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Overall Evaluation:

Sound & Music:

AoM’s musical score is somewhat laid back. In contrast to WarCraft, which is exemplary case of the music enhancing both the story mode and multiplayer games, AoM’s music is “just there”. While the voices are done quite well for the story mode, and the voice acting and dialogue communicate the message effectively, AoM does not have particularly strong music or sound effects.

Graphics:

AoM does a very good job of making units look visually distinct from each other—which is critical because battles can involve dozens of units per side. Likewise, unit upgrades change the way units appear, which is a handy way to determine at a glance what armies both sides are fielding. The same holds true for buildings—as you advance through the ages, the graphics for each building are modernized and updated.

One area where the graphics fail to impress, however, is in the area of god powers. Surprisingly, the majority of god powers are not visually majestic—even though they have tremendous effects on game play. Although a few powers, such as Thoth’s Meteor ability, do look quite good, most of the god powers “look” rather quiet—which is odd for, well, god powers.

On the other, the mythic units are quite impressive looking, and the animation for their special abilities is both appropriate and, in place, humorous. Watching a Norse kraken wrap around and sink ships is quite gratifying. Likewise, watching Ares’ Cyclops pick up and throws human units at each other is downright funny, in a blackly humorous sense.

Controls:

AoM uses the standard RTS point-and-click system. I find that the basic engine works well enough, with the usual assortment of set and customizable hotkeys for constructing units and buildings. However, I have two major reservations about the engine for the game:

1. Setting up your economy requires extensive micromanagement. Typically, you will have 30 or so villagers, each of whom needs to be individually assigned to tasks. This makes “raid” style attacks very effective, as it is a lot of work to set up and run your economy. On the other hand, it is somewhat overwhelming to have to do so much to get your economy “set up”.
2. The unit pathing has serious problems. In the initial release, at least, units ordered to “attack move” will sometimes ignore enemies that are in their visual range, and keep walking—which defeats the point of an attack move. It is downright frustrating to watch your troops walk blithely by while arrows rain down upon their heads. An equally odd problem is that units do not automatically target appropriate enemies—I have had siege units target infantry (against which they are very weak), rather than buildings, for example.

While the overall controls of the game are fairly good, the pathing issues seriously hurt the fun factor of the game. While I am sure that a patch will eventually solve this problem, it is a severe damper on the enjoyability of the game as a whole.

Overall Thoughts:

Age of Mythology is an enjoyable, engaging RTS. The pacing, and the complex resource engine—there are 4 resources (Food, Lumber, Gold, and divine Favour) to manage, make for a very “strategic” (macro, or overall control) game. Age of Mythology, while not as fast-paced as say, WarCraft, yields very satisfying games.

Specific Points of Interest:

1. Very developed resource engine, with 4 resources to manage. Units and buildings typically require multiple resources to construct, which is very involved.
2. A great deal of economic micromanagement, while battles are relatively “hands off”.
3. Comebacks happen—it is entirely possible to “barely hold off” an attack, only to attack somewhere else or make a last-ditch recovery. The game is not “decided” until someone has won.
4. A huge number of technologies and upgrades to research. Deciding between them and choosing when to research what adds a great deal of strategy to the game.
5. Deities and gods add a huge amount of diversity to the game. They also vastly increase the replay value, as god selections change from game to game.

Overall Rating:

70%--for a RTS, pathing problems are intolerable. Once a patch comes out to address this, however, I would up the rating to 85%. A good, solid, methodical game.

Overall Score: 85%