There’s a rather strange phenomena associated with revisiting games from your childhood. The image in your mind tends not to match the image on-screen. When playing older games again, with the context of modernity, graphics look patchier and stranger, mechanics feel duller, and you begin to wonder how you ever fell in love with a game in the first place. But in the magic of remasters, games of childhood can become the image in your mind’s eye, with a fresh lick of paint updating and upgrading games to better represent your favoured memories. To that end, Age of Mythology: Retold is a brilliant remaster.
This game goes far beyond visual improvements, to make Age of Mythology feel new and fresh for a modern audience. Menus feel much cleaner and easier to navigate, gameplay is streamlined with better organised options for guiding your civilisation (a villager priority system allows them to self-organise for resources), and there’s something incredibly novel about being able to zoom into your settlements, so that every detail is visible.
Changes to the Age of Mythology formula
The base of Age of Mythology remains, and is largely untouched, thanks to ageless game design, leaving the visual and menu improvements to shine outright. In its glittering lakes, grassy hills, and rocky plains, Age of Mythology now looks absolutely gorgeous, and the visuals make building your townscapes all the more satisfying.
Playing through rounds of sandbox mode, I found myself wanting to design my towns better, creating civilisations that were visually appealing, as well as economically viable and ready for war. I will admit I spent too long perfecting my towns in one run, to the point where my opponent was building a Titan Gate before I could reach my final age. At the very least, I did get to marvel at all the lovely tufts of fur on Cerberus before he completely obliterated my army of 40-strong tough guys.
Read: Age of Mythology: Retold aims to be “crazy, chaotic, pure fun”
What remains most satisfying about sandbox mode, as unchanged from the original Age of Mythology is the vast array of options you have to build your settlement, beyond basic design. Choosing your nationality will shape how your towns and citizens look, and it will also determine the array of gods that may favour you, and which Titans you can summon.
As your town grows, you can also pick and choose which gods to worship, providing you with potentially devastating abilities on the battlefield. Unlike the original game, you can actually use these god powers more than once, which is a nice tweak that amps the stakes.
Worshipping Hera in the Mythic Age will let you summon great storms of lightning. Worshipping Hel gives you control over Nidhogg, a fire-breathing dragon with terrifying power. I also particularly enjoyed the gift of Oceanus, which was a giant carnivorous plant that could chomp enemies (although its stationary positioning makes it harder use effectively).
In each run, you can choose new nationalities and new gods, wielding their power in the quest to survive waves of enemy attacks, and overthrow your nearest neighbours. While the difficulty level of the game’s sandbox mode is high at default, the game also presents you with plenty of options for tweaking your experience, and working out the best and most visually impressive ways to defeat your opponents.
Glory in all modes
Beyond sandbox, Age of Mythology: Retold also presents opportunity to play in multiplayer fashion (as long as you’ve got willing players), or work through three set campaigns, inspired by history. These are fully voiced, with ample cutscenes that haul you along hours-long stories.
For those looking to get a bit more flavour from their Age adventures, the three campaigns – Fall of the Trident, The Golden Gift, and The New Atlantis – are solid and satisfying. I particularly enjoyed my time with Fall of the Trident, because rather than hold your hand, it immediately sends an army of Krakens to kill you and your troops in the first scenario. It’s terribly mean, and very fun.
The New Atlantis also has some neat quirks, as this tasks you with migrating your civilisation, moving helpless villagers to a special Sky Passage while defending their right to live. At one point, the game clearly felt sorry for my attempts, as I was sent an army of catapults to help my migration – and that made the scenario even more chaotic, and wonderfully over-the-top.
In either sandbox or campaign modes, which I spent the most time testing, there is wonderful opportunity to grow your flock of heroes and villagers, carving out a worthy civilisation aided by the power of the gods. I’d like to think I did Hel proud in my fights with Nidhogg, and that I paid enough homage to Baldr in deploying my Heroes of Ragnarok soldiers.
I did slightly betray them by homaging other gods in other run throughs, but that’s part of the freedom of Age of Mythology: Retold. You are the overseer of your own destiny, and with neat, well-designed changes to the original game’s mechanics and visuals, leading your flocks is now ever more satisfying.
World’s Edge and Forgotten Empires have done it again with this remaster. After the quality of the Age of Empires remasters, it should come as no surprise – but the balance of old features and new twists is marvellous. Together, they make Age of Mythology: Retold a lovely, worthy remaster perfect for all players – experienced, nostalgic, or otherwise.
Four stars: ★★★★
Age of Mythology: Retold
Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X/S
Developer: World’s Edge, Forgotten Empires
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Release Date: 4 September 2024
A PC code for Age of Mythology: Retold was provided by the publisher and played for the purposes of this review. GamesHub reviews were previously rated on a five-point scale. As of 29 July 2024, they have been rated on a ten-point scale.
