Age of Wonders 2 is a highly addictive mixture of high-level strategy and detailed tactics.
User Rating: 8.7 | Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne PC
There aren't enough good turn-based games out there, but there is at least one that is superior: "Age of Wonders 2". I found this game to be as challenging, enjoyable, and addictive as my favorite turn-based games of all time: "Civilization" and "Colonization". It has the perfect blend of economics, empire-building, advancement, and fighting that you need to make a great game. This game is loaded with the decisions and trade-offs that make a good strategy game nailbiting. Should I build a few military units to defend my city in the short term against a rush, or should I build up the structures in the city for the long term? Should I research a good battlefield spell, or one that will increase the income generated by my empire? The magic system is excellent too. The wizards in the game have very powerful abilities, but your ability to use them is highly limited. Sometimes you might be only able to cast one or two spells in a turn, but one spell can turn the tide of a battle. Besides cities, there are lots of important strategic points in the game, like magical relay points that extend your domain (which is the only place that you can use magic). Most strategy games of this type don't offer much in the way of tactics. Battles are usually somewhat simple affairs that you don't have much control over. One of the special features that AoW2 has is that you get to play out battles on the battlefield. When a big army of yours tries to capture a city, for example, the view switches to a blow-up of the city, and you command your units one-by-one. The battles are a lot of fun to play out, but you can put them on automatic if you get tired of them. Different units have different strengths and weaknesses, and advantages in certain situations. For instance, when I am attacking an enemy wizard's castle, I have my cannons smash the gate, and then send in the cavalry to race right to the wizard and take him out. Once you figure out how to conduct your units in battle well, you can formulate a high-level strategy for winning them. That is what makes this game such a rare perfect blend of strategy and tactics. The game is somewhat complicated, but it is not tedious because of it. You can pick up general concepts and strategies and then dig deeper after that. That is why AoW2 is such a perfect mix of complexity and playability. The interface could use more hot keys, but other than that, it is great and it makes the game managable. That's another way of saying that this game is highly polished. The game's fantasy setting is very well done. There are a lot of different races, and although some units are somewhat redundant, every race has at least one or two unique units that make it special. Probably, the weakest area of Age of Wonders 2 is the lack of strategic variety between races. Every race gets to build the same city structures, and thus, the strategy for winning hardly changes for each race. The maps are beautifully decked out in bright colors, and the game has some great looking units. The wizard portraits look great as well, but the units are kind of small and lacking in detail. The game doesn't look quite as pretty as say, Warcraft 3, but it still looks great. The music and sound bites for the game are high quality, but what they lack is variety. Lots of different units share the same sound bites, so much that you might get sick of hearing them after a while. Similarly, music for the game is excellent, but the soundtrack isn't very long, so you will hear it loop a lot during the game's 19 scenarios. That is saying a lot, because each scenario in the single player campaign is as much as 10 hours long. That means you will be playing possibly for months before you finish it. Diplomacy is also a somewhat weak link in "Age of Wonders 2", since most of your missions involve defeating one or more wizards, and diplomacy is almost pointless. That's about the only fault that I find in this outstanding game. If you are like me and you have been searching for that great turn-based strategy game, then look no further. Prepare for some sleep deprivation, and break out the munchie foods. You're going to need them. 
