Age of Mythology: The Titans Expansion is a well crafted third-person strategy game. In this game, like all third person strategy games, your purpose is to become godlike by raising armies, exploiting local resources, advancing your civilization, and destroying all who oppose you. Age of Mythology: The Titans Expansion is exactly as its title suggests: it is an expansion pack for the popular Age of Mythology game. The expansion features a new story line, new creatures, new campaigns, new heroes, and new warriors. The new story line blends in huge monsters called Titans who have escaped from their prison to wreak havoc. The special purpose of the Titans campaign is to stop these immensely powerful beings from destroying everything in the realms of mythology.
Graphics
The Titans’ artists have given minute detail to the game’s rich graphics. Every object in the game’s landscape has some special decoration that makes it interesting and unique. For example, there is a well in the front of one yard, jars and pots in front of another yard, one house has an open fire pit, another house has a tree, there is a beautiful pond in the middle of the desert, etc. These tiny details make the game’s landscape rich and inviting – I wish I could live in some of those places.
The game’s character models have the same level of detail as the landscape does. For example, on some characters you can see individual chain links on their armor, or small feathers in their hats, or crests on their shirts, etc. There are tons of different cool looking warriors and creatures in the game, so you never tire of the same characters.
Gameplay
People who love third-person strategy games will love this one. In each new campaign, you have to build your civilizations from the bottom up. There are tons of advancements that can be made to your characters and buildings, so players can utilize hundreds of strategies to make their civilization powerful. When your warriors are on the battle field, you quickly see what advancements your warriors lack when they begin to fall.
If this game has one weakness, it is the game’s combat A.I. Every character in your army has their own idea of what to do during a battle; unfortunately, all of these ideas are bad. When you are in the midst of a fever pitched battle, you will see your warriors suddenly wander off as if disinterested in the battle. They will walk over to some villager and start hacking them, or walk over to a house and start attacking it. Meanwhile, the opposing army will maintain its formation and slaughter your scattered army. You have to treat your army like a puppy and continually coax it back in line when it strays.
The game has an excellent A.I. for marching units. You can select hundreds of warriors at once and have one huge army walk in tandem to the plains of battle. Whenever you set a destination for a group of warriors, they walk in a real battle formation: heroes at the front, footmen behind the heroes, archers at the back, and siege weapons last. You can also change an army’s marching order and have them walk in a straight line formation, box formation, or spread out formation.
Plot
The Titans Expansion’s plot is easily summed up: the gods are fickle. One moment you are blessed by one god, and then cursed by the same on. The plot not only weaves you through the landscape of Greek mythology, but also through Norse and Egyptian mythology. Although the game has a very rich story as its backdrop (what better backdrop for a game than mythology itself), the plot is not very involving. The game’s plot is basically a thin thread connecting together a host of battles in different mythological locations.
Sound
Every Microsoft game I have played has well composed musical scores – this game is no exception. The music is pleasant, fits the theme of the game, and you can listen to it over and over again without getting sick of it. One neat feature for the game’s sound is that the music rises to a fevered pitch when you besiege a city.
Value
Third-person games arguably have the best replay value out of all games. In the Titans Expansion, there are hundreds of little campaigns that you can embark on, or you can replay the same level over and over again at different level settings. Even repeatedly playing the same level over and over again is fun. With the length and breadth that this game has, you can keep replaying this game over and over again for months and never get bored with it.
Conclusion
For third-person strategy games, this game has it all: huge battles, rich graphics, cool characters, and massive monsters to fight. Despite lacking a well developed A.I. for combat, I hate when my warriors wander off in the midst of battle or stand motionless and get killed, this game is highly recommend for third person strategy game fans. Players will find themselves so immersed in mythology that they will never want to return reality.
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