The I wanna talk about AoW II threadiii (Suomi)

[Cookie Monster]

Well not in Finnish anyway.

Anybody pick up Age of Wonders II? I'd be interested in hearing from my fellow 'Polytons as I value your opinions deeply.

Let me know if this is a game worthy of picking up or not.

Thanks in advance

[chronocrator]

I'd like to know the same thing, I enjoy HoMM4 quite a bit, how is AoW2 in comparison to it?

Are there any reviews out yet?

BTW is the game out in the US allready, AFAIK it cannot be found on German store shelves yet.

[da_jaymz]

Originally posted by chronocrator
I'd like to know the same thing, I enjoy HoMM4 quite a bit, how is AoW2 in comparison to it?

Are there any reviews out yet?

BTW is the game out in the US allready, AFAIK it cannot be found on German store shelves yet.

AoW is a mix of HoMM, Warlords, MoM and good old Civ.
More of half of those innovations you saw in HoMM4 were already done in the first AoW.
In the second one you got wizards, heroes, 12 different races, you can now build towns and loads of improvements to the game...there's a beta demo on Fileplanet I think, about 100mb...if you're on cable or higher go check it out...I believe the regular demo will be out very soon.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by chronocrator
Are there any reviews out yet?

BTW is the game out in the US allready, AFAIK it cannot be found on German store shelves yet.

There are no reviews out yet but the game is in stores here in the US. I'm waiting for both official and unofficial reviews before I pick this one up.

da_jaymz description of AoW hit the nail right on the head. I have the first AoW and enjoyed it a lot. Hopefully AoW II will be just as fun to play. We shall see.................

[Kassiopeia]

You damn fraud.

[JohnIII]

I didn't enjoy either AoW or HOMMIII as much as HOMMII. That game is so refined.

[SnowFire]

JohnIII: I agree that HOMM3 is not the "perfect" game that Heroes II was in terms of refinement. It did however add a lot of features that I liked (especially map editor style things for story maps), even if it backpedaled in some areas (making you have heroes farm creature dwellings every week so you don't lose them, stupid and annoying), and thus I respect it for that reason.

I got my copy of AOW2 yesterday (had it pre-ordered), but I've been way too busy to play it much. I did play the demo a lot though (which is why I bought it), and I was highly, highly impressed. Unless the campaign sucks, I expect to be impressed with the full game too.

More soon!

[Pythagoras]

So whats new or supposed to be new about AoW 2?

[da_jaymz]

Originally posted by Pythagoras
So whats new or supposed to be new about AoW 2?

get the beta demo and see it for yourself.. http://aow2.godgames.com/demo_download.html

just scroll down...

[SnowFire]

It's AOW with lots of play balance issues corrected and lots of new strategic things to think about. In other words, better.

My one complaint is still that combat can be a bit random. Take 3 catapults, with attacks of 14 and damage of 16 against a target with reasonably good defense... if they get lucky, they can shell out unstoppably painful amounts of punishment. Or you can be almost totally unscathed for 3 rounds of firing.

And oh yes, the plot isn't as good as AOW1 so far. I'm hoping that more will be revealed as I advance.

[Pythagoras]

What about replayability? I had a beef with not being able to do much after the campaign was over. I was hoping to be able to make campaigns (not jsut maps) and/or generate random scenarios/maps?

[SnowFire]

Well, there were no less than 4 endings to the campaign in AOW. But I don't think you can create campaigns as it stands (Except by hand with a series of maps and pre-set carry overs), although I'm told that AOW2Ed was used to create the game.

[Sarxis]

I am downing the demo now.

[da_jaymz]

Final Demo is out now...will be downloading soon

http://gigex.com/gp/gp.asp?PackageId=0050900013&source=05

http://www.shacknews.com/fileshack/dl.x?fname=strategy/aow2/demo/AoW2FinalDemo_RC1.exe

http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/demo.asp?id=3264

[General Ludd]

Well, I've gotten a chance to play it now....

Good game

It basically improves upon the first in every way, and none of the changes are a step backward in my opinion (atleast, not that I have seen so far)

The magic and research part of the game, town managment, andas the combat engine have all been greatly improved, and the races/units have been cleaned up a bit, but no drastic changes. (Although, I haven't gotten a chance to play them all yet)

My only complaints are that it still takes ages for the computer to take their turns on classical mode, and it goes a bit sluggish for me on the larger maps. The new graphics are nice... but I don't think it was enough of an improvement to warrant the higher system requirements.