Maybe you're thinking of getting Planetfall instead of Age of Wonders 4 because it will be cheaper after that game launches, especially in a sale. You may see some of the negative reviews talking about "cheating AI," "tons of bugs," or that the game is just nebulously "missing" something. Let me attempt to give a recommendation for this game based in reality and say who this game is made for and what the game actually is. Buckle in, because this game is very complex and there is a lot to talk about regarding the game itself and what people are saying about it.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall has more in common with Heroes of Might and Magic, Total War, and Warcraft 3 than it does with Civ. If you're looking for a game where you slowly build up an empire with a huge economy, this isn't the game for you. The strategy layer largely exists as an excuse to make for fun, deep, and interesting tactical battles where a lot of different factors are at play which can honestly be overwhelming for new players. No sense denying that; there is a large learning curve to both this game and Age of Wonders in general, as you will need to understand things like flanking, morale, a large variety of different status effects, action points, overwatch, and there's even more than that, and the tutorial does a bad job of teaching you. So if you are looking to pick this one up, be prepared to have to spend a lot of time just learning, especially if you're unfamiliar with the genre.

The graphical fidelity is good, but the animations are AA in quality. I don't blame the devs for it, though, and you'll be playing the tactical battles sped up most of the time anyway.

For the strategic layer, some complain that it is too simplistic. This is intentionally so; this is a game about building units and using them to fight battles, which is the interesting part. No one plays Civ for the battles, everyone knows Civ's combat system is boring, but nobody cares because that's not the point of the game. You should think similarly about Planetfall's combat vs strategy layer: the strategy exists for you to have fun in the fun part of the game without the game being an unconnected series of battles like most wargames. It's actually an advantage that the economy is so easy to get a handle on, because it means you'll be taking more fights and thus be having more fun while playing.

As for the XCOM comparison, a lot of people will say XCOM is "Deeper." What I think they mean is that it's more satisfying, in large part because XCOM has a lot of "I win" buttons like grenades, double-attacks, high damage criticals, all with snappy cinematic animations and high lethality that gets you attached to your individual soldiers. Planetfall isn't trying to achieve that same goal; you're leading entire armies. I would argue Planetfall is more complex than XCOM, and deeper, too in the later stages of the game when you're juggling resistances, status effects and how to deal with them, and even the Stagger mechanic, which can shut down armies that aren't prepared for them. Adding to this complexity is the size of the battles; in XCOM you at most manage 6 squad members, while in Planetfall you will sometimes be managing 18 or even 24 depending on the battle, some of which have even more abilities and nuances to understand than XCOM's units.

Regarding a lot of the negative reviews: a lot of them, and I do mean a LOT of them are people with a serious skill issue problem, as I don't even play Multiplayer (and thus don't use their hyper optimized playstyles) and am still able to win the game on the highest difficulty against multiple opponents consistently. When you get good at the game, you need the AI to cheat so it can keep up with you, as you can manually resolve battles and the AI cannot, which I cannot overstate the importance of.

Another complaint people have is about the auto resolve being better than the player at fighting battles, and honestly this is just completely false. Autoresolving leads to you losing a lot of units early on, which can completely kill your momentum/tempo into winning a match. Again, this is a skill issue, and it's one of your biggest advantages over the AI, who aren't allowed to manual resolve and thus maximize their early game progress the way you are, even when they build and summon a ton of units from minor factions.

Planetfall has 8 factions and 7 "Secret Techs," which are supplementary tech trees that can radically alter your playstyle for a given faction- thus, there are technically 56 different ways to play the game just from tech tree choice. Your faction choice affects your Secret Tech units as well; for example, a warrior monk Light Bringer might be a foot infantry for one faction, but for another, it might be a flying unit with different abilities entirely to consider. There are also a ton of minor factions who you can ally with and use their units and upgrades, further making each run feel unique and different, and this is where the 4X part of Planetfall really shines I think. Again, however, the fun comes from training and customizing units, through a unit modding system that allows you to tailor units to encounters if you like at the cost of a limited resource called Cosmite, which you will be fighting tooth and nail for every source of it you can find. Unit mods dramatically change how a unit works, both by increasing their stats AND changing how the unit behaves, from giving them debuffs and resistances to giving them other effects like AoE attacks, chain attacks, armor melting, and more, so getting as many of them as possible is your strategic goal each game. Mods are also the key to using units both from your roster and from minor factions and secret tech, as you can mix and match mods from different sources to create different, interesting combinations.

Some people also say Age of Wonders 3 is a superior game. This is patently false; Planetfall fixes a lot of Age of Wonders 3's issues, including exploits like experience stacking on heroes to break the game, as well as design flaws like a lack of production and research overflow. Yeah, in Age of Wonders 3, if a unit costs 100 production, and you have 90 production in that city, the unit will always take 2 turns to make, meaning every production cycle you are 'wasting' 80 production. It's bonkers they never patched that. Planetfall's Cosmite resource also fixes AOW3's end-game issue where the only units worth training are deathstacks of your strongest units, while Planetfall promotes the use of combined arms by having a more economical frontline backed up by support units. The only thing AOW3 does better is offer a cheap power fantasy, and an actual fantasy setting. Don't get me wrong, I love AOW3, but Planetfall is just the better game at this point in time.

So... who is this game actually for? If you liked Heroes of Might and Magic's gameplay, I'd say it's worth giving a shot. If you liked Warcraft 3 and like turn-based games, I'd say to give this a shot, too. If you like Total War, and like turn-based combat, you will also feel at home here. I think saying this game is for XCOM fans might be a stretch even despite the superficial similarities in the combat system, and saying this game is for Civ fans is probably just foolish even though both are technically 4X games.

Really though, you should get this game if you like turn-based battles with a lot of complexity, choice, and systems to master. And that's all I can say since I've reached the character limit. Hopefully I've convinced you by now, or given an honest assessment at the very least.

A lot of people seem to misunderstand the game, so I figured I'd clarify it. This is a wargame, not a civlike. It contains civlike mechanics, but if you attempt to play the game passively, building up your empire and economy, you're going to find yourself quickly falling behind, running out of resources, and losing. This is a game about building big armies you use to invade and take land and resources, then turn those resources into more armies, more land, and more resources. City building is far more simple and straightforward than Civ, and can easily feel like there's nothing to do if you're not building armies because city upgrades come far slower than your building of units.

Units can have long, detailed statblocks with a long list of benefits, and can then be customized to do all manner of things. A basic soldier wielding an electrical rifle in the early game can quickly become a unit who wields a chain lightning stun rifle that ignores cover. A soldier with a plasma launcher can equip themselves with a medical kit and the means to heal and empower themselves from the flames they create and form a rolling barrage of fire that incinerates anything that dares to approach them. These are not expensive lategame units, these are basic cannon fodder. Late game can include things such as teleporting tanks, hovercrafts that can call down orbital bombardments, multiple flavors of mecha, and drone swarms.

This is a game about building armies and waging war. If you're like me and your average 4x game descends into a blood bath that would make Khorne proud, this is among if not the best 4x games on the market. If you want to play sim city, look elsewhere, as this game does not cater to that sort of play.

Planetfall reminds me a lot of Evolve. That's not a good memory to have. Where the game itself is actually very good but because of idiot marketing decisions you never feel like you've quite got the complete game. Evolve had so many possible pre-order versions that it was like trying to navigate the Crystal Maze and figure out which door got you closest to the finished product, and then purchasing the rest of the bits piecemeal.

Here you had a similar problem, bits of cosmetic content locked behind a time limited newsletter, bits of cosmetic content tied to pre-orders, bits of cosmetic content tied to a deluxe version, a planetary scenario (which turns out to be one of the five "officially listed" scenarios) locked to the deluxe or top version. So like, really?. EDIT: The commanders that come as base do not use any DLC cosmetics. I'm not sure about random generated.

The game itself is good. Not great. But good. I suspect it will be great when Triumph eventually get around to finishing it some three expansions down the line. What we have here is a typical Paradox product. The core is well put together, but it's just that. The Core. This is not the complete experience. We'll get that and when we do it'll be magnificent, but you'll have to pay extra for that.


I get it. Your long term support of games is legendary. But Stellaris was a case in point. When it came out it was a mess, a buggy, confused, chaotic mess. There was a lot of promise and potential under the hood, and it had original ideas (some of which you've murdered on the altar of efficiency), It's become a much more mature and complete game as you've added to it, but once again, the cost of entry and the cost of what you need to make the damn thing what it is now are two very different things. Let's not get into Crusader Kings 2, that thing is a nightmare if you've not been fortunate enough to get the DLC on a sale.

Planetfall is slated for three expansions, by the end of which I strongly suspect we'll see how the game is supposed to feel like with everything it's supposed to have. Six factions and six secret techs is not exactly a bounty of options, and when you get into the meat of the game those secret techs just feel like different damage types as opposed to anything really ground shaking. Where's the cool tech specific buildings? I get that Age of Wonders games have been predominantly all about the units and making them unique and interesting but given there's been additional focus on making city development more significant with the advent of sectors it feels like one side got significantly more care than the other.


You end up with a lot of units that overlap each other because your racial and your tech dump a lot of units out and if you want to blend the pair to max your hero potential you'll end up with similar damage paths for both tech and race. There's precious little to really make races stand out except for these ethereal "doctrines" which are passive buffs in the main. The real issue is your Commander defines your primary damage path and you're going to want to max that since then you get all the useful benefits from following the tree (so making sure you throw out lots of pyro toting units if you're running a promethean commander).

Running different *types* of commanders sounds like a good idea until you realise it puts you at a research disadvantage for your doomsday weapon victory path, so taking on non specced commanders means you'll only invest in those at a minimal level.

This game could have stood to have learned from Endless Legend in some aspects, such as integrating minor races (as opposed to just buying units from their leaders or only being able to integrate from their leading colony), and having more, and more diverse minor races as a result. The city building side is *nearly* there but again, lessons from Endless Legend would have been really helpful.

The area where Planetfall shines is tactical combat, where once again large scale battles can result in brilliant, drawn out tactical battles, and where individual units can be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ heroes. AoW 3 before it shined in this regard, and that element hasn't dimmed, you just wish it had learned from other games to get the other small elements right.

And you wish Paradox had learned not to make their content model so opaque and unpleasant.


It's good. It's held back from being great from a paucity of content and Paradox once again proving what you get in the box isn't the finished product, and due to the vagaries of pre-orders, various editions and time limited content campaigns, you may not even get everything even if you try.

The game marches very strongly in combat, but the stuff outside of it feels very much hollow, this was forgivable in AoW 3, it's *less* forgivable now. This is something that I had issues with previously, now it becomes a legitimate complaint. If Triumph decide to make another Age of Wonders, this is now something that -needs addressing-, because the empire management side feels perfunctory and misses elements that would make it feel more viable.

Verdict: Recommend, on discount - How much of a discount depends on you.

I was holding back on my review until I thought I've played enough to understand how the game works, the different mechanics, played different factions and different specialisations. The game has a lot to offer, a lot of new stuff compared to AOW3, some similarities to other games too.

The Good:
Unit, faction and specialisation variety. There's 6 Factions and 6 specialisations all with their own units plus NPC factions with their own units and they all can be modded with 3 different mods. Insane amount of different stuff to try and use. A lot of flexibility and options.

Triumph got rid of the physical and elemental resist system of AOW3. Instead now you have 2 different protection (Armor and Shield) against all damage and resistance against status effects like bleed, blind, stun..etc. Combine that with the ability to mod units and you get a system in which a levelled up tier 1 unit can stand it's ground against a basic Tier 3 or even tier 4 unit so AOW3 tier 4 spam is not necessarily a winning strategy in Planetfall, which is great.

Modding units gives you a lot of flexibility to design your units, make them glass cannons or "tanks" to soak up damage,you can give them AOE effects or change their Kinetic damage to Arc to be more effective against machines, you can give them extra health or health regen.. it's up to you. You can get mods and units from dwellings (independent NPC factions) too so the possibilities are almost endless.

The tactical combat has been reworked too. The most significant change is the cover system and the chance based hitting in which you can actually miss opposed to AOW3's system where you always hit, even if it was only for 1HP. Some people like it, some don't all in all with all the changes to combat combined, I prefer Planetfall's system to AOW3's

The Sector system is an another big change which I love. I remember how many times I started with a Sorcerer in AOW3 and wanted mana nodes but all I got was gold and production and when I started as a Warlord wanted gold and mana but found 8 mana to 1 gold and 1 production. Whit the sector system this is gone. If you need food you specialise your sector on food and expand to sectors where there's food. If you need Energy (money) than you just specialise on energy and level up your energy sectors. It's a lot more flexible system than AOW3 population and border based one. Basically sectors are your traditional "mines" but you can decide what sort of resource you want them to produce.

The other great thing is colony defences. You can build defensive buildings in your colony which provides you with militia units to defend your colony AND your sectors TOO which means your economy is protected and "turtle" strategy is a lot more viable option than ever before.

Operations are great. Do you remember how annoying the constant Empire "upgrade" spell spam and disjunction spam was in AOW3? There was a mod to disable disjunction so you and the AI won't be able to remove spells from each other (wasn't a great solution either) It's all gone. Now you can still try to use some operations (spells) on each other but all faction has operation defences too with which you can lower the chance of success of any enemy operations.

These are the main changes that makes the game better than AOW3 and it seems Triumph has listened to all the community feedback they've been given to AOW3 and sort the biggest problems out in Planetfall so kudos to you Triumph Studios!!


The Ok:
Graphics and Music and animations are ok but nothing spectacular.
Diplomacy is ok at best but let's face it AOW was never about the diplomacy but the units, faction diversity and tactical combat.

The Bad
Some of the voice over are horrendous (looking at you Dvar)
There's some bugs where the game just stops working,the battle doesn't end, some desync issues in Multiplayer (not too common) Some interface issues,information missing here and there...
Nothing major and I don't want to list them all here one by one but there's certainly stuff to work on.

....And The BEST: That freakin' "Eat Dust" ability :D That just made me laugh. Some great sense of humour right there :)

As you probably guessed by now I'd absolutely recommend the game,even at full price but it certainly isn't for everyone.
Not a diplomacy based game, not a Civ-like empire building either, although the economy is important to support what the game is GREAT about which is tactical combat.
If you're into unit customisation, unit diversity, finding and using faction, unit and mod synergies to find a combination that suits your play style the best and use all that to conquer the world than this is the best game for you to pick up and play. You better be ready to read a lot! :)

A good 4X. I've only played the base campaigns; this review does not extend to the DLC gameplay or generic scenario maps. Before you start playing, you should know you can speed up map movement on both strategic and tactical layers from the game options - you'll want to very soon even into your first campaign,

Pros:
+ Playing well tactically can let you pull off victories that the army balance would say are impossible, and it feels really satisfying when you do. Accuracy and cover work in interesting ways, and it's sometimes worth it to take shots at 15% hit chance. Additionally, the support skill system is fun to use, though it doesn't feel very well balanced.
+ Strategically, exploring new worlds is enjoyable, as is growing your colonies and setting up defenses and transport nodes in anticipation of what your enemies will do.
+ Decent graphics, light but pleasant lore. Some of the voice acting doesn't fit at times, but it's almost comical when that happens, like a golden radio voice telling me about mass genocide in an upbeat tone.
+ Moment-to-moment gameplay almost always keeps you on your toes. I had a hard time putting down the game mid-map; there was always one more place to raid or army to fight.
+ Lots of ways to customize your units, allowing for different tactical strategies. Sometimes you'll end up preferring tier 1 bonuses that give a very niche effect even if the overall stats are lower compared to tier 4 alternatives, just because you're going for a certain playstyle.
+ Also, the fact that your main heroes are campaign-persistent is nice. On the downside, that did make me end up grinding already-won maps so I could have a power start in the next.
+ Great, memorable soundtrack. Parts of it reminds me of Westwood game soundtracks, while the rest feels like an 80s sci-fi action movie. Really solid, unique feel.
+ Even though I didn't play MP, I like the idea that you can log off while waiting for turns and get notified when yours starts. Given how long turns can take, I wouldn't like to have to wait for possibly an hour, so I felt like this might be worth mentioning for those who do want to play online.
+ I like that you can defeat an enemy by taking out their main commander and their capital, as opposed to having to spend a lot of time conquering each individual settlement and defeating each army. Outmaneuvering them is rewarded.

It's not without some flaws, though:
- The turn timer gets really long past turn 50 or so, and not always for good reason. In one case, there were only a few dozen NPC armies left and two factions that did nothing but turtle. It probably boiled down to trying to find options when they were severely limited in what they could do, but it was frustrating.
- In the early game, losing any units at all is very punishing, which leads to a tendency to repeat battles a lot, which ends up being tedious.
- Tying into my previous point, the tactical AI doesn't understand attrition very well. It won't use choke points, nor keep melee units back to allow your ranged units to bait and punish. Additionally, if you have a lot of army support skills, it will spam them in favor of actually killing enemies. It does sometimes set up overwatch traps on defense maps, but only if it "feels" you can't hit them with anything. You can break it using a support skill and they won't retry.
- The strategic AI sometimes plays in very unnatural ways. It might just be bias, but it feels like when I'm attacked they show up with a doomstack at my border, but they'll be at war with an ally for ages and never move back and forth more than one settlement.
- There's lots of variety in tactical support skills and espionage operations, but it doesn't feel like most of them are meaningful or worth the cost compared to alternatives.
- You can find yourself in a real slog with progress in the last 1/3 of some campaigns. There is one specific Syndicate map with lots of water and teleporters that was a particular nightmare.

The tutorial could be a bit better about explaining some core concepts - such as:
1. you should take your scout units from your first stacks and send them out to explore right from turn 1,
2. almost every colony needs at least the first military defense upgrade to survive random marauders, unless you clear their spawners out, which you won't probably have the time for
3. you should almost always focus on NPC faction quests in the early game and save up influence to buy a stack from them as your 2nd/3rd army
4. having an air unit raider stack can be a very powerful strategy, as they can cross water and mountains very fast and let you do precision strikes
5. before finishing a campaign, kit out your main commander with the best stuff you can get that would work against tier 1 or 2 units, as you'll be using them to clear out the early and mid game for the next campaign
6. when picking new sectors, cosmite is usually the most important to get, followed by influence, followed by everything else. Also, you can talk to friendly NPC faction armies to get them off of occupied resource points - I didn't know this for quite some time.

All in all, I had a good time, and I would recommend the game to people who enjoy Civ-style games but would like more control over their units. I've played a lot of XCOM, and I wouldn't agree the tactical gameplay is all that similar, but it does feel good for the most part.

This game very nearly got a "no" from me and I held off reviewing it for quite a while, because I was trying to decide if I wanted to recommend it or not.

Let me give you the short version, first: I am enjoying this game; mostly. But, there are so many problems with it that I know that a lot of people who buy it are going to come away from it disappointed. It is buggy, it has countless misleading ability/item descriptions that tell you that things should work one way when in fact they work a completely different way, it has awkward animations that always feel stiff and cheap (unfortunately, a trademark of the Age of Wonders franchise), and worst of all... it was developed by a company that is now owned by Paradox, a studio that is infamous for pushing excessive, overpriced DLCs for half finished games while they completely ignore bugs and broken content for months or even years after release. Yet, here I am, with a three digit play time, buying those DLCs the day they come out, so... clearly I can't say that it isn't fun. If you want to know more, read on.

I have been playing Age of Wonders since I was fifteen, and I'm thirty five, now. I have never seen an entry in the series that I haven't liked, and I bought this game as soon as I got the chance. Age 2 advanced the series from Age 1 by a lot, and Age 3 was the best the series has ever been. But this one... it feels a lot like a re-skin of the last one; maybe more like a well made sci-fi mod, than a sequel. If you are old-hat and hoping for another revolutionary leap in the franchise, you won't see it here. Much, if not most, of the content is recycled from Age 3 and while there are many changes, nothing that has been added is actually new. Maybe some things are new to this series, but they're all things you've seen in other 4X titles, before. You'll recognize things from Endless Legend, especially, and some stuff from Civilization, too, and even a bit from Europa Universalis, to boot, but nothing here is original. Even the sci-fi 4X premise, itself, has already been done to death in the last five years, so you'd better already be a fan of this stuff if you're coming to this table.

That being said, I do feel like this game does all of those things much better than they've ever been done before, and presents itself as a very ambitious (if not unpolished) member of that well-known sci-fi 4X club. If you like the genre then you'll find that this one has quite a lot of content and is fun enough to keep you clicking the 'End Turn' button several thousand times (and pushing on through all of the bugs). The graphics are nice, though not fantastic, and the different races are all interesting and richly developed. They not only have a lot for you to unlock and play with, but they have plenty of lore and identity, too. The Secret techs are cool, the NPC factions are cool, and the unit mod system gives you lots of options for personalizing your units as you build your empire. Playing it all over again, with a new race and tech combo, leads to a very different experience than you had the last time, and that's super important in a game like this.

The turn based combat is fantastic, and is among the best I have ever seen in a 4X title. Psychic soldiers who infect the enemy's mind with evil spirits, causing them to explode and release ghosts onto the battlefield, dinosaur-riding amazons shooting laser arrows, bugs that eat you and poop out giant maggots, deathbots that fire plasma cannons that light the battlefield on fire; it's all great. But then, Age has always had great combat. It might stand out when you compare it to everything else you've seen on Steam, but it isn't much better than what we got in the last game, and to be perfectly frank, I much preferred the high-fantasy aesthetic to the sci-fi aesthetic. Dragons, spells, undead; that was more my jam, than aliens and laserguns. I miss the wizards, a lot.

Plus, the combat experience, while great overall, is persistently hindered by ability/item descriptions that mislead you as to how they work. You'll go and use an ability that says it causes your unit to turn rabid, and attack the nearest enemy with bonus damage, only to find out they'll attack anyone nearby and you wind up killing your own dude. You'll activate a power because it says your Xeno creatures are immune to it, and it'll turn out theyre not. You'll target a machine with an attack that says it works on machines, only to find out it doesn't affect that machine, for some reason. You'll try to equip a mod that turns all of your psychic attacks into poisonous fire, but for whatever reason the game will tell you that the unit in question has no psychic attacks, even if he has three...

The game could be awesome, but it's broken in so many ways and it just feels more like an awkward spinoff than a proper sequel. And, because it's owned by Paradox, now, the devs are hard at work on their upcoming DLCs instead of fixing anything, and I am left to wonder if that means its problems will ever see real attention paid to them. Many of these issues have existed since launch, and their updates contain a nominal offering of remedies, at best.

So... overall... this game is fun, but the acquisition by Paradox has seriously tarnished it and holds it back. If you're really into 4X games, you'll like it, especially if you're into the sci-fi aesthetic. If you've played all of the Age games, before now, you'll think it's "ok", and have some fun. But... if you're new to the franchise, and you want to try it out, just go and get Age of Wonders 3. It was leaps and bounds ahead of this thing in quality, had more content, and was a lot more stable. It remains the paragon of the series, while this will probably fall off the radar in another year or two.

My initial opinion of this game was that it had a lot of options and complexity in some mechanics (particularly combat and unit modding), while other mechanics left me wanting (district systems, future tech). It also feels odd to have totally unmitigated Horizontal expansion- the game forces you to play wide, not tall. A slight lack of polish. Basically, I still liked the game, but I had much more enjoyment playing Age of Wonders III.

Now however, after multiple DLC's and patches, I find the game state to be polished and very well done. Combat / Questing / Unit Modding are just as good as originally, with even more variety due to new factions and additions. My major complaints with the district system were shored up by the allowance of urban districts that both let you strategically expand further than 2 zones from your city, and benefit from more vertical-built cityscapes. Future techs don't just end now, you can continue researching for a variety of worthwhile bonuses - meaning your research is no longer useless later in the game, but continually beneficial. While you do still need to play wide, having additional vertical benefits present doesn't make this feel quite as forced as previously.

Overall, I'd highly recommend the game in it's current state. Great job in interacting with your community and polishing this game up Triumph.

This game is easily one of the best newer strategy games (i.e. 4X style game) currently available for single player in my opinion, period. I've had a lot of time to try several of these sorts of games that are considered the top games in the category lately. Civ, Total War games, Stellaris, Endless Legend, the list goes on, but I always come back to this one.

NOTE: Many of the reviews for this game were from when the game was released, since then they did a massive update that re-balanced the game and overhauled several mechanics. A lot of the comments in negative reviews were from a year+ ago using the old mechanics. This game is being actively improved / patched as of Oct 2020 from what I've seen and they're still releasing an expansion.

I'll get the cons out of the way first:

CONS:
- The campaign storyline is pretty poorly written compared to the rest of the game and its lore excerpts. They definitely need an editor. I still really enjoyed the campaign though, and definitely think it's worth it to learn the game. I don't think Civ even had a campaign..

- Some minor bugs encountered during the campaign, but the game is constantly saving every turn so it wasn't a gigantic deal to reload

- On extra large maps with tons of opponents the game gets pretty heavy on the CPU around turn 70+. Turns take around 15-30s seconds for me at that point on a fairly strong i7 from 3 years ago. I didn't encounter this on non-huge maps or when using Simultaneous Turns mode to speed things up.

- The game can be a bit overwhelming if you're totally unfamiliar with Age of Wonders, so you'll probably be playing at least 2 maps before you get the hang of things. I shouldn't need to warn people but 4X games are time consuming, heh.

- The AI could still use improvement. They make some questionable military decisions at times and you can fleece them in diplomacy if you're clever enough. I didn't have problems adding more enemies/setting various options to up the difficulty though.

PROS:

- Campaign is like 200 hours+ of gameplay in the base game alone. It's... quite a bit longer than that if you are taking your time. You will be getting your money's worth if you stick to this game.

- Good UI scaling if you play on a TV or super high resolution

- Best combat system of any newer 4X I've played by far. My God it's good. It's especially good if you like XCOM (it uses things like overwatch, cover, etc. for the tactics). Several points below outline why I think so.

- Even if you hate the combat or XCOM, this game lets you auto-combat on a per battle basis if you want, and essentially sidestep the tactical combat if you dislike it or want to skip trivial fights, so you can ALSO play it as a pure empire building game if you wanted to.

- Tactical battles allow you to re-watch what happened turn-by-turn even if you auto-combat, and also give you the option of RETRYING a fight without reloading the game, which is great! You can even pull up battle replays from the very beginning of the match at any time (say if you forgot what loadouts your enemy units were using). You can also pull out of combat before it starts if you're attacking with no penalty, movement or otherwise.

- If you were a Heroes of Might and Magic 3 fan try this game and AOW3 out as well, they're the true spiritual successors to the legendary game itself IMO! Same strategic map / empire building / tactical combat balance.

- Easy and unfrustrating save system, this thing saves my games automatically going back dozens of turns (in addition to regular save / quick save options), loading games is a nearly instantaneous for me. Taking back huge mistakes is a matter of 5 seconds.

- Several races with their totally own style to choose from, several "classes" to choose from (called secret techs in this game, but same idea). Each combination plays / feels a lot different than the other ones, each mission felt like a new experience to me.

- In addition to the usual racial and class-based units you'd expect, this game has an amazing "mods" (unit/hero upgrade) system, allowing you to upgrade and customize the loadout of every single unit and hero in your army. This means the game's combat has hundreds if not thousands of combinations and strategies in it that other games don't because they don't allow such deep flexibility. Facing a faction of sentient plants? Burn them by adding fiery lasers to your robots. Enemy stunning your robots too much with electric attacks? Add some +electricity resistance defense mods to your units. You get the idea.

- Heroes can level up, get talents and switch out what weapons/gear they have. They can even talent into piloting and drive around in vehicles.

- Units can level up (although they aren't as extreme as heroes). So a "Veteran" unit after several battles would be stronger than a unit you just trained. The "prime" top tier rank usually grants the units an additional, more powerful bonus than the weaker ones from the other ranks. You get rewarded for being good at fighting and being smart with units.

- This game lets you research fast map movement speed and teleporters regardless of what race/class you are. A lot of games become a slog on super large maps without this.

- Pretty good sound track and the racial announcers during fights make it sound exciting. "Enemy OBLITERATED!"

- Tons of space / sci fi references if you're into that. The game doesn't take itself too seriously, but it has some seriously awesome lore and references of its own. The visual artwork is really solid too.

- Founding colonies and exploiting resources: the actual "empire building" and research aspect of this game is solid and not overly punishing or boring.

- Adventure on the map: visit exploration sites and curiosities on the map, fight monsters, gain treasure and items! Do quests for rewards too! (just like in heroes of might and magic). I felt like I was actually *doing interesting things* and being rewarded during the game instead of just passing turns for the empire building to complete.

- Multiple ways to victory! Win by whatever play style you want, including: just murdering everyone else, becoming a diplomacy expert and "peacefully" winning, using a doomsday weapon, controlling the overwhelming majority of map sectors, or if you're in the campaign often just doing the quest lines.

In summary:

This game is one of the best there is in the genre right now as of Oct 2020, putting a particular emphasis on action and tactical combat, although still a very rewarding game even if auto-combated for all battles. The game is almost criminally underrated on steam right now and if you're looking to try a new 4X I think this game is a must try.

A few weeks ago I was locked out of another game due to server issues. By chance I saw that Planetfall was on sale (-50%). I never looked back and became instantly addicted. This game truly deserves all its positive reviews. Even the negative reviews do not report game breaking technical issues or bugs. Some reviewers just preferred a previous game from the same developers (Age of wonders 1-3) Some have criticized the visual appearance of the game. (Looks fine to me, very nice artwork on the unit cards, research tree and encyclopaedia are a bit minimalist, decent tactical combat graphics) Some people just gave up on the game after less than 10 hours.

I can confidently recommend this game for people who like 4X games (Xpand Xplore Xploit Xterminate) such as Alpha centauri, Civilisation, Warlock, Master of Magic, Endless legend, Stellaris and others. It is a fine mix of strategic map management and tactical combat. Tactical combat has similarities to X-Com but without the brutal rng failures and timer (you do have dice rolls and skill checks but you also have a drop down box detailing combat events for all the hardcore game nerds) . Once you start understanding the wonderful complexities of different possible builds and strategies it begins to feel like an advanced form of chess where you want to plan your colony expansions several turns in advance and grab special structures that will give you special bonuses.

Units can be enhanced with mods in so many different ways. Armies consist of 6 units (including a hero who can also be customized with melee or ranged weapons, offensive or defensive mods, perks to enhance the hero or the army) Your starting faction and planet can be customized (in so many ways it will make your head spin) or randomized.

There is an amazing level of complexity that will appeal to most strategy players who like to figure out the best possible builds for their factions.

The game rewards exploration. There is true joy in discovering rare items after defeating powerful enemies in dangerous locations.

The game will appeal to players who like to expand all over the map without expansion penalties. (You still have to manage your economy and be prepared for invasions) There are many paths to victory. Diplomacy may look deceptively simple but it is actually quite a juggling act among all the major factions. And it seems to work for me so far. You must also handle minor factions that can sell you techs and units to improve your armies and offer quests, bounties, rewards or make demands.

AND there is a cool Science fiction story (about the fall of a galactic empire and the struggles of various factions in the ensuing turmoil) that plays out during the campaign. I enjoy discovering the backstory for some heroes and factions. With branching story lines you may even want to play the campaign more than once if you don't spoil it by researching it on the web.

BEGINNER TIPS: Do the tutorial (first campaign mission) The game will suggest you play the practise planet before you do the second campaign mission. Do this. Choose hero Helen Shaw for the practise planet. (You will learn more about Helen during the next campaign mission.) You will feel lost at this point. ("What do I do next?") Find the you tube video "Planetfall 10 beginner tips" by Frost Ees OP
Have fun. Experiment. Discover.

I can easily see myself playing over 1000 hours of this game.

TL;DR: If you found the Endless games beautiful and intriguing, but frustrating in terms of mechanics, gameplay, and player freedom? Play this instead.

I picked this up through Humble Choice, and wasn't expecting to think much of it -- I'm much more to the Civ and Stellaris side of 4X gaming -- but, much to my surprise, I found a game which took all the potential of Endless Space II & Endless Legend and gave me something I could actually work with. See, while I enjoy cool battles and leveling up my units, I don't want that to be the only thing I'm doing -- and I *certainly* don't want that to be the *main* thing I'm doing.

Planetfall lets me focus on planning and growing my civilization in peaceful/defensive ways, while exploring the various cool sites scattered around the map. It's much easier to nerf my opponents/make them peaceful than it has been in other games in this sort, and that suits my low-key playstyle just fine. When I want challenges, I go after the increasingly difficult npcs/'barbarian'-type units out there -- which can also be set not to attack, if that's your thing.

Reviewers who have said that you can't play a peaceful game with Planetfall are only partially correct. This is by no means as mellow a game as you can get with the proper settings on, say, Civ V or VI. However, if you're the kind of person who occasionally needs to stomp assorted beings while slowly ascending to galactic superiority?

You can do a lot worse than this.

*thinks* I described it to one of my partners as Civ Meets Diablo, but I think it's actually a lot more like one of my beloved sim-farming games on a decidedly epic scale. Like, you're rebuilding Portia... world.

Add in the great music, the fun voice acting, and, again, the fact that the game is freakin' gorgeous -- call it 7.5/10. I'd give it an even higher grade, but a lot of the fun/customizability is coming from fan-mods and paid dlcs. I'm iffy on that model.