Century Age of Ashes, the protagonist of today’s review, is an intriguing game that suddenly managed to leave us at mouth open. A technically sumptuous product characterized by a very enjoyable gameplay, albeit with some small and inevitable problems related to the type of play. Without getting lost in further talk, let’s go into the details of this thrilling battle between living.
Century Age of Ashes hits the mark: a sumptuous and fulfilling experience
When it comes to free-to-play often refers to games, in some ways, limited in many aspects. It is difficult to remain speechless in front of a game that, basically, almost never gives guarantees of a certain type for the economic return. Century Age of Ashes yes, it is a free-to-play game, but looking at it and above all playing it, the feeling is more that of a game that, if it were paid, could easily cost more than 40 or 50 euros. If you appreciate fantasy creatures, in this case the wyverns, it really is impossible not to be amazed by the final result. An Unreal Engine used not well, very well! Every detail of the creatures on screen is maniacally finished, literally making an impression at times. Usually these are considerations to make talking about the technical side, but we could say that more than graphics it is mainly about Artistic direction. It is not so difficult to obtain graphically stunning results nowadays, we are no longer in 2010 anyway, but the technical component only impresses when the artistic direction is of a certain type. Certainly this is the case with Century Age of Ashes, which has the happiest note of the review in this. Unique fall of style, relatively unimportant, is the to call wyvern dragons, since they have the front legs joined to the wings (while the dragons have the front legs separated).
However, the experience is not all graphics and art direction, given that the focus of Century Age of Ashes is the pvp gameplay, which takes place in very well done arenas at the level of level design. These are authentic battles between knights who drive wyverns. When we first saw this game, we inevitably had some little doubts about the success of the gameplay. It is usually difficult to merge the spectacularity of a high-altitude collision with a enjoyable playability. When you are in flight you don’t just move forward, backward, left or right (or in their intermediate directions), but you have a full-fledged three-dimensional movement, to quote Attack on Titan. It is not at all easy, especially for those who are less experienced players, to get used to and above all to better master the movements in flight while fighting. The boys of Playwing LTD have tried to make the gaming experience as accessible as possible, with automatic aiming of flames for example, but the title is definitely not suitable for everyone. It takes reflexes, eyes wide open and constant concentration on every single detail of the match. One literally wrong choice is enough to be duped by an opponent, especially against more experienced players.
The same feature of automatic aiming is not really a plus point, however, not entirely at least, since it makes it less credible and skill-based a fight. The skill lies almost solely in the knowing how to fly well and flawlessly, while fighting requires less precision. A fight that, however, is not trivial and indeed has its own depth, with three types of attack: fire ball, base blaze, special and ultimate attack (which can be both offensive and empowering). The best types of attacks to use change depending on the distance to the target, our position relative to his and our flight speed. By connecting to the flight itself, the choice of the is wonderful aerial shot based on energy charges, recoverable by flying over energy trails or collecting power-ups around the arena. The feeling sprinting at an enemy or flying away to escape an assault is wonderful, especially using a pad. Finally, it should be noted that in hours and hours of play we never had any form of nausea or similar, so from the point of view of the driveability of the wyvern and the management of the camera, an admirable job has been done.
Technical side and progression
If on the artistic side Century Age of Ashes in this review shone, the pure graphics from a technical point of view it is obviously equally to be applauded. Every particle effect, every detail of the wyverns, every texture, it’s all top notch level and surprisingly, as mentioned above, even in its nature a free-to-play! But in these games the discriminant is always and only one, that is the game progression and the factor microtransactions. From this point of view Century Age of Ashes is without infamy and without praise, it remains enjoyable even by playing it without spending but, inevitably, if you put your hand to your wallet, the growth of your account will accelerate. The gameplay, however, is so much based on skill, at least in flight, that having creatures that are strong enough and not “over the top” can often be enough to take away some satisfactions. It will hardly be a game with a following tournament, therefore in the perspective of just playing it for fun is fine so, also because most of the purchases are mainly about skins.
A small note of merit, however, must be spent on the hatching of the eggs, which is the method of obtaining new wives. They could have made them hatch and grow the puppy with a timer, accelerated with the in-game currency, instead they inserted a goal system. Example: For the next level of pup growth, kill two enemies using the fireball. It seems trivial but it is an extra gem to further centralize everything on the gameplay, on the skill precisely. A nice idea that we really appreciated.
Definitely, Century Age of Ashes Does it deserve to be played? Absolutely yes, above all because we are talking about a free-to-play and therefore you can try it easily, at most you uninstall it without losing anything. We hope rather that in the long run it will not prove to be too prone to microtransactions (for now it would not seem to be), but it is a good sign that after more than a month the user, at least on PC, continues to be particularly active, symptom of a title that works and, consequently, deserves to be promoted with flying colors!
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