Age of Empires: Mythologies

What's next? Age of Mythology: Empire?

When it came time for me to play Age of Mythology, an Age of Empires game where the stories and legends of the ancient world form the basis of inspiration for the units and gameplay, rather than the actual history of the period, I would ultimately conclude that the game was alright. Worth a play, but it was largely interchangeable with any other Age of Empires I had played before it.

But now there's another one, this time Age of Empires: Mythologies, on the Nintendo DS. Is this an Age of Empires game or an Age of Mythologies title? Is this a merging of the two? How would that even work? And on a handheld? You must be mad.

Well, I'm mad enough to take on a 1001 games list just to see if I could, and now that the Internet is finally stable enough to write something about these games, it's time to find out what on Earth is going on here.

Fun Times

Mythologies follows the tales of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Norse of old. I sort of complained during Age of Mythology that I'd spent tens of hours in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt in Assassin's Creed recently, and when and if Assassin's Creed Valhalla comes out of the Epic Games store, providing my ageing rig can run it, I'll likely be spending a load more time in that setting as well.

This is basically my way of saying that I prefer the gameplay of Assassin's Creed to Age of Empires, but someone, somewhere, said that Mythologies was a little like Advance Wars. Huh. Now I'm interested...

This is the opening to the 5th campaign mission for the Ancient Egyptians. I can't play the other two civilizations yet, sadly, and if you're wondering why this isn't the first mission, it's just because of a snafu on my part. A happy accident, as it happens, as you don't really get to see any Age of Empires-esque empire building in the first few missions.

Instead, the main focus seems to be on the combat, where your units will go head-to-head against opposition soldiers, camel riders, giant beetles... you know, the usual threats commonly found in Ancient Egypt.

The limitations of the handheld design turn this real-time strategy game into a turn-based one, where you can select your units, march them around the desert, and engage in probability-based skirmishes where unit type, strength, and terrain all make a difference to the likelihood of your victory.

Giant beetles are pretty deadly for the weakest troops at your command, but if you've a heroic unit like Thutmose here, who is blessed with divine power, suddenly the danger looks much more manageable.

Units will run into the fight on the top screen, looping attack animations playing out and a seemingly random number of enemy (and friendly) units falling over in often humourous fashion, especially if your targets just stand there waiting for your slingers to throw rocks at their heads.

When you're not engaged in a fight, you do have an empire to run and will make use of villagers to construct mills and mines, barracks and shrines, and all kinds of structures to increase your presence in the region. 

Everything runs on food and money, so the more of that you can farm, the better position you'll be in for training new troops or researching new technology.

The game is full of soundbites, rather than speech, and is full of artwork that jumps off the screens. I'm not entirely sure about that cat, though. That's just a little weird, isn't it? Still, the divine abilities it offers us - assuming we pay for them - are abilities that'll make our lives easier, I'm sure.

Not that I make the most of them during my run. Thutmose can inspire all my units to run twice as far, but the cooldown on it is quite lengthy. My other hero, Hatshepsut, can make it rain gold, I think, along with whatever I purchase here.

My enemy sent forth a plague of locusts to wipe out my food production for a turn or two, so these abilities are interesting, but for me, they're low down in the pecking order - perhaps to my peril.

 

Frustrations

It had taken me about an hour to get through the first four missions, serving as a tutorial for moving units, placing buildings and so on, the maps getting larger and larger up to this point. This map was pretty big, and maybe not even anywhere near as big as Mythologies maps will get, I don't know, but I was feeling it.

With nearly 20 units on the field, each one capable of moving on my turn, and my one objective to be 'Destroy the enemy', it was almost inevitable that there would come a point where the game turned into a bit of a slog.

I could of course park my units up and only move the ones that were in the enemy village, blocking the path out into the rest of the desert, but my understanding of a particular units strengths and weaknesses was limited at best, largely because I wasn't all that fussed about the details.

As such, I was throwing literally anything I had against everything in range, no matter what it was. Sphynxes against buildings? Sure, why not. While the enemy had barracks and resources, they had new enemies each turn.

Sure, they didn't start off at full health, but spawning a new enemy on a building meant no attacking the building until the enemy had been defeated, so progress felt really slow. I spent an hour on this mission alone before finally seeing the results.

I can't say they were worth the wait, but this story does need to develop quite a bit. We're just scratching the surface. Strange stuff is going on, we're not sure what or why. Myth's, eh? Why are they so mysterious?

Final Word

After two hours with Age of Empires: Mythologies it was time to drop a save state just in case I came back to it, and that's an interesting question.

On the one hand, you don't get a whole lot back for your investment, certainly not so far, or not in the way I'm playing it. It's repetitive, it's slow, and it's not exactly the greatest piece of entertainment you can find.

On the other hand, this game is quite good indeed. Three campaigns, skirmish battles, multiplayer support, entirely new gameplay thanks to the switch from PC to handheld, art that really does pop, even if you could argue that it's lacking in a bit of style. Age of Empires: Mythologies is something a little bit special.

I like these kinds of turn-based strategy games. A little bit of base building on the side of what is mostly - so far - a game about throwing units into each other as tactically as you can. This scratches some sort of itch, for sure, though it doesn't scratch it fully.

I'm surprised by what I saw, I suppose. I didn't have any idea of what lay ahead, but now I find myself wondering what the next hour might bring. What divine abilities will we learn? What mythical beasts will we fight? How deep is the empire-building side of things?

To stress the point, Age of Empires: Mythologies hasn't knocked my socks off or left my jaw hanging open, but it has got a nod of approval. Dare I say, it's likely to be the first Age of Empires game I return to in the future, not because it's the best of the bunch, but because it's the easier spin-off to entice us simple folk.

Fun Facts

I don't know what it means, but Wikipedia tells me that Hades - King of the Underworld - has no access to Underworld Passage. Chuh, scoff, pfft.

Age of Empires: Mythologies, developed by Griptonite Games, first released in 2008.

Version played: Nintendo DS, 2008, via emulation.