Age of Fear is a top-down 2D turn-based strategy game. In some ways, the game is so painfully indie that it probably wears a beard and considers facial hair ironic. If you are looking for pretty graphics, this isn’t the game for you. This game looks like it was made back in the mid-90′s to look like games made in the early 90′s. That said, don’t assume that this makes the game a broken, easy, garbage sort of game, because it isn’t.

Age of Fear has two campaigns, one as a knight and the other as a necromancer. You can choose to play either campaign you like. Let’s face it though, in the choice between playing a goody-two-shoes knight and a blood-curdlingly evil necromancer, who are you going to play? Right. There is a fairly detailed story told between missions, but if you want to skip over you, you are free to do so. The enemy AI is actually surprisingly intelligent. You will often find yourself outnumbered, but unlike most games where overwhelming numbers make up for poor AI, there are only a few more enemy than you, and an AI which is intelligent enough to target weaker foes, and retreat to safe distances.

What Age of Fear does is take the classic turn-based strategy game and strip away all of the elements unimportant to the gameplay. You have the battles, the leveling up of characters between battles, and a passably decent story which isn’t shoved in your face. The result is pretty well refined gameplay. Characters can move about as they wish within certain instances per turn, but their sphere (er…circle) of influence is altered by other characters standing in the path of the circle. It means that there is a fair amount of thought which the player puts into shielding one another. Your archers can fight from a distance, but have low health. The AI will specifically target them to get them out of the way first. So you’ll want to put your shock troops (zombies) in the front to shield your archers from the enemy. It’s little things like this that really help make the game fun. You can choose to just blitzkrieg enemies and hope for the best, or you can sit there and fiddle with the exact positions of your characters, the choice is up to you.

I’ll fully admit, my favorite move in the game is unquestionably when playing the necromancer. What are necromancers, but wizards with domain over the dead? So when one of your zombies die, you can bring them back to life very easily. This allows you to wait until the enemy is in just the right position, then raise the dead and attack them from behind. It is very satisfying.

It is a very cerebral game. If you are looking for a game where you can shoot someone in the face with a shotgun, or build up your horde to sweep over the enemy, you won’t find it here. Age of Fear is a game more for someone who wants a more thoughtful approach to strategy, and don’t want to feel the rush of a real time strategy game. I didn’t think I would like it at first, but within a half hour (the general which-button-does-what-now? time) I found myself relaxed and enjoying it very much.

-Broklynite

Buy Age of Fear: The Undead King on Green Man Gaming today.

Tags: 2D, age of fear, Enter your zip code here, knight, necromancer, strategy, top-down, turn, turn-based

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 at 9:09 am and is filed under Gaming, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.