There’s nothing better than that moment you open up the dryer and pull out a warm blanket to wrap around yourself. That’s what playing Age of Mythology: Retold felt like – familiar and comforting, but with an extra sensation added into the mix.
Age of Mythology: Retold is an astounding reimagining of a cult classic strategy game, a remake that manages to straddle the line between honoring the original’s vision and meaningfully updating it to feel completely modern. Developer World’s Edge has done an impeccable job of making smart, intentional changes that make Age of Mythology play better than ever, while simultaneously giving the game a jaw-dropping visual upgrade. Retold simply cements Age of Mythology’s place in the pantheon of the greatest strategy games ever made.
Gods and Men
Age of Mythology was originally released by Ensemble Studios in 2002, as an offshoot of the Age of Empires series. Like AoE, Mythology was a real-time strategy (RTS) game that focused on building up a base and economy, producing units, and conquering your opponents. The twist here, however, is that you’re playing as Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Atlantean gods, with mythological creatures and dazzling god powers that let you call down meteors, turn enemies into pigs, and more.
It was a brilliant twist on the classic RTS, taking the phenomenal foundation of Empires and putting a godlike asymmetric twist on it, with all four civilizations playing drastically differently. That idea holds true with this remake, but Retold smooths out Age of Mythology’s rough edges, making it play better than ever before. But it’s so much more than a familiar, enhanced experience — Retold feels new and fresh, forming a foundation that can be built upon moving forward. As someone who’s played the original for well over 1000 hours, that’s what’s most striking.
To get the obvious out of the way first, Retold’s new visual style is phenomenal without exception. Each and every unit and environment has been lavishly upgraded, giving the game a stylized look that falls somewhere in between cartoony and realistic, and it works. There are loads of little details crammed into the visual style to give things personality, like the way slobber drips from the massive jaws of the Titan Cerberus, or little anime-esque light trails that appear as heroes swing their weapons. The different styles of the mythological pantheons have been accentuated even more here, with Atlanteans leaning into their connection to the Earth or the Norse’s aesthetic more properly representing existing in harsh climates. Retold runs like a dream, and it’s genuinely hard to imagine a better way the look and style of this game could have been updated.
But as much as I could wax on about the visuals, Retold’s gameplay updates are equally impressive. There are dozens of changes applied across the whole experience, but a few are particularly impactful. God powers disappeared once they were activated in the original game, but in Retold can be recharged by using the Favor resource. This change drastically changes your approach, making favor more important than ever, as it’s also used for research and to construct Myth units.
Apart from that, the other biggest changes come to the Pantheons themselves. The Norse and Atlanteans have been given massive upgrades to make them more streamlined to play — like Atlanteans gathering favor through oracles, and the Norse getting new units for a more robust army. The changes are too numerous to list, but by and large, the four civilizations now feel more balanced, with multilayered strategies and counters for each other.
In general, Retold’s gameplay changes lean into rebalancing everything, providing more robust and complex strategic options for more competitive matches and scenarios. As you build your bases you’ll advance through “Ages” and unlock new units and technologies, and Retold has added a fifth “Wonder Age,” which can keep games going for even longer. On top of that, other alterations like allowing an unlimited population size encourage bigger battles and expansive empires.
All of these changes pile up to make for a game that, while the same formula as the original, feels drastically different in terms of flow and pacing. But it honestly feels better. The original Age of Mythology was brilliant but flawed, and clear problems emerged in terms of balancing and exploits. With Retold, those shortcomings have been deliberately addressed, and this new foundation makes the strategy gameplay feel more reactive and exciting. However, it’s abundantly clear that this new formula can be iterated on and improved even further, and that’s clearly the intention. World’s Edge has already announced two expansions and hopes to do more, and they’ve set the stage to turn Age of Mythology into a grand strategy game that could provide fresh content for years to come.
All that being said, there is a bit of work that still needs to be put into the overall package. I ran into some frequent bugs, including audio glitches and visual snags. There’s also the occasional issue with unit commands and pathfinding, with units getting stuck on building or geography. These are overall small issues that can likely be hammered out with future patches, but they’re still present nonetheless.
A Tale For the Ages
What’s interesting about Retold’s sweeping gameplay changes is how those factor into the already existing campaign. Age of Mythology was already a shining example of how to make a compelling RTS campaign, telling a story about the Atlantean hero Arkantos as he seeks to stop the revival of the Titan Kronos, who wants to bring ruin to the world. The campaign weaves a compelling tale filled with memorable characters, from the brusque Egyptian mercenary Amanra to the wise old Centaur Chiron.
Age of Mythology came out before games like God of War hit it big and before mythology flooded popular video games. It’s interesting seeing the campaign with that context now. But it still holds up as a compelling tale with mythological inspirations smartly woven throughout, and lifted up even more by fantastic mission design. Every single mission in Age of Mythology’s campaign presents you with some kind of unique objective or gimmick. In one, your whole army is transformed into pigs and you need to escort them to a temple to turn them back, in another, you play tug-of-war with a piece of Osiris’ body to bring it safely to your camp. The amount of variation in the campaign has always been astounding, but gameplay changes of Retold help embellish that even more. While the story and general structure of the campaign have been completely unchanged, those mechanical changes, on top of rebalanced AI, make Retold’s campaign feel better than ever. Between the campaign, a new Mythologic battle option, multiplayer, and a scenario editor, there’s a ton of content to sink your teeth into.
Honing the Formula
More than anything, what strikes me about Age of Mythology: Retold is how approachable it feels now. This is an RTS title that contains boundless depth for longtime fans, but can effectively double up as someone’s first introduction to the genre. It’s a reimagining that gives the classic game a new lease on life, and its mythological trappings are masterfully executed.
Age of Mythology: Retold is exactly what a remake should be — not just bringing something classic to a modern audience, but meaningfully changing and upgrading it for that audience. It’s stunning in nearly every way, and a clear sign that real-time strategy games still have a bright future ahead.
9/10
Age of Mythology: Retold releases on September 4 for Xbox Series X|S and PC.
INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.
