izigame.me

The Giant Kings DLC had a unique impact to me, in such a way that much like how Elden Ring's DLC had me camping out to buy it and play it INSTANTLY, I was so excited to finally have cool and playable giant-representation in a game that I already loved that it had me hooked just by the idea. Ignoring entirely every other piece of content, I wanted a giant king and easier ways to get giants, a unit type that has existed in a awful limbo since.. well probably BEFORE 3 but I only played AOW:3 before this.
What we got was pretty damn great, and I really enjoy the content. I love being a forgemaster-like ruler who gets nasty gear early, so that no matter the case of if my stacks die, my ruler just on it's own can carry a fight with massive fuckoff damage. We got giants accessible through the free Ogre update's changes to the tome of terramancy, in the form of stone giants. This is the first constantly accessible giant we have had AT ALL, a unit type we should've had much much earlier as they're generally not that fantastic in comparison to other mythic units. Additionally with the ogre update giving us stone giants accessibly at tier 3 tomes (a decent bit late into the game albeit), your giant ruler is a giant-governor type which means once your reknown on your main hero goes to tier 4, you can draft the type of giant that your ruler aligns with; Do you have storm giants? Well now at reknown 4 your city can draft them and, this goes for all other giant-types as well. In addition I have seen a dramatic increase in wonders that allow you to get giants in Rally the Lieges, a system I dislike reasonably but is not without it's use to get giants and other cool mythological units you couldn't normally get.
In addition the new crystal faction is quite cool, with strong and interesting units that are awesome to look at and animated rather wonderfully. The new landmarks system is really cool too, and makesthe world look quite cool in all the right places. The ogre merchants (I believe from the ogre update, not the DLC) are also a fantastic addition to the game. This doesn't require you to interact with it but can give great benefits to your populace and allows you to trade mana for knowledge, a very coveted resource.
All-in-all this is a fantastic DLC and while it is a bit expensive, the amount of time art and animation put into this product is commendable, and many features added by it might go unnoticed for a while since it's new, the small stuff will get noticed slower most likely. I highly recommend this DLC and it gave me what I wanted, though I could really do with giants as a unit being just a bit stronger haha