by Kyle Baker
One Gamer's Struggle to Keep Good Gaming Alive
Triumph Studios: Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
This time on Dying Genre I take a look at one of the games that has a special place in my nostalgic heart. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, it was released in 2003 by Triumph Studios and GODGames. This game is easily one of the best fantasy strategy games ever made. I make that claim because it is one of the few titles I regularly pick back up and give another play through.
The game is a turn based strategy that couples unit and resource management with a well designed magic system that was refined from the previous title Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne. In that game you played as the wizard Merlin, (yes, I know, it IS was bad choice on the part of the developers to call the protagonist wizard Merlin.) and he commanded a large number of spells drawn from the different elements of magic; fire, earth, wind, water, life, and death. I already feel like I'm talking in circles, so I'll lay out some Basics,
The Story
Age of Wonders lays out a fantasy world where the elves have controlled most everything throughout existence. The first game takes place after the humans rose up and jealously killed the king of the elves to take their lands for themselves. This splits the remaining elves into two camps, those willing to share their knowledge and lands with humans, and those who want to punish the upstarts for the death of the old king. The former are called 'Elves' and are lead by the queen Julia. The latter are now known as 'Dark Elves' and are lead by her brother Meandor. The first game pits the two against each other as you go to each race and court their aid in the overall conflict. It was much more focused on basic turn based strategy concepts of army building and map control. It was a solid game that I may review in more depth at a later date.
The sequel, Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne, was about the rise to prominence of the wizard class. You play as the young human wizard, Merlin, who is learning the basics of magic, in order to better the world. The game takes you across the world where Merlin masters each element of magic in turn to overcome all of his rivals and usher in a peaceful age of magic to better the lives of everyone.
Now, the ending to that sounds sappy and cliche, I know that. That's why Shadow Magic is my favorite title in the series, because things did not turn out all that well for the wizards, or Merlin for that matter. Overuse of magic has caused rifts to open in the world, and through them horrible creatures called the Shadow Demons appeared. The unity fractured and most blamed the wizards for summoning these horrors and quickly turned on them, driving them into exile. All the while a new human empire quickly rose lead by the xenophobic Phobius. Throughout the game you play as the wizards in exile, each representative of an element of magic, and you must confront both the Phobian Empire and the shadow demons that are quickly destroying the world. By the end of the story all hell has broken loose and each wizard you've played arrive at the enemy capital for one final showdown against the invaders, and well... it was one of the most challenging turn based experiences of my life.
The Races
The game has a large variety of races that you can play as in the campaign and in scenarios, each race has unique units and strengths and weaknesses that promote specific strategies. For example the undead play style is to raze opponents cities then reanimate the ruins creating free undead units to add to your armies. The downside is undead unit are in general weaker than their living counterparts.
The races are:
Archons - a pure good race of humans who are all extremely devout and fanatical
Dwarves - subterranean dwelling machine building small folk
Elves - nature worshiping creatures with an affinity to magic and archery
Halflings - short folk with lots of fey allies like centaurs and faeries
Syrons - a race of spirit beings from beyond, enslaved by the shadow demons
Draconians - dragon men who dwell in mountains and feel superior to other races
Frostlings - imagine tiny Eskimos who have pet yetis.
Humans - numerous, power hungry, and well armed
Nomads - humans who took to being mobile and riding camels
Tigrans - cat people who are experts at being speedy and accurate
Dark Elves - green skinned elves who turned against their own kind
Goblins - small evil race that seeks to cause pain and misery
Orcs - brutal race of powerful warriors who respect only strength
Shadow Demons - a race of ever hungry creatures from a void beyond our world
Undead - humans and other creatures that have been reanimated and seek to end all life
The Magic
The magic system in Age of Wonders has always been well designed, but shadow magic refined the system. Magic is based on the control of five elements of power; Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Life, and Death. Each element has five spell levels, and each wizard can have seven levels of spells. Meaning each wizard can master a complete area of magic and have spheres left over to branch out, this allows the player to customize in interesting ways. Generally I play a Death-Air combo so I can use the animate ruins spells and have all my armies hasted to favor a blitz style of game.
The Combat
Combat comes in two flavors, auto battle and manual battle. The auto resolve system lets your units just slap each other until one side is dead. The manual battle system places your units on a hex board and has you take turns moving and attacking with your troops, simple enough- but each turn your wizard can throw a spell from your wizard's tower to assist the fight, but only if the fight takes place inside your wizards range. This mechanic makes defense much easier than offense, and makes heroes a central part of gameplay since they generate a small area of spell range.
The Wrap Up
Shadow Magic is one of the gems of fantasy games. It was the final Age of Wonders, the most polished of the series with the most difficulty. If you enjoy the genre at all this game deserves a play through.
Overall Score 8/10 - Fantastic game, a gem of the genre
+ Unique factions and magic setups that allow serious customization
+ Smart AI creates a wonderful challenge for the campaign, especially near the end game
Note to the readers,
Hey all, this is my fifth article for the site, [and] I'm having a blast covering the games that shaped me and my tastes. You may have noticed a slowing of my updates- for this I apologize. My writing has slowed due to my work taking over more and more of my free time. Normally I would say I'll get my update schedule worked out shortly, however, the 11th of November will complicate things. The release of Skyrim will most likely claim my life completely for at least a week. So I'll get my next review up near the end of November instead of the middle.
As always I welcome comments and suggestions for game reviews, thanks for reading!
Kyle Baker is a multi-faceted nerd with interests in table top, dice and miniture based gaming, comics, movies and other areas of pop culture. He has been an active gamer for more tha 12 years and runs weekly RPGs with his friends via the internet and from his home. He is married to avid cosplayer, gamer and Comic Relady Kelsey Benoit.
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