Age of Mythology: Retold – Divine Return Review

Remakes and remasters of famous brands have a hard time. They are very detailed creations that the community will easily criticize because they do not fully correspond to their ideas. The announcement of Age of Mythology: Retold was a big surprise for many players. However, as the developers showed more of their work, the player community began to look forward to what was to come. And I must admit, the final product is worth it.

• Platform: PC (review), XSX|S
• Release date: 09.04.2024
• Manufacturer: Ensemble Studios, SkyBox Labs, Westlake Interactive
• Genre: RTS
• Czech localization: Yes
• Multiplayer: Yes
• Data for download: 21 GB
• Play time: 40+ hours
• Price: 749 CZK or via Game Pass

Heroes of ancient myths come to life through their stories in Age of Mythology: Retold

Most of us have probably had the opportunity to read at some point in our lives. Greek Fables and Legends or other books based on myths from Greece, Egypt or the Nordic countries. In this work, you have the opportunity to witness legendary battles with your own eyes in three unique campaigns. Campaign The Fall of the Trident The player, as Arkanto, subjugates Troy and fights various creatures from wild tales. For those who don’t like Greece, there is an alternative in the form of the story “The Golden Gift”, which takes you to the North, from where after completing it you can go to restore Atlantis in the third story.

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The individual campaigns are presented to you as missions of varying lengths, always requiring certain objectives to be completed. I must admit that while I don’t really care about the plot in other strategy games, I found the narrative here to be very satisfying, as it simply presented a theme that has been very close to my heart since childhood. Overall, I like the format of individual campaigns more than competing projects, so I had no problem fully immersing myself in all three stories.

However, I can’t help but feel that their potential is not fully exploited. In all scenarios, you simply need to reach a certain point, after which everything is decided, although in front of you there are often still determined enemy forces or even a city that deserves to be properly looted. In fact, from the final stages of individual missions, I got the distinct impression that most of them ended in the best possible way. I would certainly like it if I could, for example, destroy such a Troy by breaking down the gate, and not just look at a box with the inscription victory.

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As for the difficulty of the campaigns, I think they are always adequate for the given difficulty. Once you have completed most of them, you can safely proceed to the multiplayer game, which will test how well you have mastered the possibilities provided by the campaigns and additional scenarios, which is also not bad at all. For those of you who missed Age of Mythology, there are a number of new things compared to the format known from Age of Empires, which you will have to get used to. The most basic of them is that you do not build city centers as you wish, but are rigidly tied to set points on the map. However, this gives you the advantage of getting additional population later on after you can no longer create more houses.

Another factor you’ll notice in the first few minutes is the lack of stone. In the Age of Myths, you simply don’t need stone. Instead, you’ll find divine energy, which each of the four diametrically opposed nations in the game receives in slightly different ways. The Greeks only need to pray, while the Norse generate it through combat – the more blood you spill, the better for you, because you get a lot for this “stuff” in Age of Mythology: Retold. This game takes place in a world where there’s never a shortage of divine intervention.

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However, at the very beginning, there is not much you can do with this divine energy. Its full potential will only be revealed in the following minutes, when you traditionally advance through the “historical” eras and thus gain access to mythical monsters, special abilities related to the gods of your nation, and weapons that can be used to strengthen human warriors. These can be used to poison arrows, improve their armor, or otherwise increase their chances of survival against enemy forces.

In addition to traditional infantry, you also lead monsters from Scandinavian, Egyptian, and Greek legends into battle. Their composition is mostly determined by which gods you choose during the change of eras. Some will give you minotaurs, others – hydras or stone giants. There are really a lot of options, and all of them are brutal enhancements for ordinary people, because each creature has some special abilities, as well as a lifespan that mortals can only envy. In the fight against them, you use other monsters or heroes specially created to execute trolls, cyclops, and other creatures that threaten the common people.

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Don’t forget that battles also have a place for using divine powers, which are a powerful card that can decide the outcome of the battle in your favor. You can count on lightning, locust swarms or earthquakes. Again, each god from the menu gives you different options. However, they all require divine energy after the first use. Clashes are a wonderful manifestation of technological progress. In them, hundreds of fighters fight, trying to decide the outcome of the battle in favor of their side. Then when it comes to cities, you get quality destruction that meets current standards.

In terms of optimization and visual design, I can’t find fault with the set. The game worked and looked very decent. In addition, the controls were enriched with various simplifications and improvements, which I consider a big plus. Units have, for example, the function of automatically performing certain actions, as well as the ability to automatically distribute workers and other gadgets adapted to the controller, which you will encounter during the gameplay. Personally, I stayed with the mouse.

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Age of Mythology Retold is a great example of what legendary returns should look like.

Having conquered a number of juices of varying strengths, I must say that the return of the Age of Mythology brand has been a real success. Age of Mythology: Retold is an improved legend in every way. In this real-time strategy, you can lead three successful campaigns or start a campaign against AI and real players in classic skirmishes. The four-leaf clover factions have retained their uniqueness, so you will experience a unique experience for each of them thanks to special mechanics, basic units and even monsters. The icing on the cake is the unlimited use of spells and the presence of an editor, with which nothing prevents you from creating impressive battles or interesting maps.

However, the AI ​​in and out of missions could be better, and I wouldn’t mind if the missions were more detailed. Fortunately, Age of Mythology: Retold is a rich work in terms of content. However, it does not contain everything that the original version of the full game offered. However, overall it is clear that the creators want to expand it in the long term, which is demonstrated, among other things, by the new Norse god. I hope the authors succeed and give us a bunch of properly balanced gods in the future. Their work definitely deserves to be taken care of.