The really neat thing about throwing a tactical battle system into a 4X game is that your strategic-level decisions determine which units you can bring into battle. The tactical battles, as briefly mentioned before, are similar to tactical role-playing games: you move about a hex grid and subsequently attack enemies using ability points. How you get units that aren’t of your faction’s race will take some work but it’s well worth it to get the benefits of a varied team. Like previous Age of Wonders games, there are different races of units to command, each with their own benefits. You must maintain an economy of resources that are required for building and maintaining units. You build units with your bases and use those units to expand your turf and intervene in events or battles on the map. In the strategic level, you have your basic 4X movements and actions.

While I can’t comment on how all the separate campaigns connect, the universe that Planetfall inhabits seems fleshed out and deep so maybe I just picked a bad one. I wasn’t overly impressed with the campaign I picked but I also don’t play these games for their stories as I don’t expect to be wowed by them. Not only is there a tutorial campaign that goes over the basics of the game and sets up the world but there’s also multiple stories you can choose to experience. The campaign mode is a nice addition for those who need a little push in their 4X endeavors.

I can understand the strategic level being clunky to some extent, but tactical battles have been done well before with a controller in other games, and that feels like more of a shortcoming here. It might be because I’m used to the keyboard, but it’s just unwieldy to use for both the strategic and tactical gameplay. I lasted about a half-hour before going back to keyboard and mouse. Because the game is releasing on consoles as well, I decided to give the gamepad controls a test.

Age of wonders planetfall dlc roadmap