Despite the many hours I spent in the Age of Empires games back in the day, I never took the dive into the series’ less historical spin-off, Age of Mythology. Maybe this year I’ll finally give it a shot, as the trailer shown at the Xbox Games Showcase makes it look like a goofy good time.
As we found out earlier this year, Age of Mythology: Retold is aiming to go “way beyond” what the definitive editions did for Age of Empires. In addition to the expected graphical improvements and UI tweaks, population limits are up, god powers can trigger more than once per map, and mythic unit powers are now controlled by players rather than automatically firing whenever they’re off cooldown.
I’m looking forward to trying the singleplayer campaign, which casts you as an admiral of Atlantis who has to sail around the territory of the other base factions—which are Greek, Egyptian, and Norse—on the trail of a cyclops. I’ll struggle to not see the Greek gods as their incarnations from Hades, but maybe that’ll lend an extra frisson to beating them up.
I used to be suspicious of historical games going fantastical, but then the Warhammer games became my favorite Total Wars so I guess now I’m down with an Age of Empires where I can fight Poseidon and summon dryads or trolls or mummies.
Age of Mythology: Retold will be out on Steam and Game Pass on September 4. If you fork out some additional drachmas for the Premium Edition or the Premium Upgrade though, you’ll get to play it seven days earlier because that is how things work now.
