Age of Wonders 4
Last updated: 2025-04-05
- Extensive, visually appealing character customization options.
- High freedom and flexible gameplay experiences.
- Engaging, deep, and balanced gameplay overall.
- Active development and meaningful DLC support.
- AI often cheats and is generally inept.
- Repetitive, boring late-game experience.
- Reviews
(sample size) - 2000
- Helpful reviews
- 74%
- Unhelpful reviews
- 24%
- Protest reviews
- 2%
- 82%Helpful reviews with positive sentiment
- 18%Helpful reviews with negative sentiment
- Positive points
- 3390
- Negative points
- 1855
- Gameplay points
- 589
- Perf. points
- 132
- Rec. points
- 979
- Misc points
- 136
| Point | Description | Importance |
|---|---|---|
| Extensive, visually appealing customization | The game offers extensive customization options for factions, races, and leaders, allowing players to create unique and personalized experiences. This high degree of customization significantly enhances replayability, as players can experiment with different combinations and create their own fantasy worlds. The visuals are also appealing, with detailed units and environments. | 97% |
| High freedom and flexible gameplay | The game provides players with a high degree of freedom and flexibility in shaping their gameplay experience. This includes diverse playstyles, strategic choices, and the ability to create unique stories within the game world. The game's mechanics support experimentation and reward creative approaches to gameplay. | 90% |
| Engaging, deep, and balanced gameplay | The game is praised for its engaging gameplay loop, depth, and balance, drawing comparisons to genre-defining titles like Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic. Reviewers appreciate its accessibility, strategic combat, and the way it blends 4X and RPG elements. Many consider it a standout title in the genre, improving upon previous entries in the series. | 87% |
| Active development and meaningful DLC | The developers are dedicated to improving the game through frequent updates and DLC releases, adding meaningful content and features. These additions enhance the game's depth, variety, and replayability, without making the DLC feel essential for enjoyment. The developers also actively listen to community feedback and incorporate it into the game. | 27% |
| Engaging story and Pantheon progression | The game features enjoyable story missions and campaigns that offer multiple endings and encourage experimentation with different playstyles. The Pantheon mechanic adds a sense of progression and long-term motivation, allowing players to retain their equipment, powers, and race modifications when adding leaders to the pantheon. | 19% |
| Creative and strategic magic system | The game's magic system is a standout feature, adding strategic depth and dynamic elements to battles. Players can learn specific magic through tomes, unlocking spells and creating different combinations. The magic system also allows for unit upgrades and transformations, visually reflected on units and heroes. | 15% |
| Well-executed fantasy roleplaying options | The game's fantasy setting and roleplay options are well-executed, allowing players to create and customize factions with creative depth. The ability to design races and combine different troops, magic, and victory styles makes each session unique. The game is praised for its play balancing and the dynamic interactions between created factions. | 13% |
| Immersive audio and high replayability | The game features a thematically coherent and enjoyable soundtrack that complements the gameplay. The audio design effectively pulls players into the fantasy world, enhancing the atmosphere and immersion. The game also offers significant replay value and merges beloved mechanics into a single experience. | 10% |
| Balanced and varied map generation | The game features a map generation system that is now much more balanced, with interesting maps to explore that encourage expansion and discovery. The variety of maps enriches the game's exploration mechanics, with different map designs for new discoveries. The game has improved significantly over the past year, with balance adjustments and helpful features. | 8% |
| Mod support and well-integrated systems | The game has a workshop where many missing elements are available as mods, adding depth to the RPG strategy elements. The reviewer appreciates the complex and well-integrated systems, highlighting the governance mechanic as a solid addition. The reviewer has enjoyed the game's DLCs and purchased the season pass for future content. | 7% |
| Interesting empire-building with replayability | The game has decent replayability with interesting society combinations to try and is intense and concise compared to other Paradox games. The game is an interesting empire-building game with many elements similar to the Civilization games. The game is a worthy successor to the first part, allowing players to realize their potential as a strategist, businessman, and diplomat. | 7% |