Age of Wonders: Planetfall (PS4) – First Impressions

I snagged this for £6, having been intrigued for a while by the seeming mix of Civ and XCOM mechanics. But how does the sci-fi game stack up after a couple of hours of play?

Pretty well, actually. There are six factions available, of which I’ve only played the Vanguard (think humans with advanced war machines and laser guns). The others are the man-hating tree-huggers, insects without a hive mind, cyborg vampires(ish), human resource capitalists, and Russian space dwarves. You can customise your own commanders (who partake in combat) and there’s a decent array of options, from flags to vices.

There are two tenets of gameplay: a strategic world map, and tactical combat on a battlefield. I’m a console peasant but like the idea of strategy games (may get Stellaris next month) so I’m still getting to grips with all the strategic stuff, but so far I think it’s fairly intuitive and easy to follow. In addition, the research often leads to amusing little quotes, and it’s nice the game doesn’t take itself too seriously.

You start off with a planetfall colony, to which you can annexe adjacent sectors for more food, productions and other resources. It’s also where you create new units, including the coloniser to set up new colonies.

The tactical battles play out significantly faster than XCOM’s. Beforehand (when initiating, at least, unsure if it happens when you defend) you get to compare the relative strengths of the armies, which is very helpful. You can also have an auto-combat option, which simply gives you an automatic result. During the battle you can also hand over to the Machine God to run auto-combat from there (you’ll see the moves taken in this instance). There are options to cut down on the brief overhead intro and make enemies’ turns quicker, which I adopted to cut down on noise (see below).

A really nice feature is modding units. Research soon yields bonuses, from ammo that inflicts bleeding to hitpoint restoration abilities. You can apply these to units individually or en masse, giving that template a name (the suggested ones, such as Butcher and Eviscerator, are usually pretty good). That way, you can create these specifically upgraded units at your colony, if you want to. It also makes tier 1 units more useful later on, it seems, rather than just becoming obsolete.

The biggest drawback I’ve encountered isn’t the game, it’s the console. Fellow PS4 owners will be aware that the machine (I’ve got a fat original version) can be noisy a lot, and occasionally mimic a jet engine with alarming authenticity. It’s audible during the strategic map, but during the tactical battles it can get pretty damned loud. Can’t fault the game for this because I’ve had the same with many other titles, and it’s obviously a console cooling weakness, but if, like me, you get nervous of your console melting itself, this is a downside.

The game itself, however, is pretty good.

Thaddeus