Age of Fear: The Undead King reviews

Translated by
Microsoft from French
I am copying here my evaluation written for the 3 and which relates to the 3 Opus: I had an excellent surprise with the series of the age of fear. Certainly it does not pay a mine and if you love the special effects that splash the eyes and fill the ears, that you pinch on the technical quality and ergonomics of triples A, then the AoF may not be games for you. But if you are like me flexible enough on pure geekery, these games offer a big tactico-playful potential. The campaigns lead us in various stories of heroic fantasy, delirious and funny that realize a strange synthesis between classicism and originality. I really enjoyed this permanent feeling that it does not take seriously while being done very seriously. AoF evolves the player in a world that is full of details and proves to be very coherent from one campaign to another. It gives a little taste of RP to these games which are otherwise essentially tactical. It is indeed in the fighting that the AoF reveal their wealth. Despite some surprising design choices and technical imperfections especially at the level of displacement and a sometimes rebellious UI, the great diversity of units, skills and objects, the specifics of the terrain and simply the number of committed units lead to beautiful skirmishers. When you come up with your 15 units in the middle of a fight between three factions, it starts to make a joyous Scrum! Each episode offers 2 campaigns:-humans and undead for the first,-demons and Orcs for the second,-forest people and dwarves for the third that can span with 2 DLC offering side quests and their rewards. The 3 games have the same engine and it seems that the developer is trying to keep them level when there are additions. On today's day one is however still indented without the open world with its side quests and random ecarmouches which in 2 and 3 allows to develop almost freely our small band (however recruitment is done only during steps of the campaign and the skirmish of too much can do more harm than good). Each campaign allows us to build our small army around one or more heroes and to drive it in a frame offering variants, sometimes well hidden and several endings. My limited English does not allow me to judge the linguistic quality but at the level of intrigues I found it rather well done and well told (there are however some allusions and thanks about the indie games that will pass well if you are trendy humor and dacalage, less if you are very looking at immersion). Of course we do not escape the archetypes: the succubus is a real bitch, the Knight an idealist, the dwarves think only at the next Tavern and the orcs know only the diplomacy of the axe. But given the bias a bit quirky a little burlesque of the whole, it goes well. AoF offers a great freedom of management of our small troop (small it is relative, we start at 5 or 6 and we can finish several dozen even if it does not seem to have been able to hire more than a fortnight at a time, the pool ends up being so) since , even if a campaign is centered on a race, all units are present there and it is possible to diversify our army at random encounters by catches with the skills of corruption, enslavement... Quick capture can be crucial to fill the specific deficiencies of a breed or lead to the tactical style of our choice. I loved to the point that I'm modding my game. Well Yes, I almost forgot, there is a workshop (unfortunately not provided for now) and the developer puts to refreshed the doc and the tools that go well. Come on, I'm going back;)
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