Customer Reviews

Age of Mythology

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I must say, I am thoroughly impressed with Age of Mythology. Though it's certainly not revolutionary to the RTS genre (it plays very similarly to Age of Empires I & II), it is an addictive game that's accessible to amateurs but still rewarding to those that master it. What really stands out about it though, is how polished it is.

Age of Mythology is all about the details. While Age of Empires I & II had very simlar looking units for their many "races", this game really gives the varying units a different look. There are only so many ways you can depict a 0.5 inch spearman on screen, but the developers have nevertheless defined each unit visually. It gets even more impressive with the plethora of colorful myth units. Who knew that a manticore and a chimera would look so very, very different?

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that at least the Greeks actually speak their ancient language (though the single player mode understandably narrates the story in English). Take it from the classics major (I even verified the phrases I didn't know in my lexicon.....yeah....I'm a loser), Ensemble Studios did their homework. We're not talking Thucydides; the statements are really simple phrases basically translating to "that is my purpose" and "especially" and "yes". I have no idea how accurate the Egyptian or Norse game language is, but I have to imagine that they did their best to base them off their ancient languages.

On top of being polished, Age of Mythology is a lot of fun. For fans of the Age of Empires games, you'll be pleased to know you'll still be having a blast with powerful siege weapons and legions of infantry, archers and cavalry. The addition of myth and hero units and of course the wonderful "god powers" does wonders for the gameplay. The old and the new are boiled down into one familiar, intuitive interface.

My largest complaint about Age of Mythology is that the variety between the races. I was nurtured by Starcraft in the beginning of my RTS days, so I have long been accustomed to different "races" holding different advantages. Though there are certainly variety in the "races" strengths as well as units' abilities and look, they are pretty similar (i.e. Greeks have more types of archer units, Norse have the best melee fighters, Egyptians build stronger walls, but all races have archers, melee fighters and as walls). This does tend to force players to strategize more, but I would have liked to see more variety.

Overall, this is a really good game that is really detailed and just a hoot to play. If you're considering getting Age of Empires I or II, waste not your money and get this one instead.

We bought this game for my son's birthday. It was not expensive and sort of a whim purchase. The game out of the box requires Rosetta (it's not a Universal binary), but if you apply the free patch from their website, it will upgrade the game to a Universal binary. This makes the game much more stable and enjoyable to play.

We had purchased Civ IV: Warlords and this game; my son has hardly even touched Civ IV since we bought this.

Please note: Amazon combines reviews for this basic game, the Titans expansion, the Collector's Edition, and the various operating systems all together. This review concerns only the Mac version. It specifically does NOT address the any of the Windows versions, which may indeed be spectacular. In fact, the Mac version might well be spectacular, but after spending time and money, I really can't say since it won't load correctly.

I'd love to play Age of Mythology--it looks fantastic, and I'm an addict for Age of Empires. But after convincing my loved ones to shell out relatively big bucks for it, and opening it with great joy at Christmas, and installing it with wide-eyed anticipation, I was met not with centaurs and pyramids, but only heart-rending despair. Textures didn't load, so I got odd looking polygon characters and buildings in blue and white instead of Gods and Goddesses. Oddly enough, palm tress came out okay.

Must be a faulty install, right? So I de-installed and re-installed...no luck. Surely there's information in the booklet or on the web page? Nope...but there is contact information, only on the web page.

After a short flurry of e-mail--and I must admit, MacSoft's promptness was greatly to be admired--I was told that there's a driver problem with OS 10.2.8, and since it's a driver problem, there's no fix available. MacSoft's suggestion was that I should upgrade my OS to Panther. Of course, that may play havoc with all the other software I currently use.

My suggestion to MacSoft is that they clearly label the fact that Age of Mythology doesn't work with OS 10.2.8 on the product box itself, in the Read-Me file with the installer, and on their webpage. Since OS 10.2.8 is one of the most common upgrades for OS X, to do otherwise treats the customer most poorly. I'm extremely disappointed.

My son is enthralled with this game! He is learning while being entertained. The graphics are exceptional, music is great, situations are complex and challenging and it works on the MAC! What more could we ask for?

I picked this game up cheap and have been playing it on my dual 1.8 G5. It's a fun game, very similar to Warcraft III but it has major crash issues with dual processor machines. There is nothing worse then playing a strategy game for 2 hours to have it crash on you and lose everything. And the sad part is it crashes more then not. Macsoft support is nil, in-fact there is a patch for this game and all three locations linked on the Macsoft webpage to down load the patch are dead. Even for 15 bucks I would have to pass on this game, not worth the crashing and lost time. I am very disappointed they do not put some effort into porting there games to OSX.

We have two kids (age 8 and 10) who really like this game. They have other friends their ages that own it and like it also. Despite it's teen rating, we have felt the game was fine for our kids to play, and it familiarizes them with aspects of mythological beings. While there is warring that goes on, it does not involve guns and thus doesn't seem quite as violent as many of the other teen rated games.

I have a Mac and my wife has a PC. We like to play games together. AOM is one of her favorite PC games, so I bought the Mac version so we could play together. Found several problems with this. The first one is that Mac and PC versions can't be played on the same server. This may be an inherent problem with the programming or it could be because the PC version is several updates ahead of the Mac version. Second, there's been little effort to "Mac" the PC game. For example, the manual and pop-up help instruct you to "right click" in order to do a lot of things, which are actually done by "control" clicking. I've played the PC version of the game as well; even though I'm playing on a high spec machine with my Mac, the game has a sluggish, unresponsive feel on my computer. AOM is a great game, but it feels like MacSoft didn't spend as much time on this one as they should have.

Age of Mythology is the first Age of Empires game I have played. I have really enjoyed the game. it is not difficult at all and time flies while you are playing the game.

I just bought this for my Mac and it is what I loved about the Windows version only better! The graphics are WAY ahead and everything is much more advanced. Nice job but I really wish you could build more than 130 units. Bummer.

As my title says this game is ridiculously fun! As a long time Age of Empires fan I was excited to see that this game was basically Age of Empires with some new tricks up it's sleeves and some interesting change sin game play. The graphics are surprisingly good. Some people have said that the campaign is too short but playing it through on hard it's by no means a short game, as far as I can remember the AOM campaign is longer than those from any of the AOE 3 and expansions packs. If you are a fan of Age of Empires this is definitely a game worth buying!