I have an embarrassing amount of playtime in this short time and can honestly say that the developer playthrough streams & videos accurately reflect the actual gameplay. This will definitely be a Game of the Year contender, if anything, for the 4X Strategy genre.

Essentially: easy to pickup.. but will take time to master and figure out unique, powerful combinations (of faction builds, tomes of knowledge, buildings, units, & spells).

The best thing about AoW4 is the custom faction creation. I'm hoping in the future there will be more body types, societies, cultures, mind&body traits and customisation options. Its really cool to encounter one of your custom races as an opponent in the game!

I didn't encounter any crashes and the only 'bug' was selecting a combat spell, but then not selecting an enemy and selecting a friendly instead, it would remove the right-side UI temporarily (couldn't figure out how to restore it when it happened). Nothing game-breaking.

The game isn't perfect, it could definitely implement a system that allows you to compare your gear (right now, you have to put your cursor on each item and remember the differences in stats), and when enemies come into your field of view, it would be good if the camera locks/pans to that location (it becomes difficult to see what's creeping into your kingdom during mid/endgame).

I have an embarrassing amount of playtime in this short time and can honestly say that the developer playthrough streams & videos accurately reflect the actual gameplay. This will definitely be a Game of the Year contender, if anything, for the 4X Strategy genre. Essentially: easy to pickup.. but will take time to master and figure out unique, powerful combinations (of faction builds, tomes of knowledge, buildings, units, & spells). The best thing about AoW4 is the custom faction creation. I'm hoping in the future there will be more body types, societies, cultures, mind&body traits and customisation options. Its really cool to encounter one of your custom races as an opponent in the game! I didn't encounter any crashes and the only 'bug' was selecting a combat spell, but then not selecting an enemy and selecting a friendly instead, it would remove the right-side UI temporarily (couldn't figure out how to restore it when it happened). Nothing game-breaking. The game isn't perfect, it could definitely implement a system that allows you to compare your gear (right now, you have to put your cursor on each item and remember the differences in stats), and when enemies come into your field of view, it would be good if the camera locks/pans to that location (it becomes difficult to see what's creeping into your kingdom during mid/endgame).