After the many faceplants of Age of Mythology: Retold, I wasn’t feeling terribly enthusiastic about the Japanese-themed Heavenly Spear expansion, but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s not perfect, but it’s a definite step up in quality.

Most notably, the campaign is a much better experience than Immortal Pillars’ disappointing effort. Most every major point of criticism seems to have been at least somewhat addressed.

The campaign is longer, at  twelve missions rather than nine, and only two of those are dungeon crawls, which is still probably one two many, but progress is progress. The rest are mostly very meaty and satisfying macro missions with large maps and multiple objectives. The story is also much better. The voice acting is actually competent, and the characters have discernible personality traits and meaningful arcs.

The villain is pretty forgettable, and the final mission is too quick and easy, but overall it’s a good campaign, and it feels much more like those from the original Age of Mythology. Kind of hokey, a bit campy, but earnest and fun.

My great love of the Chinese civilization was the main saving grace of Immortal Pillars for me, and while the Japanese haven’t impressed me to the same degree, they’re mostly enjoyable. I like the Bushido mechanic, wherein fighting levels up your army and improves certain perks from your major god. It feels like a good way to encourage aggressive play without feeling as feast or famine as the Norse favour mechanic.

Uniquely, I think the Japanese are the first AoM civilization where I enjoy the non-mythological elements more. Their myth units and god powers feel a bit uninspired (with a few notable exceptions, like the asura, shinigami, and the giant sword god power), but I quite enjoy their human army. They have a diverse roster with a lot of fun potential unit compositions.

My preferred playstyle so far is cavalry spam with Tsukoyomi, but you can also go for a slow and tanky infantry army (best done with Amaterasu) that seems crazy strong. They’ve very different feeling builds, but both fun and effective, and it’s great to have so much diversity in one civ.

My one complaint with the Chinese was that their plethora of hero units felt over-complicated to me, and at first I felt like the Japanese were the same way, but in practice their hero system is pretty easy to wrap your head around. They have one hero from each production structure, each of which fills one of the five types of human unit (worker, archer, infantry, cavalry, and siege). Having a mage hero as a siege unit is especially cool.

I like how both the campaign story and the Japanese favour mechanic emphasize Shinto’s connection to the natural world, but it also worries me that it’s cannibalizing design space that could have been used for other naturalistic mythologies, like Celtic. Then again it’s pretty uncertain if we’ll ever get any more civilizations, so that may not matter.

I’m still a little burnt out on east Asian aesthetics after two DLCs in a row focused on the region, but otherwise the Japanese feel like a pretty worthy addition to the game, even if they’re probably not going to become my new favourite civ.

This DLC also came with a free update to the much-criticized Arena of the Gods mode. The original static pseudo-campaign is now labelled as “story mode,” with a new “gauntlet” mode offering randomized runs with more meta progression and more diverse challenges.

This is a definite improvement, but it still needs a lot of work. Gauntlet missions constantly cycle through random buffs for you and your opponents, as well as “chaos events” that usually just drop a super nasty god power on everyone’s bases. It’s a tonne to keep track of, and while it beats the static boredom of old Arena missions, it’s also more than a bit exhausting, and I don’t enjoy that most of the mode’s difficulty comes from just being randomly screwed by chaos events.

I’m also quite frustrated by the fact you still can’t save mid-match, as well as the fact it’s still nothing but skirmish maps with no hand-made objective-based missions, and while it’s good we can unlock other legends now, they’re wildly imbalanced, and some legends are clearly far better than others.

I appreciate that there’s some meta-progression now, but outside of a few minor perks, it’s mostly in the form of a giant favour hoard you can tap into mid-game, which is just way too good. You basically don’t have to worry about gathering favour at all. The few hundred you can claim from your stash should be all you need for most matches.

I can see myself putting more time into the gauntlet, which is more than I could have said about Arena of the Gods when it first launched, but it still has a long way to go to live up to its full potential. The developers did call this a “beta” version of gauntlet, so hopefully improvements are on the way.

It does amuse the TSW fan in me that with the addition of the Japanese and Amaterasu, and the Gaia’s Lashing Roots blessing in Arena of the Gods, you can now literally be charged by Amaterasu and blessed by Gaia. With how strong Amaterasu’s Onna-Musha are, it’s even a pretty good strategy.

Don’t make me use my stuff on you, man.