With everything from the historical settings of Crusader Kings 3 and Europa Universalis 4 to the interstellar exploration of Stellaris, developer Paradox has a solid claim as the champion of grand strategy games. Yet the latest entry in its delightful fantasy-realm series Age of Wonders 4 has been troubled of late. Arriving alongside the newest AoW 4 DLC, its Mystic update brings plenty of upgrades, but introduces some notable problems alongside them.
The new Age of Wonders 4 Mystic update arrived as a free patch alongside the launch of its latest DLC, Age of Wonders 4 Eldritch Realms. As the name suggests, it delivers a rework to the Mystic culture with three different schools of spellcasting. Along that come other new features for the grand strategy game including the ability to take over combat for your AI allies and a mode enabling new games to venture to unknown realms that must be gradually explored.
Despite an early hotfix, however, Paradox admits that the Age of Wonders 1.1 update “has not been as stable as we wanted it to be.” Alongside some balance concerns, the major worries include crashes and mid-game lockups, as well as erroneous behavior from AI-controlled factions. To help resolve these issues, a new 1.2 update has just been rolled out and should now be available to download on Steam, resolving numerous issues.
That’s not the end of the story, however. “As it stands, there is more work to be done,” Paradox confirms in its latest blog post. “We are planning a Mystic 1.3 update with which we aim to address lingering issues as well as some of the balance feedback we’ve received. It’s key that we take our time for this, so no date has been set yet.”
In the meantime, a lot of the major issues have been addressed in the 1.2 update. If you’ve been hoping for balance changes, however, you might be waiting a while longer. Despite these problems, our Age of Wonders review scores it 9/10, so there are still plenty of reasons to check in if you’re looking for something new.
Alternatively, here are the best 4X games for plenty more exploring, exploiting, expanding, and extermination action. Or you can adventure into more magical and mystical realms with the best fantasy gamese on PC.
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