The campaigns are very well designed, but the fact that Triumph embraces so many fantasy clichés means that I stopped reading most of the dialog after a few scenarios, preferring to focus on the development of my heroes and the power of my armies.įor those who are able to get into the story, there’s a lot of game lore to explore and understand.Īge of Wonders III, somewhat surprisingly, manages to create interesting stories through its random scenarios, where the player has a lot of control over the world he will be fighting in and, more importantly, over the leader of his would-be empire. There are plenty of colorful characters to deal with, a lot of betrayal and high-minded speeches, but there’s nothing here that even approaches the tension that the campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic III generated. Its main purpose is to teach the player how to approach various tactical challenges, how to develop their cities, how to handle their various units and how crucial supporting armies are to a successful advance. The narrative of Age of Wonders III is set in a fantasy world where two big alliances, comprising many races and types of heroes, are facing off against one another in a titanic conflict that encompasses a whole world.

Since then, I have lost plenty of battles, especially when I failed to carefully prepare for them, have won more, have discovered how important solid spell use is and have gained an all new appreciation for the way Age of Wonders III treats the turn-based strategy genre.

I learned a valuable lesson about the core concepts behind Age of Wonders III at that point and I instantly felt that this was an experience that was able to take the best elements of the past while pushing the genre forward in order to challenge players in new and interesting ways. The first time I suffered defeat was because I though Age of Wonders III was set up as a classic Heroes of Might and Magic title, with two honorable heroes standing facing each other, each with his own assortment of units and spells, with tactics the main element that would decide the fate of the battle.īut the new strategy title from Triumph Studios understands that much of war is decided by placement of armies and by the support they are able to lend each other, which means that my Elf units, capable as they were, had no hope of fighting off the three enemy forces that descended upon them.

Age of wonders 3 elf campaign mission 1