lot of audio lags. If you have the game in Spanish – which is not a sin – you will suddenly hear the English voices. There are also some glitches during the game and the physics have tiny, but still noticeable errors. This does not destroy the experience, but it can be annoying after a while.
Reviving these games is not easy, especially since the original files may already be very old. When they are run through the HD rendering machines, they are either not there or someone decides to use an AI to “fix” them, and no matter how many tweaks they make, they just don’t feel as good as new. Surely whoever was in charge of this release took the hard way, but it just didn’t turn out 100% perfect.
The good thing is that despite those small imperfections, Age of Mythology: Retold It works perfectly to keep you entertained for hours, you will even get to the point of “I started playing at 8 and it was 12” and eventually you continue. And come on, the creators of this kind of titles know that you are weak and you will fall into their clutches because it is a very entertaining experience.
Age of Mythology: Retold sometimes feels old, but you get used to it
Microsoft Studios’ RTS games have game mechanics that don’t age, they are well preserved because they are entertaining and addictive. The thing is that the animations and designs feel like they are from another era. Updating these aspects may be unnecessary for some, but others will surely say “this is the same game.”
Age of Mythology: Retold Yes, it has its tweaks without having to abandon the original work, which I personally am very happy about. If you are one of those who have a 1440p monitor, you will find that the gaming experience is perfectly adequate. The character animations sometimes break, but in general they work.
It would have been nice to have some sort of extra in the final product, but there isn’t. This is where the debate begins as to whether this product is better than the “definitive edition” that came out over a decade ago. The answer is very simple: yes it is. Upgrading is the ideal, but if you have any doubts, try using PC Game Pass – because you won’t regret it.
If you’re one of those people who thinks that this game is just one of those products that they sell you again just because Microsoft likes money, let me tell you, you’re not wrong. Bringing back these proven franchises is nothing more than wanting profits, however, it must also be considered that their return is justified when the experience fully meets its objective of entertaining you, even when in the visual presentation we don’t have a perfect or 100% renewed product.
Should you buy Age of Mythology: Retold?
Nostalgia is a factor that sells like tortillas on Monday morning or warm bread fresh from the oven. Like Thanos, it is inevitable. Capitalizing on this factor is a joke and when it is done perfectly, users fall right into the trap, which is not bad. It is a resource that is worth using. Age of Mythology: Retold that’s exactly it.
Age of Mythology: Retold It’s a clear journey through time, free of pretensions and full of creativity, where gameplay was the most important thing of all. This remaster fully fulfills its role in giving you enough hours of entertainment so that you won’t think about playing another game for months. Despite some glitches here and there, this remaster does its job and will make you believe that classics will never die.
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We played Age of Mythology: Retold using a PC code provided by an Xbox representative in our region.
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