Age of Mythology Retold Review – I thought fighting with the Gods would be more exciting

I love RTS games, and have considerable hours in numerous other similar titles, such as Cossacks and Iron Harvest. So I jumped at the chance to play Age of Mythology: Retold, only for it to fall somewhat short. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy and do recommend this game, yet I can’t ignore that every match feels like the one before it.

Let’s break down what makes Age of Mythology: Retold tick, and why, despite having four vastly different factions teaming with pantheons full of interesting Gods, this game came across as rather “samey” before long.

Age of Mythology Retold comes with three campaigns, four factions, and 52 Gods

Age of Mythology: Retold is bursting with content.

There are four factions, each with their own economies, militaries, strategies, and systems. It was super fun diving in and figuring out all the differences and quirks between the Egyptians, Greeks, Norse, and Atlanteans.

This asymmetry in systems makes for interesting fights, as the paths each faction takes to victory are different from each other, providing unique weaknesses and strengths that you can exploit if you know them well enough.

For example, in a skirmish where I played as the Norse (whose systems reward aggression and allow for quick and easy soldiers) against the Atlanteans (who start with expensive yet specialized Citizens and no military), I immediately threw some Berserkers together and rushed the enemy Citizens to seriously stifle their initial resource generation.

This strategy is only viable in Norse and Atlantean match-ups due to the strengths and weaknesses of each faction. It’s always to exploit a faction’s unique weakness in such asymmetrical games.

Upon booting up the game, however, I was blown away with how many Gods are present in Age of Mythology: Retold. Instead of picking a faction, you choose a major God. Each major God has buffs, boons, technologies, and God Powers that are unique to them, and some may even allow the construction of special buildings.

Upon picking a God, you’ll be playing with the associated faction. As you ascend through the ages, you’ll get to pick a minor God for each age, which will come with their own myth units, technologies, and God Power.

Each age for each pantheon will have three (or four for the Norse) minor Gods, but each major God will only have two available to choose from. This makes picking your major God much more important. Not only will you be picking what initial buffs you want, but you’ll also be narrowing down your choice of minor Gods that’ll provide extra assistance and powers.

It’s a wonderful system and experimenting with different major and minor Gods provided me with different strategies and a different army every game, even if I played with the same pantheon and faction.

And to top all this off? Age of Mythology: Retold comes with three campaigns off the bat that you can delve into, each with their own story, setting, and characters.

I know long after this review I’ll be playing these campaigns, as I’m a sucker for RTS campaigns and because these ones are rather enjoyable. I haven’t pushed too deep into any of them, however, as I’ve been having such a fun time playing skirmish matches.

…Well, this has turned out to be such a glowing review so far, yet my introductory paragraph undermines what would otherwise be an overwhelmingly positive tone. What gives?

Despite enjoying every game I’ve played, and despite there being such great differences between the factions and the Gods, each game I’ve played feels like the same one. Allow me to explain.

Different factions, different Gods, same strategy

The factions may have different systems, Gods, and units, but I found myself doing the exact same thing match after match after match.

Every game I sat and gathered resources for a while as I got to the Mythic Age as quickly as I could, and then I built an army and crushed my foes. No matter whether I was Norse or Egyptian, the same process of sitting pretty before gathering a mighty army and going on one crusade to win the game was really the only way to play it.

Most RTS games I’ve played share that same sentiment of building up your economy before fleshing out a military capable of destroying your enemies. And I do know that playing with people is infinitely more interesting than playing with bots. However, I couldn’t help but reminisce on Iron Harvest and how they managed to make the playstyles and strategies between the factions feel so wildly different.

After some reflection, I think I figured it out. The units are virtually all the same in Age of Mythology: Retold. They may look different and be different sizes, but ultimately, the melee units will hack and slash and the ranged units will shoot. Whether I was playing with an army of Cyclopes and Nemean Lions or Minotaurs and Manticores, ultimately I did the same thing. Overproduced them and shoved them into combat.

Myth units will slaughter human units easily, and hero units will have more of a chance but will ultimately fail against a horde of Hydras. It didn’t matter whether my myth units shot beams of sunlight, swung giant battle axes, or mauled their foes, the push was the same.

There are different types of human infantry that are all strong and weak against each other, with counter-units for each type. This system seemed interesting when I first started playing, and I started brainstorming formations and compositions to best deal with my adversaries.

Then I unlocked Anubites and Scorpion Men and never had to produce, let alone worry about, human units ever again. In all the games that followed, I relied solely on myth units because they’re just that strong. And when units are that strong, you stop paying attention to the minuscule differences between them.

I began choosing my minor Gods based on the technologies they’d give me and how cool the myth unit they unlocked would be. After all, I’d amass the same blob of mythical nightmares and win later on, anyway.

This became a stark disappointment, and suddenly, every single game no matter the faction or Gods that I picked was devoid of excitement. Each game was still fun, but not necessarily exciting.

I can’t help but compare this game to Iron Harvest. Despite working with so much less, Iron Harvest manages to make every single firefight, assault, and siege intense and exciting. Every mech is fundamentally different, from the weapons they wield to their attack patterns and speeds. Every match-up needs to be carefully planned, or else your armada of mechs will be reduced to bolts even by mere humans.

And that is what Age of Mythology: Retold is missing. Genuine variation that’s more than aesthetic and slight stat differences. It doesn’t really matter whether the economy systems are different if the main meat of the game, the combat, feels the same no matter what myth units you’re using.

There is so much room for exciting variation. You’re working with creatures of legend. Each monster you can field has stories wrapped around them, and yet they’ve been boiled down, mechanically, to stronger human units. It’s a shame and a missed opportunity that bugs me.

Age of Mythology Retold still presents a fun time, even if it’s not as exciting as it could be

Age of Mythology: Retold is, at the end of the day, a remake of a classic game from an older time. They’ve done a fantastic job of remaking this game, and returning and new fans are sure to find lots of fun in it.

Despite me pining over what could have been, I understand that implementing such a drastic change would change the identity of Age of Mythology, which is ultimately a dudes-on-a-map war game that presents stunning battles of mythological warfare. If this is what you’re here for, that’s what you’ll get.

My qualms aside, building up a roster of myth units and sending them charging over to do battle with other myth units was always fun, which is a different metric to exciting. And popping off God Powers in the middle of a bout feels good.

Besides, I was only playing against bots the entire time. If you’re playing with others that know the game inside out, the asymmetries between the factions will shine. The Egyptian’s rather limited Favor productions make their Monuments key targets for raids, and the Greek’s worshippers huddled around the Temple make it a prime target for destructive God Powers.

This may seem obvious and may make my previous criticisms of the game feel repetitive and redundant, but I strongly believe that RTS games like this should be inherently interesting, like Iron Harvest, no matter the skill level of the players. I feel like the abundance of units has been approached with a quantity-over-quality mindset when I’d happily settle for fewer units if it meant that each one is interesting and unique in its own right.

Even though I resorted to the same strategy to win every time, I can’t say it wasn’t fun building my economy, ascending the ages, conquering the map, and building my army. I had a lot of fun, and think you will too as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into.