Age of Mythology: Retold review – A classic gets much-needed facelift

Following on from the excellent Age of Empires remasters, World’s Edge is bringing back Age of Mythology, with all-new art, features, and content to give it a polish for the modern generation. 

Originally released in 2002 as an Age of Empires spin-off, Age of Mythology took the timeless real-time strategy gameplay of the series and put a folkloric spin on it. Replacing actual historical elements with mythological ones allowed for greater creative freedom.

It’s now 22 years later and World’s Edge is again partnering with Forgotten Empires to bring back the beloved classic. But does its commitment to the original game’s vision compromise the potential for change?

Key details

• Price: $29.99 | £22.49
• Developer: World’s Edge, Forgotten Empires
• Release Date: August 28th, 2024 (Advanced Access) | September 4th, 2024 (Standard Edition)
• Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PC

Quality of life

As with the earlier Age of Empires remasters, World’s Edge has brought in a lot of quality-of-life improvements to help you micromanage your armies and villagers. For starters, Auto Scout and Villager Priority features are available here as they were in the previous Definitive Editions. 

Auto Scout is a feature that allows an AI to take over your scouts, letting them explore the map for you without any manual input. Meanwhile, Villager Priority automates many of your villager units to prioritize a particular resource. 

Both of these features feel like the most important additions Retold has to offer. It means less time spent micromanaging your villagers and scouts, and more time to focus on building up your cities and armies. While they don’t necessarily take top billing over the improved graphics or AI, they’re certainly features players will come to appreciate the most.

Similarly, managing your armies has also become a lot easier. Pathfinding improvements that came to previous Age games are also present here. Military units can move to their target location much easier and are also a lot smarter when it comes to attacking an enemy army. 

You don’t feel like you need to babysit them as much as you would have in the original game, but that doesn’t mean you can just leave them be. Having an active role in the battles is still crucial here, made better by the God Powers available to you as you advance through the ages.

World’s Edge / Dexerto

Balance

As with the Age series remasters, Retold’s release also includes a massive number of balance changes to the various units, powers, and technologies. 

Choosing a specific god to add to your Pantheon as you level up gives you access to dramatic powers to cast on the battlefield. These powers can either hurt your enemies or help you grow. These were also features in the original Age of Mythology, but they’re completely revamped here.

While they were one-time use in the original game, God Powers can now be used multiple times and cost an increasing number of favor to cast. So while you’ll be able to continually reuse them, the frequency at which you can cast the powers becomes slower and slower as you accumulate a higher favor cost. 

It’s clear World’s Edge wants to make the God Powers more useful for late-game victories. Now, there’s less of a need to preserve powers for when you require them, and are free to reuse them as much as you want, provided you can afford it. It’s quite easily one of the best changes here and is an effective way to modernize it without changing it too dramatically.

Speaking of balance changes, there are plenty of other changes to the technology trees for each civilization. There are countless changes for each unit, from damage to HP, and resource cost to training time. These tweaks range from tiny alterations to fundamentally changing how you approach a civilization.

Aside from each civilization now feeling a lot more balanced in terms of strength, it now means there’ll be a time for series veterans to adjust to the new changes. 

Online PvP gameplay is now a lot more common than it was in 2002, and attention to how balanced the civilizations are is crucial for a game with longevity like Retold. As World’s Edge has done with its other Age remasters, expect more balance changes to come as the meta settles.

World’s Edge

Content

Age of Mythology Retold launches with three campaigns: Fall of the Trident from the original game, alongside The Golden Gift and The New Atlantis which were later added in expansions. These can be played in any order, but they’re organized on the menu screen in release order which makes the most sense to play through.

While I didn’t have enough time to finish the campaigns during the review period, I didn’t notice too many changes in the levels. Most of them play similarly to how they did in the original game, albeit with some small tweaks that hardcore fans will spot immediately. In particular, the new graphics and audio recordings make these worth playing through again.

On the other hand, the Tale of the Dragon campaign does not return here. In fact, most of the content from that expansion does not come back for Retold. There’s no Chinese civilization nor the new units that were added when the DLC was originally released. Given the negative reception of the expansion, it’s clear Microsoft would rather forget about that and instead potentially re-introduce the Chinese pantheon in a future expansion.

World’s Edge

Future

As for what the future holds for Age of Mythology Retold, it’ll largely come down to how the community receives the game. Due to the review process being somewhat limited, there haven’t been a lot of opportunities for me to dive into multiplayer, but I’ll be jumping into online lobbies once the Advanced Access period begins this week.

While not as popular as the mainline Empires games, Mythology has a dedicated community that may migrate over and check out the improvements made to the game. Microsoft’s support for Retold will depend upon how accepted the game is within these circles. Based on feedback, they’ll work with the community to balance and patch the game.

In terms of expansions, two have been confirmed to be coming at some point in the future. These will likely include a new pantheon and a campaign. As Microsoft did with Age of Empires’ definitive editions, the popularity of Retold will tell if more paid content is coming beyond that.

Verdict – 4/5

Similar to how I felt with the Age of Empires remasters, the quality-of-life changes to Age of Mythology Retold are welcome and help refresh it for modern gamers, even if it still does feel like a game stuck in 2002. In reality, I’d love to see a new Mythology game that builds upon the original in the same way Age of Empires 4 did. For now, the new 4k visuals, enhanced sounds, and improved AI make for an incredible reimagining of an old classic.