A change I wish they had made is that they had added more Titans. I would have loved it if, for instance, The Atlanteans summoned their unique Titans, Gaia & Kronos, whereas Oranos got the standard one, if Hades's Titan was Cerberus while Zeus's was Hekatonchires etc.
and not just Titans that are one another's asset swaps. Titans that could be tougher and more powerful takes on the Norse dragon Nidhogg/Níðhöggr, mobile factories / mass summoners, dedicated damage sponges, the IJN Yamato of ancient times...
@@royasturias1784they could do it by giving each one a special ability outside of just a knockback. Like if Kronos had the ability to phase units & buildings out of time in an arc in front of him. Making them impossible to be damaged, while also preventing from doing damage, producing units, researching upgrades and allowing your own units to simply pass through them like they're not even there
Good Review! Played the game a bit during the weekend and I feel like they have done a solid job. As far as I know the team isn't that big and the leap form the original AOM and the technology at the time to what they have done with AOM Retold looks like a step in the right direction. Especially considering what happened to some other games like Warcraft. Although I’m not the biggest fan of the voice acting for Arkantos and Athena I don’t seem to mind it as much as some other people. One of the most important things in my opinion is the editor. We haven’t seen the editor yet but if the editor is good it will keep the community playing for years.
Another thing I really want back is the lore book the game had. Also, we'll be able to check stats through there but the storytelling in it was really good
this is something that happens whenever we try new games. I heard the same point when aoe4 released, on stormgate beta, etc. our eyes just need to adjust and minds need to learn then we are good. also doesn't help that there was a floating water mark bouncing around the whole time.
Have you watched a new player try the original AOM block? Visual clarity is much, much worse there (especially differentiating infantry units), it's just our eyes have trained on it. I think what anomie stated will be the case, and there'll just be an adjustment period.
I’m sad I missed the beta. I’m so excited for this game. Will definitely be getting the premium version with early access. I used to play AOM with my dad (or rather, I started out watching him play it as a kid and annoying him 😂), so I know what I’m getting him for his birthday later this year.
@@ilovesalad2702 They said something about stress tests where people on Steam can play and fill their server as much as possible. I suppose you need the preordered game for this too.
I'd like to add that many of the sound effects, specifically for building damage, archers and melee are so satisfying to listen to. I don't know if they buffed the Norse Ballista to actually do well against units now, but the sound effects really made it feel like they are so much more impactful than in the classic game. I love it.
It's really sad to see that they really used IA for the art, it always looked so unique and in the credits of the titans campaign we saw the hand made atlantian units and it was absolutely amazing. How time changes...
Hand made and real artists will never get old or replace but boy do i agree it is so annoying how we see it left and right lately. Everyone so desperate to be artists but do not want to put the effort to actually become one so a lot of one click gens are coming out from the woodwork cause stealing is easy until they realize that by doing it they actually are stealing for real and not just theorizing, it is a fact. Though i do keep my positive outlook and believe that it will end sooner or later, even now huge companies such as Microsoft and Apple are being judged harshly and they are changing the perspective on gen content, it is not looking bright for generative content and that is honestly a good news.
@@tzoanast1061 sorry what variations? Mythological ones? He didnt have six fingers in any myth that i know of. And if artist can draw five knuckles and thumb, and have it aproved for release of the game then both he and person that have aproved it should lose their job. But no human would do this mistake anyway, its clearly AI. I dont get why some people are still in denial about it
I wish all the major gods had their own Titan, not just the pantheons like Greeks get Cerberus, Egypt’s eagle and Norse giant troll. I wish Zeus got his own Titan, Poseidon gets his own and hades gets his own 😢
@@mooseaom The original gods would be sad if new pantheons would be added while they are forgotten. Imagine not only mythical war, but also mythical economy; what if scarabs could gather gold like dung beattles and roll golden balls of 150 gold alongside villagers, or what if Rocks could just sit with their tent basket on the ground and serve as ox cart for the norse. And may others ideas.
Village Center is PERFECT for custom scenarios! Want to have an allied village help you? Put village center so it looks like a village is helping you and not a second huge town. Want to have a lot of neutral, yet working villages on a map? Just place a few village centers which can be raided and will not leave a "clunky" settlement. For stuff like that it's going to be amazing. I only hope AI will treat it as a TC with villager production and age advancement.
I just don't get it... Can someone explain to me why would they use awful garbage generative way to get their portraits when they already HAD perfect ones that they could use. They literally have the original drawings from the original artist in a large size mind you ( they even had to scale them down when the AoM from 2002 was about to release back then ) it was told in the documentary you can check to this day about "Making of Age of Mythology" So i literally am blown away by the fact they would do this. It really annoys me because everything else is absolutely great and it won't ruin my love and excitement for the full release. BUT OH MY GOD does it annoy me, this gen fest needs to already end, it is so damaging, so anti-creative, anti-human even. Just to think every stroke of a brush went into making the originals and then some lazy dude just goes in and presents them with 1 click favor and gets paid, should honestly already be illegal. If they do not step up and get rid of these and hire a real artist i swear the first mod ever for AOM:Retold will be - Custom "Hand Painted" god portraits. Because even the ones we are getting with Premium package people have some doubts about whether they are upscaled or not, which again makes no sense if they still have the originals that they do not have to upscale if they are literally massive. I am really wondering if the studio actually knows and the artist simply lied to them about saying "Yea i made it" cause i refuse to believe they would willingly do this especially if they claim that it is made by a real artist, so there has to be something weird going on and Microsoft might know more actually. Just frustrating.
I don't see this game's graphics as looking "cartoony" at all. And I find the trend of calling any art style you don't like "cartoony" really bizarre. It happened with AoE4 and it's happened again here. It's especially unhelpful because it makes it hard to criticise when they do something that is _actually_ stylistically a weird fit. Like how the Bronze god power puts literal cartoony stars around your units.
The Ai shit is devastating to hear. I already disliked the god portraits because I feel like they look like generic mobile games. Now it makes sense. Especially dislike what they did to Gaia. She just looks like a league champion now, not like the mother of nature she’s suppose to be
Gameplay-wise I think the game needs some pathfinding fixes before it's ready. The original game's pathfinidng wasn't brilliant by any means but I did have more that a few cases of units getting stuck on gold mines and standing next to enemies without attacking them. I'm excited to see what new metas develop over time as all civs get major game plan changes, especially the Norse.
I also had problems with my villagers standing still with the gold on their heads. Can't tell if it's because a storehouse was too close to the mine or it's something else. But hey it's a beta, hopefully everything will be perfect.
Thanks for the great review. I loved the original and the expansion and plan to pick this game up when it's released. Most of the changes sound like improvements aside from the artwork and the voice actors. Still, the fact that we're getting a re-release is just so awesome.
The overexposure of light and the blank body design in those artworks clearly indicate that they were created by AI. They significantly lower the game's quality and require reworks.
AOE3 DE allow you to choose one of the three UI panels, one being old AOE3 style, the other being mirrored and last being AOE2 style with resources on top (like here) so there is a chance they will add this option to the full release.
Regarding the voice actors, while there are quite a few criticisms I've seen for them (some of which I would agree), you couldn't bring back the entire original cast even if you wanted to. The OG VA for Ajax was found dead of an apparent suicide (I read somewhere his throat was slit so idk if it actually was suicide). So, using the og cast is not fully possible. I guess you could reuse the voicelines but I do think new actors could've been better if they had better direction.
Played for 10 hours would have played more but the beta came out of nowhere so i am surprised i found as much time as I did. I loved playing it, most changes were thoughtful and intentional, like the monument bonuses for egypt giving reasons for non isis players to strategically place their monuments rather than hiding them away is a great change. I also finally got the AoM experience with friends I wanted from EE, but back then it was just unplayable, so I am glad that we now have a second chance with a much better game. I am looking forward to whats next great times ahead for AoM. That being said changes I need to see for it to be perfect is BETTER voice acting or just getting the old voicelines back, right now its insultingly bad especially to those that experienced the greatness of the original, AoM deserves better. The actual oldschool god art not the wierd upscale version they are teasing now. And military que being on by default.
Military queue is available for unranked games and the entire singleplayer. More than enough. I think it's way healthier for more serious AoM to have no military autoqueue (or no autoqueue at all for that matter).
@@derpyhooves7349 AoM always had auto que and thus I see no reason to remove it, if certain people feel this somehow renders the game uncompetitive they are free to compete in any of the other numerous Age of Titles. For me auto que is an essential feature as it remvoes one of biggest hurdles to newer players and even the devs must agree to some extend on this as they kept auto que where it is most important which is villager production.
@@sesleri6457 For the same reasons why it is healthy with every other RTS, including all AoE games, from which AoM came. More granularity in your actions, leading to more skill expression. Noobs don't get to have as good of an army (and with autoworkers as good of an eco) as really skilled players that way. Another thing is self-expression and differentiation. In games like Starcraft 1 and 2 you can cover the names of a handful players that you have watched play, and guess who they are just by the way they play and which tasks they choose to prioritize. No auto production (again, preferably remove worker auto too) also makes every bit of macro more deliberate. It's actually really fun to make production decisions for yourself, as was said in the review "it makes you think". It also makes games more fun and scrappy as players stay in the early-mid game longer, though some players do prefer to just get into the late game. It only sounds like a scary design choice to you because you are used to autoqueue, but trust me, you will get used to manual production without too much trouble.
@@sesleri6457 I just thought of a decent visualization for what I mean. Playing against a less skilled player who was access to all manners of mechanical crutches (even if you have them too) feels like kickboxing an amateur who has padded armor (even if you have it too). Any extra hit you get in via your movement, spacing, timing etc. is curbed by the padding it strikes. Your opponent in this example is worse in every way, and even though you will clearly win, the fight becomes awkward and your skill expression loses some of its value because the damage it deals gets dampened. When you outmultitask, outmicro or outposition somebody succesfully, or just apply a ton of pressure to them, you start to see the cracks in their play form in front of your eyes. The first thing that goes down the drain is their macro. Same when you struggle against their pressure. This is a really fundamental sinkhole that makes competitive games way more intriguing and interactive, because anything you use to throw your opponent can make them lose their grip on the game. And enduring against that and continuing to do everything well is a skill of its own.
Age of Mythology is the game that got me into RTS as a kid, I'm hugely nostalgic for it. I wish they would clean slate, take the IP, and make a sequel game. But this is better than nothing.
Many of the changes to the gameplay, QoL and graphics have overall been a net positive. But the campaign, the voice acting in particular, leaves a LOT to be desired I genuinely can't tell if the new voices are placeholders, AI generated or if they are close to the final version because they sound.so.FLAT!!! The accents are totally fine, even appreciated, but the actors take these unnaturally long pauses between certain lines, lines that used to be read as intentionally sarcastic, joking, angry etc. are now being played completely straight and it just makes it all sound much more boring. Sure, the cheesiness is gone, but not only did that add to the charm, it was *memorable* From what I've heard thus far, Ajax and Agamemnon are the best. Because you can tell, like the original VAs, they are having a TON of fun playing these braggadocious/overconfident characters. Arkantos is "fine" The voice actor does a good enough job with what direction he's being given, but I feel like he might have been misscast alltogether. As he sounds almost too young to play an admiral on the cusp of retirement and he doesn't really give off the same confidence the original does. As tongue-and-cheek as it was sometimes. Athena almost sounds bored. She doesn't give off the same quiet wisdom as the original. She does do a soft, whispery voice similar to the original briefly which shows that she CAN emulate it but isn't being directed to. Said soft voice just gave the original that mysterious aura, as if Arkantos really was talking to a godly being and one who knows much more than what she is allowed to say. And Kamos, oh man, they did him dirty cause he sounds AWFUL! He genuinely sounds goofy, like a saturday morning cartoon villain; whereas the original sounded kind of intimidating and more akin to what you'd expect from a freaking Minotaur. This SERIOUSLY makes me worried about what they did to Amanra, Kemsyt, Gargarensis, Adult Kastor and ,of course, the hillarious General Malegious. Really hope they didn't change much of the campaign so that we can freely switch back to the old voices. And if there aren't any changes, that does make me wonder, why change the voices *at all?* And the major god artworks are honestly , mostly, a downgrade of the originals. Also not a big fan of Kronos's redesign. It just looks less distinct/unique than the original
You could summon all campaign heroes via cheat to hear their new voice lines. I don't want to tell you too much, but if you didn't like Arkantos... Better be prepared for Amanra.
@@ikosaeder3625 Oh, good lord, what did they do to our girl? :< And if Kamos is anything to go by, I don't even WANNA know what they did to Kemsyt and Gargarensis...
i'm a single player i relaly hope they ad the diffrent personalities with the Ai at skirmish now you only have atacker and defender but you also had the builder agressor and protector in age of mythology all with different playstyles
Well done, covered the important things. I'm also a little underwhelmed by the new voice actors. I guess they are trying to be more authentic, but a lot of the charm and nostalgia is sacrificed.
Not using AQ as a barrier to "being good" is an odd argument. It is a tedious thing to micro these sort of things. There is a reason why fundamental mechanics change. I should be able to focus on how my economy grows, not on keeping a mental timer going so I can click a button at regular intervals.
Not mentioned here, but I believe god powers used more than once also increase in favour price. So more efficient use of your god powers, still emphasize good play.
I really enjoyed playing the beta. Was blown away back then when i played the original game for the first time. I would like to see an option to use the old unitcards / god pictures AND most important, the old soundtrack. Those songs were incredible, not only soundtrack, it was music. It sounded more authentic and real then the new remake... the new sounds artificial and made up, the old one fits this game way more than the remakes.
Moose i absolutely loved the content you've put up of Retold so far, you really gave it your all and it shows with your initial statement at the start of the video lol. I have a question tho, how do you autoqueue eco units? I haven't figured it out
Thanks for this, I thought they'd taken it out! The postgame villager counts for some of my 1v1s were an embarrassing show of how much I have come to rely on eco autoqueue 😅
While the move for new voice actors is disappointing, we don't know how the full-fledged campaign is going to shape out just yet. Retold at one point on the Steam Store page, advertised "50 campaign missions"; as it currently stands, Fall of the Trident has 32, The New Atlantis has 12, and Golden Gift has 4, so a total of 48. Therefore, inevitably, totally new dialog is involved somewhere, whether exclusively with two potentially brand-new missions, or whether tweaks to other missions throughout may be involved (perhaps a good chance, seeing the extent of some of these mission redesigns the beta showed off). My point being, if there is indeed totally new dialog, totally new voice actors were needed. Unfortunately, the original English VA for Ajax passed away I think a year or two after The Titans released; as far as the rest, the best I can gather is that most of them have since retired. Of course, I don't fully know what's going on behind the scenes where perhaps, best case, a complication prevented the original dialog recordings from being re-used; or worst case, the devs strictly decided to reinvent the wheel, breaking what wasn't broken to begin with. Either way, I'd totally grab a mod for the original campaign voice acting, even if it conflicts with some totally fresh dialog/content.
There is a really good chance that the use of AI was only for the closed beta and the human designs will be ready when the game is released (I hope so at least, but it’s been seen for other games)
You can't. Village Centers also don't contribute to your pop cap, only town centers built on settlements do. They also don't fire arrows by default, only when garrisoned. Basically they're very much meant as a support building, not a TC replacement.
Interesting that you point out the radius of the Isis god power blocking tech. Because yeah it's there and that's great! But it's also _missing_ the ability to see what the range of the Isis-block is when the monument is empowered. Which hopefully is just a small missed feature which they'll add in before release.
The UI is amazing as someone who plays the other age games as well. It’s much more consistent between the other games which will make it easier for new players.
It feels like a transition to AOE 2 mechanics. If I wanted AOE 2, I'd be playing that. Balance was never in my mind for AoM. And I hate the UI. Keep the popups to adds.
Since i love the campaign im a bit concerned it might be not doing justice to the amazing original one, the immersion the voiceactors created was great and with the authentic emotional expressions they made u really involved to the fate of the characters. Just having a greek accent is more accurate but not immersive if not good voice acted, i hope it steps up from what i have seen so far
Looks alright, never played AoM. The only thing I don't like the look of is villagers taking up most of your population, leaving little scope for your military. Maybe I need to play it first to see.
Love the videos Moose!!! The game certainly does more right than wrong and i'll 100% be buying it, but it's far from a slam dunk. The problem I have with remastered games is the progressive "juvenilisation" of characters and animation as you mentioned. This is what the remasters for AOE1/2 did well, but what AOE3 and (its seems) retold is going to fall victim to. I get why they do it, so they can appeal to broader audience before going to market, but it feels belittling to the original artwork. The game looks/feels like AOE3 remastered to me for some reason. I'm probably just speaking from a nostalgia point of view, but I hear others speaking of the same problems. Often how we envision remastered games, and what we end up getting are two completely different things these days. Or i'm just older and not the easily exited kid I used to be. Keep up the good work mate!!
I am 26 and I spend most of my time playing video games. I agree with your comment. I need to stress the fact that I think that graphics ARE important, but its not end all be all type of a situation. Great recent example of this is Company of Heroes 3 whose graphics and feel just clash very hard with CoH1 and CoH2. Some would argue that its due to the setting (e.g. Mediterranean theatre vs East/West Europe). But to me it just feels off. Another one I had issues with was coming to Civ6 from Civ5... I thought it was very weird to go this cartoony/colourful route but over time the graphics grew and me and I like the style a lot.. the game is, for fucks sake, very beautiful and the graphics/aesthetics work. Some people are so vehemently against Civ6 (due to graphics) when in reality Civ6 in its current state is a vastly better game. This brings me to AoM: Retold... and remastered games. Firstly I think we should judge separately sequels and remasters. As that being said I agree with your point about the progressive "juvenalisation" of the game(s). I get that their reasoning is probably to appeal to broader audiences, but isn't the main audience for a remastered game the people who spend hundreds of hours in the old one? The style being cartoony or realistic to a person who never played AOM shouldn't matter. I have no idea anymore..
the ai art is a bummer, and the voice acting is just wrong... i need mods to revert this befor i play the campaign, the only reason i wil buy this :I edit: the pop was 300 total if i dont rember wrong? how much did it incresse? do the little sentres increas the pop?
I icon in the top center of the screen shat shows what age you're in, when you click it, it should click you up to the next age if you have the resources instead of bringing you to the TC.
People are complaining the new graphics are too cartoony? Were they blind when they played the og AOM? It's less cartoony if anything. It's just reading as people complaining for sake of complaining.
Going to feel strange to play AOM on a new canvas but im here for it. I've been playing for 22 years consistently, almost daily. I just hope the stability and netcode are rock solid. I can tolerate gameplay changes but the online bugs (lobby bugs, random crash bugs, sync issues and lag) have made the game borderline unplayable. I can spend 3 hours in a night and sometimes not manage to get a full good game in.
Don't play with randoms then. If one player has a bad computer/connection, everyone suffers equally because they get dumped down to his level. If everyone has an SSD, 60 FPS limit and stable internet, there is no issue with 4v4s.
@@ikosaeder3625 I enjoy playing against randoms. I get bored playing the same people over and over. Its just a wish list that the new version is solid. It sounds like it will be
Yeah, so I played Beta for about 12 hours during the weekend - honestly would be more if we had more than 5 campaign missions to play, since I'm not that much into skirmish. And my review every time is "The game is good. It still need works, there are some pretty serious issues that I hope are fixed - but even if this was the final state of the game, it is still better than EE". I absolutely love how they pretty much re balanced the entire game, and reworked most units, techs and god powers in the game. Makes me actually excited for Chinese pantheon now - if this is the scale of the changes for existing civs, and they say that China is going to get a whole new pantheon? Sounds great. Hopefully the map editor is good, that's an important part of the game for me. And yeah, hopefully they do fix up the UI a bit, give us an option to use non grid hotkeys, align hotkeys with industry standard instead of being different for the sake of being different, and of course how the pathing bugs are fixed. But again - even if this was the final product, I would have no reason to every play EE over Retold - so it does a good job at what it aims to be
Because she supposed to be a purification of Earth and all about her is Trees and grass, Have you ever seen Gaia from Gow of War games or in the real mythology?? She is not supposed to look like a Human in the original AOM game
@@Omega-jg4oq Well she's not supposed to look like Groot either! I've seen fan arts and you can Google up images of Gaia that looks much better than this. She doesn't have to look like a human, but she at least shouldn't look like Groot.
Just an important thing to note: these games are historically inspired, at best, and are actually pure fantasy, at worst. Very little of it is historically accurate. Edit: that picture of Zeus is from a tourist attraction Edit2: that's such a weird auto queue system. Either have it for everything or don't have it. Yes, it has warped the AOM competitive metagame around it, but it's also what makes aom unique and it plays more like starcraft than other age games. Very optimized and fast paced. Humans can achieve what auto queue can do, but having auto queue means you get to focus on other things. Edit3: good hunting dogs change, aside from it being unbalanced, the early game was too fast, especially with atlanteans Edit4: great god power change, age of mythology actually didn't have enough mythology in it for me. Favor was one of those things you get for a particular upgrade and that's it.
Regarding auto queue. I think it should be in ranked, but it should produce units about 12% slower. I think people should be rewarded for macro managing well and having people who want to opt out of that only get punished by a small margin is fair. Producing villagers 12% slower means little (sometimes nothing, when the opponent forgets to produce villagers) in low to mid elo games, where auto queue will matter to most people.
Did anyone else have issue with reading the text when hovering over the build or research icons on console? It was like, 5 pt, and I couldn't update it anywhere.
the generic AI looking artwork is the biggest deal breaker for me, some of the god portraits look like something out of a moba. The artwork of the different gods in the 1st one is so iconic.
sorry, I missed a few things out. I prefer it to the wonder starting a 10 min countdown but the cost is so high! The free titan gates and myth unit power increase are great
@@mooseaom no worries at all. I was definitely just curious to hear your opinion. I find it really breaks what used to just b mythic age stalemates after everyone is out of god powers and Titans are dead. Awesome video can’t wait to see more retold content!
I enjoyed the game, but struggled with what I supposed to do. The tutorial is too superficial, only teaching you how to move units and attack. So i struggled with mechanics like age up, or acquiring favor. There needs to be a better tutorial, game is complex.
What's wrong with mythic age? And the auto economy is actually a step down from legacy, at least on ranked. The reusable god powers were one of the biggest things many people were looking forward to. Even so, their Favor costs ramp up a lot so the most powerful ones aren't gonna be used much more than once in competitive play.
Lol just don't buy/refund it at this point And there's no reason you can't like mythic age and reusable god power XDDD wonder are finally useful and not for a toxic boring and unfun victory Only use 1 time each power were absolutely boring and useless. We are supposed be hard follower of our god! economy auto just disable it in the option
They use AI art, lie about it, then paywall the original art behind the premium edition. Doesn't bode well for the future of this game. I was gonna preorder the premium edition but not anymore, I'll wait untill the modders fix it.
Cause people like to shit on AI for no good reason, even though it can already make perfectly usable content. It will always be 'bad' for these luddites that don't see we are getting decent art and voice acting in most indie games now because of reduced costs. But a triple A game did it too? Whatever, ttey look decent enough and we'll have the original art anyway. Plus, all the other new changes are great, especially the completely remade soundtrack.
@@Raulikien no good reason? Oh boy how lost you are. There are insanely good reasons regarding copyrights, personal data safety, plagiarism, work ethics, lack of intent and then more. People like you think this is _only_ about the looks and you can not be further from the truth.
The reusable use of abilities like the Son of Osiris or Nidhegg is a clear imbalance and looks strange, I hope the developers will remove the possibility of multiple use for some divine abilities.
The reusable god powers were one of the biggest things many people were looking forward to. Even so, their Favor costs ramp up a lot so the most powerful ones aren't gonna be used much more than once in competitive play.
