Polygon despite feeling that 'The story feels slightly overcooked' concedes that 'as a tutorial to the random maps. The reviewer's final and admittedly personal verdict: Still, it's a fairly successful return for a game series and style that seemed undeservedly buried.Well hey, in a industry gone mad with RTS and FPS games, that's as much as one can hope for. Of course, being 'weaker' is only relative, and when compared to the superlative, still a high bar to clear. It does all the little things right with its fantasy tactical battles, but it struggles to find its footing on the larger, strategic scale. This is exactly the case with Age of Wonders III.

If either the tactical or strategic side is significantly better than the other, then the weaker half can feel like a distraction from the good bits. IGN for example leads off with For a strategy game, having two distinct modesâ€”a world map and tactical battlesâ€”is a risky move.

The reviews themselves are on the whole generally favorable, though not gushingly so. Perhaps that's because as a self-publisher Triumph doesn't have the press budget of the big houses, but any news is good news. Coming up on the end of its first week, so far the press has been fairly quiet but the first post-release reviews of AoW3 are leaking out.

Age of wonder 3 wiki commonwealth