Age of Mythology: Extended Edition Review (Coldrestia)
My personal pick for greatest RTS of all time, although i know that's a highly contested category with games like AoE, C&C and Starcraft all being masterpieces in their own right. My love for Age of Mythology is partly because it's a game i played non stop as a kid being one of my first PC games, but also because it's a legendary RTS that still holds up by today's standards.
AoM is packed to the brim with unique units, gods to play, maps, a lengthy campaign and great mod support, not to mention a banger soundtrack. You have your basic RTS elements - gathering resources, building your towns, training units, expanding your territory, making war and trading with allies. Where AoM's strength lies is each time you advance through an age, say Classical to Heroic age you get to pick a new god or deity to swear allegiance to. Each of these gods gives you access to unique units, buildings, powers and more making each game feel varied depending on what you pick.
The gods you can pick are decided by which faction you play, these factions are the Greeks, Egyptians, Norse, Atlanteans and Chinese(DLC needed). Every one of them playing completely different and require different economic, military and strategic approaches to gameplay. The Greek faction for example will require you to send your villagers to pray at temples to gain favour with the gods, the Egyptians instead build Statues and monuments to appease theirs. This small example is what you can expect on a larger scale with the different factions and even different god choices within the respective factions resulting in a really varied RTS that can always offer something different no matter the hours you have in the game.
The units are fantastic with every sort of mythical creature you can imagine making battles a spectacle of Frost Giants fighting Minotaurs and Scarabs, mixed in with your basic units such as Hoplites and Pharaohs.
In closing AoM is a hard game to get bored of if this is your sort of thing, no bs just pure gameplay and content. A timeless classic from a time in video games which we probably will never see again.