This is important as the games victory types all require the player to have quite a strong army to either conquer all enemy capitals or defend structures that will be required for 2 of the other victory conditions - in essence it is the same, but the trigger to activate them is different: either by research or by growing large. The strongpoint here is the upgrades to each unit that the player can unlock to define his own style of fighting on the rather small battlefields. The units system is actually good, of course lending to the basis of different established unittypes like Sword+Shield to block of the enemy, Cavalry for breaking through, Pikeniers to prevent Cavalry attack, Range units and Support units for healing or buffing up ones own army or weakening the enemy army. The system around declaring war is okay, penalizing for surprise invading by reducing the rate at which a certain ressource is gathered or grants a bonus in case the war is considered rightful. It offers diplomacy, though the AI doesnt really negotiate but ditcates what it wants for any trade.

The game doesnt look bad, but isnt all shiny neither, it doesnt need to because it isnt a focus point. It crashes quite often (tested on 2 consoles) and when it doesnt the games perfomance degrages drastically with playtime even in the tutorial map up to a point where it seems as if the game has crashed again but then suddenly after about half a minute of a frozen screen with no sound playing it resumes to let the player take action.

It crashes quite often (tested on 2 consoles) and when it doesnt the games My negative critic is bassed on the games perfomance on console. My negative critic is bassed on the games perfomance on console.

Age of wonders 3 review metacritcs