Age of Mythology: Retold

Written by Elliot Hilderbrand on 8/28/2024 for XSX  

My first experience with a Real-Time-Strategy game was on the Nintendo 64. Yes, they made a RTS for the Nintendo 64. It was terrible. It was amazing. I sunk hours upon hours into it. I hated every second. Truly, I didn’t know any better. I was enamored by the concept and gameplay. I built massive armies to attack my friend, who was trying to do the same to me. It is easily still one of the best gaming memories I have. I then discovered you can play them on the PC. That was the start of my PC gaming career. Once I learned I didn’t have to use a controller but could use the far superior mouse and keyboard, I never looked back.

I stuck mainly with the popular mainline titles in my youth, such as Blizzard titles and the Command and Conquer series; I still dream about those Red Alert cutscenes. Glorious to a teenage boy.  Because of that I never got into Age of Mythology. I don’t think I can be blamed for that; it was originally released the same year as Warcraft III. So when the chance to play Age of Mythology: Retold came up, I felt I owed it to myself to check out another title from 2002 brought into the world of 2024. No matter how much changes, it sometimes still stays the same, in both good and bad ways.

First the bad. Turning the game on for the first time felt like the RTS titles of my youth. I chose to play the tutorial because that’s what you need to do, I knew nothing of the systems. The tutorial here is a joke. Maybe lasting five minutes, and it teaches you how to move troops and attack, and nothing else. No building, no maintaining your troops and units, nothing. There is a little story thrown in that helps, I guess. If you have ever played an RTS title, you already know how to move troops. They don’t even talk about how to have a troop patrol, just how to move and attack. Basic beyond basic. I was beginning to feel like this was going to play out a lot like a few of the other remastered RTS titles that have come out.

I load up the main campaign, and, in the beginning, it feels more of the same. I’m defending my base of Atlantis against attacks from giant octopi and some other invading forces. I’m having fun, but it is a limited type of fun. I can’t build anything yet; I just need to produce more forces. It’s fine. It also feels very easy in the beginning. I don’t know if it’s my age or RTS knowledge that I have that is making me feel this way. Thankfully, the further in I got, the better I felt playing.

I am also struggling with the story. In the first campaign, I’m trying to defend and strengthen Atlantis in addition to locating a missing MacGuffin, which was stolen at the start of the campaign. I have no problem with the story, in fact, it’s solid. The issue lies in the voice acting. Boy, it needs some help. The talking is blocky, and without emotion. Lines feel like they were recorded on the first take; I am immediately taken out of the game whenever someone speaks.

But that is where my hate for Age of Mythology: Retold ends. Now, for the good. Those are all issues I can get over without much problem. Visually, this looks pretty damn good. My PC isn’t running hot enough to play on high-end settings, but the frame rate looks steady, and load times are not terrible. Units look much better than their 2002 counterparts, less blocky, more fluid; everything you are looking for in a remastered title. I also like that I don’t feel like I am managing too much at once. That does change the further in I get, Age of Mythology has a lot of moving parts. The single-player campaign spans multiple eras, and has around 50 missions to play through. While you can play online against opponents, I found the real shine came from the mission-based campaign.

Age of Mythology has hero characters, just like many of the modern RTS titles of today. Back when this was initially released, it was a new practice, something that feels like it is glaring here. Your hero units don’t level up, they are the source of big, powerful moves, and that is about it. I learned that these use to be a one time attack you could use, but now they have added a recharge to them, helping to modernize the game in a small but impactful way. The hero units serve the plot more than anything and provide a nice and powerful attack.

I am a bit amazed at how balanced Age of Mythology feels when you think about all the available Pantheons. You can choose to play as the Greeks, Egyptians, Norse, and Atlanteans. And in turn each Pantheon has a handful of god-like powers you can pick from. But then each one has a handful of gods you can choose from, too. A lot of options, and most of them feel and look similar enough that you won’t notice much difference when playing, except for the powers the Pantheons have. That makes playing feel balanced.

My biggest gripe with Age of Mytholgy: Retold is that the game feels like it was released in 2002, which, oddly enough, was precisely when this first came out. But there are enough old and new-school vibes here that everyone can get into. No genre-defining changes are made here, just solid gameplay and a story that is engaging enough to witness if you can get past the voice acting. I didn’t mess with the map editor, that was a path I know can really make this a must-purchase for some. It looks thorough and time-consuming in ways a younger me would have loved. Age of Mythology: Retold holds up, with a few hiccups that can be excused without much effort.