I want to try something Elemental is being inspired of. Being it AoW what would be the best version of it in the opinion of you who played? I think there is AoW, AoWII and AoW:SM in this order of release right? What the best game experience? Gameplay mostly.
Shadow Magic seems to be the undisputed best. Fair warning, in some ways Master of Magic far surpasses it. The game was an attempt, but really missed the boat on a few things.
Aow II is totally obsoleted by SM.
AoW I has the most charm though.
I only played Shadow Magic and it was a blast of a game.
I didn't play AoW but played AoWII and Shadow Magic and Shadow magic gets my vote as the best
I still prefer the original AoW's campaign.
It was brilliant, in many ways. The first mission in the "evil campaign" had you assassinating the elven queen. You had 6 points in the storyline where you could choose different, unique, campaign paths with their own missions. With persistance between the missions, you had a core of heroes that took you through the whole campaign
I played all three games. AOWII was not worth it and was made obsolete by SM. In my opinion, AOW using Warlock's mod, was the best of the three even though the graphics are out dated. I still play AOW while the other two have been removed from my hard drive.
Dannie
AOW Shadow Magic. I still play it several times a month, until of course Stardock has a fantasy turn based game come out . You defintately want to get the fan patch you can get from just about any of the fan sites. I've played all three versions heavily, but SM stands out as the most balanced and repetably playable version IMHO. I was totally addicted to MOM as well, and I agree that game had some superior aspects (finding more spell books springs to mind).
SM magic is fantastic solo, but for a very diffrent game experiance you should try it multiplayer. Over hundreds of games now (seriously I'm afraid) its proven to be stable as a rock and runs on some very old hardware. My winter AOW league is about to kick off in fact, and we often play with 8 players. Our most serious problem is some slow turns from certain individuals . We play on random maps, and it is quite normal for one or two players to loose immediately due to horrible placement. I'm really hoping Stardocks game has turn based multiplayer; there just aren't many fantasy strategy games out there.
Final note: AOW SM is the only game that can make me pause a current game of GC II.
Another vote for Shadow Magic here, and yeah, definitely get the fan patch. There are also some pretty good maps & mods out there to really mix it up a bit.
Thanks for the responses. Let me go off topic, some are talking about Master of Magic, are there patchs of graphical enhacements for it? Be it fan or company. Give me link or title please.
Hello FlyGuy.No, I don't know about any patch to MoM, but when I tried to get it working on my modern system I only got very erratic results...
To fall back on the Age of Wonders question.If you are into mods, scenarios or play-by-email the classic Age of Wonders 1 has provided me with the best experience.
There's a multitude of player-created content out there that's just amazing, with great storytelling perfectly capturing the feel of established settings or creating new worlds. The community is still very much alive over at aow.heavengames.com. Try downloading "The Last Stand Before Destruction" single player map from there, it was the first custom map I ever tried, and the first one ever published, pitting you as the elves against an onslaught of enemies, orc, goblins, dark elves and undead, attacking you from every direction.The experience in that single scenario only never reached its comparsion in either of the sequels.The campaign, too, is one of my favorites in gaming history. No TBS has ever come close to it.
Good luck and I hope you'll tell us which game you decided for,
On vista and with dosbox I can play MoM without any problem.
Anyway AoW 1 was the best, even with it's flaws. It had a more interesting campaign.
Out of the AoW games, Shadow Magic, hands down.
I would say the original Age of Wonder provided the best experience. It was the best atmosphere and best story hands down, with such awesomeness as unit portraits and unit descriptions (admittedly, shadow magic had unit descriptions, but some of them were... stupid. Sorry, but it's true. Just look at High Man Legionaries)
Gameplay-wise, I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me, but both were equally mediocre (sans mods, at least). Clear racial imbalances existed (halflings in Shadow Magic . Dark elves in the first.) Battles were tactical, but got highly repetitive. Extremely cheesy things existed in both games, though supercombatant heroes were removed in the second.
If you don't mind playing with stone age graphics, I highly recommend getting DosBox and trying out Master of Magic.
If you want super modern, get Civ IV with both expansion packs, and download the Fall From Heaven 2 mod. It is incredible.
I know Age of Wonder was a highly regarded game, but I just could never quite get into it. I think my standards were really high from all of the MoM I had played.
I think the first game is the best. Specially the campaign. It was great to be able to carry some troops over, change path and have different endings. The story is simply awesome and moraly ambigous. I love how the Cult of the Storms ins't just the average "badguy" group, but a very moraly ambiguous one. The other games' campaigns never were as good as the first.But Age of Wonders II ins't very good, although Shadow Magic is excellent. I recomend it.
Good choice, I think AOW:SM is the best one, as it is a union of a ll the best things of the past games plus its own addittions.
ARGH!
Like I said on another thread: I tried to get an english version of AOWII: SM for ages to no avail.
OH! At an affordable price, I forgot to mention.
Btw. I managed to get MoM to run on an old WinNT 4.0 Workstation without DosBox once!
I've been wanting to play Shadow Magic for a long time but it runs about 50 bucks for a used copy. I'd love to see gog.com pick it up and offer it for 7 or 10.
On a side note, Triumph Studios has announced they are expanding on their website. Since they've only produced 4 games to date, 3 of which are AoW games, one can only hope another is in the works. I know they are developing an Overlord sequel, but with the current fantasy TBS renaissance occurring right now, I'd be surprised if they weren't in the planning stages already.
That's your (very vague) personal opinion. I totally disagree with it -- an also very vague statement.
"Miss the boat on a few things" : you can say that of any game !
I've recently reinstalled Shadow Magic, with patch 1.4 : no way I'm going back to an old, ugly DOS game (which I played to death, in 1995, when I was an 8-year old.)
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