I’ve played very few fantasy turn-based strategy games in my time, Age of Wonders III being one of them. I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to the Age of Wonders series, but I gave it a shot anyways. Turns out, I had quite a bit of fun doing so, even with a complex UI that I couldn’t make any sense of.

Age of Wonders III, being a 4X strategy game, requires you to build up your empire, upgrade your cities/units, research new goodies, and fight against others for world domination. All of the basics are there, so what makes Age of Wonders III unique? Not much, actually. Side from the fact that all of the game’s victory conditions require conquering your enemies in some fashion, no way around it.

I have played enough strategy games to know that AOW3 isn’t much different, but it still manages to hold my interest. Maybe it was the strong emphasis on combat, which is clearly evident whilst playing. Maybe it was how quickly I picked up the basics of the game, which was quite nice. However it may be, AOW3 is certainly not a bad game, but if you already own some sort of alternative, there may not be much here for you. Personally, I prefer Warlock over AOW, but that’s just me.