Intro:

Age of Wonders III is a sequel to the series, having not played the previous games, I can’t compare it to them. Though the game has a bit of Civilization, Heroes: Might and Magic and some RPG like elements.

What I mean by those is that the game lets you create the empire/leader you wish to have those include:

• Class
• Species
• Gender
• Traits

These materials help create your empire and leader on how you wish to conquer each of Age of Wonders III world maps that; can also be customizable from the amount of treasures and mobs present to how much of a type of terrain. Even if the world map is mostly a volcanic place but you want to whole world to be Frozen you can do that if your traits correspond to being able to make the lands arctic.

If the world is corrupted you can cleanse it which will put you on the Good Alignment path, making it easier to be friends with people of the same alignment, but that also means those that are on the evil alignment path are going to be your enemies.

Game Story:

At the start of the game you can either go into Single-player Story or Single-player Skirmish.  The latter means you make up a story as the game proceeds with the empire and character you’ve created or chose from a preset before starting the skirmish.

Now the story modes has you choosing from two vanilla (“The Elven Court” & “The Commonwealth”) stories and two DLC (“Eternal Lords” & “Golden Realms”) based stories, each unique in its own way and each having a story to tell and show you a world of wonders (pun intended).

Scale:

• Great
• Good
• Decent
• Not bad
• Bad
• Nope

Game: Overall – Good

• Graphic: Good
• Sound: Good
• AI: Decent
• Gameplay: Good
• Modding: Decent

Details:

• Graphics
  Graphically speaking the game is good, visually aesthetic and pleasing to look at for long periods of time.  I suppose the latter depends what kind of Empire you chose – being an Arctic Empire and staring at the white abyss can be too much for people that don’t like that look. Then again you wouldn’t be playing with that if you didn’t like it.  Each kind of Empire has their own unique look depending on how they chose their traits to be. A Druid will have a very green area filled with forests where as a Necromancer will have a very barren and desolate maybe even corrupted land.  The micro-managed battles look very good when using spells or sending soldiers to fight.  Those same or other magics that are Empire-wide or World-wide will also have a visible effect in some cases that looks nice.
• Sound
  The sound I only rank as Good because I’ve had a few times where my sound bugged out and that can be annoying.  Other than that, the sound is great and has good fidelity and detail, for example, when you take an archer unit and order it to shoot at a machine unit (usually made of metal/wood) you can hear the arrows hitting that metal/wood.  It’s not the same sound for every landing attack.
• AI
  The AI of the game acts corresponding to their traits and alignment and so far, I have had no issues with the AI doing something out of the ordinary like they would in a Civilization game. Now it is only ranked Decent because there are some aspects of the AI that could’ve been done better, like if a Good Alignment AI is good that I would expect them to cleanse the land a bit more or an Evil Alignment AI would corrupt.  It could of course also be that I haven’t played enough to be able to see that develop and since I’ve always been either an Arctic or Temperate Empire I would’ve reshaped the land per my own traits.
• Gameplay
  Gameplay wise the game is easy to understand and get into, although I am still having an issue with combat mechanics, but that’s mostly due to my part of not doing much combat in the game. Other than that, the gameplay is well done.  Research is required to do anything in the game but if you focus like a maniac on knowledge like I’ve always done, you learn everything so fast that by the time you am in mid game you have all the spells, buildings etc. that are within your traits.  An awesome mechanic I’ve liked in the game that besides being able to craft your own gear for your heroes/leader you can also do world quests, well… they are called empire quests but since all empires participate, I find it more appropriate to call them world quests.  Each one of those has a goal and a reward for the first empire to complete that goal which can be anything from a unit to an empire-wide buff.  There are so many more things I could be saying in this clarification of the gameplay, but I will leave that for discovery, I am just giving a “small preview”.
• Modding
  The area is Decent because I’ve looked at some of the mods in the workshop and they look good, but I’ve never personally tried mods in this game since I’ve still yet to finish all the achievements and stories of the game so before that I will stay away from mods.

Conclusion:

This game to me at least is a gem in the rough and worth picking up.  It’s not often I find a game that I like the style of just by looking at it.  This one was one of them and I had it on my wishlist for a while before I decide to say best way to find out if I like it is to try it and I did and I liked it.  If you like(d) the Heroes: Might and Magic series or Civilization series and/or you want some RPG elements in your RTS/TBS games like being able to decide what kind of leader to have or what kind traits you want you empire to have, then this is something you should at least consider.  Speaking from my own point of view, it was not time wasted; it was everything I liked put into one game.