Banner is created by myself with a screenshot I took in game. All images in this post are my own in game screenshots. For my initial review of my game click here
Sweet completion: All the cheevs
Did you hear that? That was the sound of me putting Age of Mythology on my "100 percented" shelf in my steam library, and honestly it wasn't even a chore to complete them. It feels really good to finally be able to retire this game (mostly) now that Age of Mythology Reold is out, but retire in class and not just leave the game nearly complete just because the remake came out. I'm not an animal.
Which were the hardest? Why?
There are a few achievements that are pretty damn hard to get, the hardest probably being "Play 50 quickmatch battles" and the respective "Play 100 battles" achievements for each game mode. The quickmatch achievement takes FOREVER since the quickmatch que is slow at best, and dead at worse. This took me a long time to finish AND that was well before Retold came out and is likely that this particular achievement is even harder to achieve (but not impossible, apparently many still like that this runs on worse computer specs etc. and has a dedicated base anyway. Pretty wild).
Tips and Tricks: Maximize Match Categories
My tip with these achievements are for when you're grinding out your vs. AI matches or vs. Player matches is to change the match type to the one you need to finish. This isn't that hard but does make the achievement grind a bit more efficient. There are handy achievment guides on steam that can help you streamline this process a bit further, but the easiest one I found to do is the match category change. Makes your casual enjoyment of running matches work towards achievements even if you aren't trying to grind for them, and because of this just enjoying the game had me pretty close to 100 percent even before Retold came out.
The best of AoM: Extended Edition
The BEST of this game was playing with others online, friends (online and IRL), and even against the AI. This game is massively rebalanced in this iteration (and further tuned in Retold) and is actually a blast to play. No more "cheesing" with units that can't be hit by certain nations etc. and requires much more actual RTS active strategy than just "age up and build a cheesey unit" strats. The original campaign and the atlantis campaign are well worth the time and effort to complete, good story and scenario building with great pacing.
The Worse: Server Issues, The Chinese Campaign
The server issues were a pretty bad at times: random desyncs, lag, ping higher than snoop dogg. However it didn't detract too much from the online play, but should be noted if you attempt to play it you may have frustrating games where the client crashes etc. (major bummer I know). The part of the game that isn't redeemable is the Chinese campaign, the story is poorly written and the scenarios are lackluster at best. Truly one of the worst RTS campaigns I've ever played through. It definitely felt like the cobbled together snippets they left on the cutting room floor and stitched them together into a frankenstein monster. I completed it anyway for the achievements but ONLY for that, definitely the one sour point of an otherwise great game. I only hope that if they remake this campaign for retold they also RETELL it.
Talking Tidbits: AoM retold next?
I most certainly will be playing Age of Mythology Retold quite a bit in the future here. I already have played a bit of it since it's release, but I'm currently traveling and not able to actually use my tower than can really run those sort of things so I haven't touched it in a while. It's honestly a blast, the graphics and physics are gorgeous. Building crumble before falling apart and actually appear more damaged as they take damage (not just catch fire). It's AoM extended edition but with 20 more gigabytes to install and cutting edge graphics and physics, all straightforward improvements and a game you will want to add to your RTS library. It does't have ALL the content from AOM yet but they are working on redoing the Chinese campaign as they stated they did not want to to a "remake" of it (likely because it's terrible as I mentioned earlier). I didn't really mention the "Gift of gold" campaign as it's a mini-campaign set in the norselands (very well done, but a bit too short for me to bring myself to call it a "campaign").
