Steam Curator

Age of Wonders 4 is a standard bearer in the 4X genre because of both its competence and its confidence. Its back of the box feature list is one of major adjustments and greater customization among series existing features; rebalancing its genre hybridization by choosing to double down on the hero and RPG mechanics that have always been there.

The result is a sequel that plays like a supercharged version of the leader focused strategy titles that make up its lineage; and also ensure that it’s nearly impossible to put down. It wraps its decisions in an approachable framework; and its friendliness towards genre newcomers is rivaled only by its endless capacity for wonder.

Age of Wonders 4 isn’t defined by what it does but the extent to which it does. Because tying a lot of your strength and decisions behind powerful hero units isn’t exactly new to the series, to 4X, or to strategy in general, and yet Age of Wonders makes it feel new because of how sharply it focuses on it.

That emphasis can be felt right from character creation, where both a hero and the army they lead can be intimately designed down to the smallest of details. Race, culture, and other such decisions are made all the more meaningful not only because of their quantity but their modularity. Sure you can play industrial hardy Tolkien-like dwarves, but those default attributes are merely that: defaults.

You can instead make them mystic seafarers led by a wizard king if you want; hell, feel free to make em a little taller while you’re at it. In another one of my sessions I had crafted a band of zealous imperial Frog men, whose holy fervor had them spreading their religion with a blades edge.

Ownership is the operative word here; the thoroughness of the hero and army building systems all reinforce how unique any one run will be, and how connected you will be to it because it feels like your-own creation.

There’s this general trend within Age of Wonders 4 to take genre strategy tenants and play up their thematic and visual significance. Any time you make minor improvements to your army like poison or flame arrows, you’ll get a brief visual representation of the change.

It’s a waving banner to showcase the games malleability, and is seen most transparently when it comes to race transformations. Both minor and major adjustments to your units will happen mid playthrough, whether by accident when stumbling across a wonder or intentionally by the process of the games magic progression system.

Because the customization does not stop within character creation: every turn that passes is not only filled with the traditional 4X staple of empire expansion, but also with the more intimate progression and transformation of your heroes and units.

A new greatsword for your warrior king is of equal or greater importance to that new mining facility you built next to your throne city, as is your mystic seafaring dwarves ascending into ethereal beings.

It verges on being this emergent storytelling game in its own weird way, the cherry on top of which is elements it borrows from 2019 RPG Wildermyth: successful completion of a run will welcome your hero into a cross-game meta pantheon, from which the game will pull them randomly into future playthroughs as recurring side characters.

Win or lose you also further a cosmetic unlock system which not only acts as a fun bonus for playing the game long term but also just one more modifier for you to visually distinguish your units and make them all the more unique.

It works on levels and grabbed me in ways that this genre typically does not; because despite this series always being strategy with RPG elements… it feels like that balance has been shifted quite a bit so that they’re now both of equal importance.

Because Age of Wonders 4 feels like this playable outreach program designed for RPG fans; and unsurprisingly that’s very intentional. In an interview with the Video game branch within sports illustrated; the game director reveals that ‘role-playing the ruler of a fantasy empire’ was an internal design mantra that influenced near every aspect of the game.

It’s why character customization trumps the series existing lore boundaries, its why there’s some super crazy ability combos that basically throw any semblance of balance out the window, and though not overtly stated, I suspect that’s why its much more approachable than a lot of its peers.

Because Age of Wonders 4 is undoubtedly a game of tremendous depth, but its also one with way more guard rails than I’m used to for this kind of thing. They’re simplifications that were appreciated by me, but I can’t help but wonder what your more explicitly 4X loving thousand hour in Stellaris types would make of them.

Guard rails like the fact that magic progression isn’t picked from an extensive tree, but instead gets dolled out to you piecemeal roguelike style: presenting you with a decision among three options every couple of turns with a ‘spend-for-reroll’ button if you don’t like any of them.

Guard rails like the fact that ending your turn will automatically shift all relevant units into defensive posturing even if you didn’t specify.

Guard rails like the fact that manual and auto battles can be worked in tandem; with the former acting as an appeals process to overturn unfavorable results from the latter.

Couple all that with a low-ish default 3 city soft-cap, and a low-ish default 150 turn cap… it means that unless you specifically push your settings or playstyle in that particular direction, you’ll seldom stumble into a kingdom that’s too fatiguingly big to manage… and even without any history with the genre you’re unlikely to be overwhelmed by choice or complexity.

The sort of ‘do this now’ advisor-like pop ups you’ll get on the right hand side won’t snowball into unwieldy territory, with the frequent flyers just being city production, knowledge production, and whatever emergent-map relevant item that needs your attention: like leveling up a hero, accepting a quest, or settling some sort of dispute.

It’s welcoming in a way that I was not expecting; but it also ensures that doesn’t come at the cost of strategic depth.

Because Age of Wonders 4 is superb: it delivers on its 4X fundamentals with fun customization twists. It venerates your prior playthroughs by weaving them all into a meta-tapestry that brings back old favorites. It marries its strategic decisions to significant visual changes; and its new found focus on modularity even has the added bonus of being mod friendly, coming out the gate with mod support via the Steam workshop.

Its willingness to borrow from other genres and even rebalancing its existing genre mixture makes it feel like something entirely new: something more akin to an RPG-4X than it is a 4X RPG. And though that new distribution may not be for everyone, it’s absolutely for me.