Age of Mythology (PC) review " An angry army of Cylclops and Medusas has infested your town and is destroying all of your houses and civilians. Now... considering this isn't your normal everyday problem, you have several choices: A) Run around screaming and wetting your pants. B) Call your local exterminator. C) Attack the annoyances with your awesome army of Hersirs, after of course, freezing them solid with your Frost god-power. "

An angry army of Cylclops and Medusas has infested your town and is destroying all of your houses and civilians. Now... considering this isn't your normal everyday problem, you have several choices: A) Run around screaming and wetting your pants. B) Call your local exterminator. C) Attack the annoyances with your awesome army of Hersirs, after of course, freezing them solid with your Frost god-power.

If you answered A or B, you should be ashamed. Wetting your pants is slightly embarassing and the exterminator is going to charge an extra four hundred bucks for mythological creature extermination. If you happened to pick C, you should buy Age Of Mythology for your PC. Microsoft and Ensemble Studios have done a great job creating this outrageously fun game. Sit back and take control of one of three major nationalities: Greek, Egyptian, and Norse. Each comes with three of its own mini-civilizations to add up to a grand total of nine different cultures. No single one is best. You must experiment to determine who you are best with.

This game has much more diversity between its civilizations as compared to its forefathers: Age of Empires and Age Of Empires II. Not only can you create a customized army of mere mortals, you can now add some creatures from Greek, Egyptian, or Norse mythology. These terrifying creatures are sure to send your enemies packing. An added bonus is the use of Heroes to counter those myth units. Norse heroes are the Hersirs, Egyptians have priests and Pharoahs, and Greeks have up to four different heroes at a time(It depends on what age you are in and which god you research). Greek heroes are created one at a time, although, they can be re-created when they are killed. Another handy convenience is the use of god powers, which can be used to boost your economy for a period, temporarily boost your armies strength, devastate an enemy town, or defend your own. Sadly, you can only use each god power once.

One other thing I was very impressed with was that you can actually read the history behind the different types of soldier, or read a little about the myth units and their history, the same goes for heroes and some buildings as well. But that is only if you enjoy mythology and history. I found it very interesting.

If that isn't enough, there is always the campaign. You get the privilege of helping Arkantos and Company destroy all enemies of Atlantis. In the campaign you will find some god powers and such that are only available in the campaign which are very nice and handy. The campaign will also help first time players develop some skills and get some good hints on how to be a good player. You will also find, in the story of the campaign, that this war against the Atlanteans goes deeper that what it seems at first, far deeper, in fact you will be traveling to the underworld at some point. I'm not telling anymore, you have to play the game to find out the rest. It is definitely worth it.

Let's not forget the other goodies, like a map and scenario editor, audio taunts (which can sometimes liven up multiplayer games), and personal profiles to keep track of how well you do. Online play is also great. It's a little more challenging since you are playing against real people. Although Microsoft did a very nice job of creating AIs that are fairly intelligent and aren't total pushovers, as the AIs were in the previous Age of Empires games. The rating system on online play is a nice touch and will help even up the games, especially when you search for an opponent.

The only things I felt could have made the game even better would be the ability to re-use god-powers, and I was hoping there would be some good scenarios included in the game, but there wasn't. But you can play other players' scenarios, or your own, with your friends online, which is cool.

Great game. I give it an 8.5.

Community review by lukifer (September 06, 2004) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.