Age of Wonders: Planetfall Review
Xplore, Xpand, Xploit, Xterminate, XCOM.
Do you remember that Family Guy sketch with the car crash? Y’know, the one where the two drivers accidentally mix chocolate and peanut butter right before Officer Reese’s turns up, discovers their fatal creation and shoots them both dead?
Looks like Civilisation and XCOM are about to collide. Luckily, Officer Planetfall is on the case.
This really is a game of two halves, although they complement each other nicely. On the one hand, there’s the familiar Civilization-style 4X layer, in which there’s hex-based land to explore, colonies to expand, resources to exploi… you get the point. Colony management should be fairly familiar to any players of Civilization and the like, as will the diplomatic options available for your interactions with other factions. Here, the land is divided into sectors, each of which contains particular points of interest that boost a colony’s production, research, food or energy levels. You’ll need to manage your need for resources with the territorial boundaries of your neighbours, making and breaking alliances as they suit your needs.
The other half of the game, that which gives Age of Wonders its unique flavour, is in the combat. Rather than simply battering away at the health bar of an army or city, this game invites the player to take part in XCOM-style tactical combat. These can vary hugely in scale, from small woodland skirmishes to enormous city sieges. Combat is definitely the most fun part of the game. It’s definitely for the best, then, that even taking the most peaceful route through a scenario will likely see quite a few encounters taking place. Hostile marauders and independent pirates will provide plenty of action, whether they’re attacking your colonies or simply occupying a resource you really, really want.
Long, complex battles are challenging and exciting, although you always have the option to auto-resolve a battle if you prefer. When confrontation kicks off, all of the squads in neighbouring hexes join the fray, making large battles feel truly epic. A highlight from an early mission saw my forces storming my nemesis’ home base, three of my armies against four of his, plus the city’s defences. This was as long and involved as any of XCOM’s best battles, as I raced to take down the colony’s enormous turrets before they slaughtered my entire army. In the end, my hero slaughtered theirs at the gates of his own kingdom, surrounded by the bodies of nearly seven entire squads.
Each playable faction has its own single-player campaign. These start gently, introducing the important characters in that faction, their goals and their basic units. There are six factions to choose from, along with a few NPC factions. Each is unique and imaginative, calling to mind familiar tropes whilst still bringing something new to the table.
Take the Dvar, for example. Defensively oriented and obsessed with mining, these steampunk dwarves are notable for their long, flowing beards made of gas-mask pipes and cables. Then there’s the Assembly, a race of fleshy cyborgs that are part Borg and part whatever Sid was making in the first Toy Story. The rest are all equally quirky – including, yes, the dinosaur-riding Amazon.
The human Vanguard, the starting race, are pretty straightforward. Most of their units are ranged – riflemen, snipers, tanks and so on, and the majority come with the overwatch ability, providing an easy transition for those of us used to XCOM’s way of doing things. These eventually give way to more exotic psychic and mechanical units as you explore the various races’ tech trees. Each squad is usually led by a hero unit, whose abilities and equipment will define that army’s purpose. Whether they’re best with a sword, a sniper rifle or a tank is ultimately, however, up to you.
There aren’t that many unique unit types available for each faction. Instead, units themselves are highly customisable, using many of the same upgrades as the hero units. Units can be individually equipped with a wide range of upgrades available that provide offensive and defensive bonuses, different damage types and even entirely new abilities to use in the field. This allows for a huge amount of variety, especially once you include the multiple tech trees available to each faction and the ability to recruit units from NPC factions once you reach a certain level of relationship.
I’d like to see some cosmetic customisation added to this, but that’s really picking nits. Overall, age of Wonders: Planetfall offers an enormous amount of player choice, from the expected multiple victory conditions to the individual units in a squad. It can be overwhelming at times.
It’s a good job, then, that the game provides a full campaign for each race, giving you plenty of time to learn their unique quirks. Unlike the traditional 4X skirmish mode which relies on one of several victory conditions being met, these campaign missions have specific objectives. Explore this, capture that, annihilate or befriend them. There are multiple opportunities for player choice throughout the story, from world-shattering events to something as simple as determining your protagonist’s sexuality through a conversation about their ex. Some decisions even have effects that extend to other missions later down the line, something I’ve not seen a 4X strategy attempt before.
If this game consisted entirely of the campaign and nothing else, I’d be satisfied. Of course, it also comes with a fully customisable skirmish mode as well as online, hot seat and asynchronous multiplayer. With that, plus the number of options available per mission, it’s hard to see strategy fans getting bored any time soon. And that’s before the community has even got their hands on the modding tools, which the game proudly supports on its main menu.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall gives me almost everything I need from a 4X game and a turn-based strategy game in one neat package. Both sides could (and doubtless will) be expanded upon, but the overall package as it stands is extremely good at what it does. If you wanted more depth to XCOM’s strategic overworld or more involving combat in Civilization VI, this is the game you’re looking for.
[Reviewed on PC]