Even Real-Time Strategy First-Timers Will Enjoy Age of Mythology: Retold
It’s been 22 years since Ensemble Studios released Age of Mythology, a spin-off to the popular Age of Empires series. The landscape surrounding games—and specifically the real-time strategy genre—has changed greatly in that time, in large part thanks to the dawn of esports. Just this month StarCraft II was an event at the inaugural Esports World Cup, offering a $1 million prize pool. Age of Mythology: Retold, the 2024 remake/remaster from co-developers World’s Edge and Forgotten Empires, aims to bring the title forward in time and earn a place in the competitive esports world, but also provide quality of life updates that can attract a whole new audience. I, as fate would have it, am part of that audience. Prior to picking up Age of Mythology: Retold, I’d never played a real-time strategy game. People who review games are not perfect machines—everybody has their blind spots, whether those are specific franchises or whole genres. For example, I’ve written a review and essay for two different Metroid-style games for Paste, and have never played the genre’s namesake. This lack of expertise should be acknowledged and disclaimed; it also gives the unique opportunity to provide a review for others like myself who are new to the real-time strategy genre.
Age of Mythology: Retold tasks the player with leading a civilization to conquest. Conceptually, it’s not so different from Riskopoly (a medley of the board games Risk and Monopoly—for true sickos only) where economic and militaristic management are key. Villagers can be instructed to gather resources, those can be exchanged for military units, and those can wage war for access to more resources. The moment-to-moment gameplay involves direct management of all units on the field: will your villagers gather food, gold, or lumber? Are you directing a portion of your army to guard them from enemy soldiers? How close are they to the nearest resource storehouse, and should you build one closer to them for faster gains? Uh oh, looks like you diverted too much of your army to protect your villagers and left your eastern flank vulnerable to an enemy ambush! Now you need to replenish your defeated military instead of building that ballista. This pushes back your siege plans, and puts you on the defensive. What should your villagers gather now?
This sounds like a lot to manage at once, and can appear overwhelming. Thankfully, Age of Mythology: Retold makes it incredibly easy to jump in as someone new to the genre. There’s an introductory tutorial, a suggestion to play a specific campaign first, and helpful advice continually given throughout the opening chapters. Villager resource priorities can be auto-assigned according to various game stages, and while this doesn’t seem like something high-level players will utilize, it gives a newer player more time to manage other aspects of their civilization. Most appreciated are the newer, easier difficulty options: players looking for the challenge they faced in 2002 can still find it here, but there are more forgiving options for players looking to dip their toes in.
Age of Mythology: Retold also runs incredibly well, which helps when your focus should be on numerous other things. Throughout my time with the game, there’s only one bug or glitch I encountered: occasionally a villager or army unit would get completely stuck in odd corners of terrain. This was never detrimental—you can delete them from the world with a single click, if need be, and they can be replaced rather quickly—except for when it happened to more valuable units. In one instance, Arkantos (the commanding unit for much of the game) became trapped between a shrine and a cliff face, and though this didn’t ruin my game, I sure missed having a powerful player on the field.
I want to specifically call out something that deserves applause: Age of Mythology: Retold launches with text-to-voice narration turned on by default. For players who wish not to use this feature, it can be turned off in a matter of seconds within the pre-main menu accessibility panel. I personally think this should be the standard. The Last of Us Part II has some of the most accessibility features I’ve seen in a game, bar none—they mean very little if a person that needs them can’t even navigate the menu to turn settings on. The recent Age of Empires releases have also had this on by default, and I hope it continues to trend. It absolutely falls in line with the idea of introducing the game to new audiences.
At the time of writing this review, Steam says I’ve played Age of Mythology: Retold for 6.8 hours. That doesn’t feel right. Since getting a review code last week, I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but consuming content related to this game. My YouTube history is filled with dozens of hours of people streaming the original Age of Mythology. I have 10 browser tabs currently open, all with tips and tricks to ensure victory. It feels like I’ve spent 60+ hours with this game—not a measly 6.8. So what gives? Turns out, I’m not good at Age of Mythology: Retold. About 75% of my playtime has been spent trying to get past the 4th mission in the Fall of the Trident campaign. I’ve read all about build orders, macro and micro resource management, the military unit matchups, and specific guides for this exact mission! I could very likely guide someone through a second-by-second play on how to achieve victory. Despite any of this, I lack the capabilities required to progress further in the campaign.
Dear reader, you’ve certainly seen the 9.2 score by now, and you must be thinking, “Why the hell are they giving it such a high score if they’re so bad at the game? Why review it in the first place?” I want to go back to an earlier point: people who review games are not perfect machines. There are countless games in just as many different genres that play uniquely from each other, and the idea that somebody could be masterful at all of them is silly. A person who knows how to play guitar won’t necessarily be good at banjo just because they look similar and both have strings—it’s a whole different instrument. There may be an underlying understanding of technique that aids the transition, but there’s a reason you’ve never seen Dave Grohl play the banjo. The point remains the same with games and the people who review them. As Rob Rich wrote for Unwinnable, “Let people be bad at games.”
Age of Mythology: Retold earns its 9.2 because it’s just plain fun. Though I quite objectively suck at the game, my losses were never met with frustration. The quick decisions needed for optimum resource gathering tickled the strategic parts of my brain that I don’t get to use all too often. I’ve tried to get into games like Dota 2 and Smite, where game phase objectives change rapidly, but they never quite clicked with me. Here, they did. The loop is clear and fun. It just so happens that I was making all the wrong decisions in my games. I’m a guitarist trying to play the banjo, as it were. I like to think I won’t be alone in this camp—that other real-time strategy newcomers will face the same difficulty I have, but I really think it comes down to my own personal skills. The time I spent watching streams and the browser tabs with tips and guides are an important part of this story. It shows me that Age of Mythology: Retold is fun enough that I had a desire to keep getting better at it, and that others can become very good at it. These are the streamers I watched play the original game, the people who wrote the guides I read, etc. These sickos (written with every manner of affection) have a skill level that I could never hope to achieve, and I’m envious of that. In reality, the only difference between me and them is dedication. Regardless, the point still stands: Age of Mythology: Retold is so much fun that I wish I was winning at it.
There’s an excerpt from Damien Mecheri’s The Works of Fumito Ueda: A Different Perspective on Video Games that I think of often. In analyzing if Ueda’s games are art, Mecheri asks: why would they even want to be considered art? The world of capital-A Art has historically been ruled by those with money and power; those who have enough authority to try and indirectly control the mores of a society through what is deemed socially safe for consumption. At times, these same figures can exhibit reactionary responses to works that challenge their belief systems—more often than not attempting to censor these works outright. Who would I be as a reviewer if I gave Age of Mythology: Retold a bad score, just because I’m not good at it? Especially when it’s as fun as it is. I cannot deny the sickos their joy—the truth is that this game will appeal to them most of all, and they will love the hell out of it. As Earnest Yuen told PC Gamer, “We want to build the game in your head.” Age of Mythology: Retold is very much that game, while being accessible to newcomers. My experience shouldn’t speak to the average beginner’s chance of enjoyment. There are tutorials, guides, and difficulty options. This game is designed for your introduction to real-time strategy games, and it’s designed so you can take it all the way up to the esport level.
I really hope any of this sells you on giving Age of Mythology: Retold a try. I truly believe that this is a well-balanced, engaging experience that’s kind to newer players. If you’ve been intimidated by real-time strategy games in the past, but remain intrigued, this is the game you’ve been waiting to try. It just so happens that it isn’t for me—but if nothing else, I gained a new appreciation for these types of games, and will stay on the lookout to see if World’s Edge and Forgotten Empires are successful in bringing Age of Mythology: Retold to the esports scene. If they are, I’ll be watching those games. See you there, sickos.
Age of Mythology: Retold was developed by World’s Edge and Forgotten Empires and published by Xbox Game Studios. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available for the Xbox Series X|S.
Perry Gottschalk is a Paste intern, thinking about games and the way they make us feel. For more feelings, follow @gottsdamn on Twitter.