When last we discussed Age of Mythology: Retold, I was pretty disappointed with its lack of new content and removal of the Tale of the Dragon content from the Extended Edition. Since then I went back and forth on whether or not I wanted to buy it, but I did end up grabbing the premium edition mainly due to a discount for Extended Edition owners and the promise of extra content.

Specifically, the premium edition includes a new “god pack” for the Norse and two additional civilizations to be added at a later date, the first of which will be Chinese. So even if we’re not getting the exact Tale of the Dragon content, we are at least getting a Chinese civilization in some form, which mollified me a bit.

It’s unclear if these civilizations will include campaign content. Recent history of the franchise has me pessimistic, but if they do feature some campaigns of decent size and quality it would definitely do a lot to turn around my opinion of the game.

My overall take on Retold is still a bit lukewarm currently. To be honest, another remaster of AoM wasn’t something I felt a huge amount of need for to begin with. I would have been much more interested in an Age of Mythology 2. The Extended Edition’s graphics and gameplay still held up pretty well all things considered. I still want a mythology based Age of X game, but I want something fresher, with content I haven’t already done a dozen times.

The new graphics are very pretty, and I do like the resuable god powers, but the favour costs are so high you won’t be able to recast them very often, so it doesn’t change too much. The new voice actors for the campaign are mostly worse than the originals, too. At least they got the original Arkantos back.

Arena of the Gods has been delayed until an unspecified date after launch, so that’s a further disappointment. And we still don’t even know what it is.

The only new content we’ve got so far is the Freyr god pack, which includes one new major god, three new minor gods, and a single “mythological battle” (this does at least imply we’ll be getting other mythological battles in future). Like Retold as a whole, the DLC is a bit mediocre overall.

Freyr himself is underwhelming. The fact the lord of Alfheim has no Alfar units feels like a big oversight, and I feel like a defensively focused Norse major god should have some way to boost favour generation when not fighting. The cost to recast his golden boar god power is also absurdly high for something that can only be used to fight off a single attack, and only at one of your town centres.

I was also a bit unimpressed by the mythological battle. Trying to shoehorn the story into the timeline of the original campaign felt awkward, and the gameplay was pretty basic.

The minor gods are a bit more fun, though. I particularly enjoyed the rock giants and ice storm god power offered by Aegir. I’m a little grumpy that both those things are so totally disconnected from Aegir’s actual identity in mythology, but they definitely offer some fun gameplay. Been loving building up an army of ranged attackers and letting them snipe the enemy with impunity while the rock giants taunt all the enemy units into attacking them.

I think once the DLCs start rolling in Retold has a decent chance evolve into a worthy continuation of the original, but I have the distinct feeling it was rushed out the door before it was ready. I’m taking a leap of faith that it will eventually justify its own existence because the current state of the game doesn’t feel worth the price tag.

I think also my recent experiences with Immortal: Gates of Pyre have ruined me for older RTS games a bit. I’m ready to start seeing some evolution in the genre.