Age of Mythology: Retold – Immortal Pillars Review – Mythology Expanded, Gameplay Intact

Age of Mythology: Retold – Immortal Pillars Review

No matter how many new and shiny games come along, I’ll always have a warm, fuzzy place in my jaded gaming heart for Age of Empires and its 2002 spinoff, Age of Mythology. Age of Mythology took aim at an already familiar genre and took it in a new direction. Instead of historical civilizations or clashing sci fi armies, the game focused on classic mythologies from different cultures. Heroes, drama and cool monsters are pre-baked in. Twenty-two years later, Age of Mythology: Retold brought the classic game up to current standards. Now we have the Immortal Pillars expansion. It fills in an important gap, adding Chinese mythology to the game.

Same but Different

Age of Mythology: Retold had a more user-friendly UI and retooled the original game’s units and animations, among other improvements. At the end of the day, though, the campaigns and units were essentially the same. Immortal Pillars is not an analogue of Tale of the Dragon, the original Chinese-focused expansion. It has new units, new heroes and new narrative.

It always feels a little strange to talk about an RTS game’s story. After all, the fun comes from pushing around all the units and playing an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors. In the case of Immortal Pillars, the story is a pretty good one — at least for the genre. You’re controlling three heroes and their factions coming together to defeat the warrior Huang Zhaowu, whose mission is to reclaim his deceased wife from the gods.

I thought that Age of Mythology: Retold’s writing didn’t improve all that much on the original version, and its voice acting was mostly just serviceable. This is equally true about Immortal Pillars. Based on actual Chinese mythology, the story and its presentation do an adequate job of pushing the player around the map and from one battle to the next.

Follow Along

Although dressed up in new costumes, mechanics in Immortal Pillars for the most part play out like the rest of the game. I’m pretty sure anyone reading this already knows the ropes and the flow of combat. But to recap: each civilization has unique units and resources to gather, a specific tech tree with important perks, buffs and abilities, and major and minor gods who grant special, devastating powers. Gather, build and fight have been the foundation loops of real time strategy and remain so in Age of Mythology and this first expansion. Immortal Pillars’ gods are Fuxi, Nüwa and Shennong, and they each have something interesting to bring to combat.

I’m guessing that a lot of RTS players are like me, looking at the campaign as an almost necessary evil by which I can learn the new factions, units and their capabilities. The main course is the ability to play one-off skirmishes pitting one civilization against another, either against other humans or AI. While Immortal Pillars doesn’t include any units or abilities that unbalance the game, there some interesting variations that make playing China feel unique enough.

A lot of that is in the visual presentation, which shows Age of Mythology’s dedication to detail and making sure each element looks interesting. To be honest, I was just a bit disappointed in the updated but stylized approach to art direction in Retold. Immortal Pillars doesn’t change my opinion. However, the art is still colorful and overall interesting to look at, even if the graphics are never the point of an RTS game. The game’s combat and spell effects are a highlight and bring excitement to combat.

Culture Clash

Age of Mythology: Retold-Immortal Pillars stylishly fulfills its mission of bringing back Chinese units to the game, much the way Tale of the Dragon did with the original. But that’s where the similarity ends. With a new story, heroes, gods, units and mechanics, Immortal Pillars adds its own flavors to the original recipe. The campaign is relatively short but fans of the game will enjoy throwing these units down against those from the Greeks, Norse, Egyptians and Atlanteans civilizations.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***