Age of Mythology: Retold short review

Let's get one thing straight from the beginning. I'm fully aware of the corporate brainrot this game suffered at launch, with its generative AI art controversy and the decision to charge £5 for legacy portraits. That's precisely why this was a half-price purchase for me.

Now for the game itself. As a remaster of a two-decades-old game, it unfortunately retains many of the design problems from that era of RTS. I'm a newcomer to Age of Mythology, though I played Age of Empires titles occasionally in my younger years. My experience is based on the state of the game after the July-August 2025 patch.

I started with the Arkantos campaign, jumping in on Hard mode. My expectation was that Hard would be a setting for RTS veterans, with Titan and Ludicrous difficulties being reserved for those with deep game and mission-specific knowledge. I was wrong. The remaster's improved enemy AI, combined with the creatively limited designs of that era, makes some missions impossible to beat blind on Hard. There are numerous "gotcha" moments where scripted enemy attacks appear out of nowhere, completely ruining a run and forcing a restart.

This old-school "puzzle box" design simply doesn't allow for much player agency or creativity on higher difficulties. You're not just fighting an opponent but also the script they designed. Some missions feel less about strategy and more about discovering the one specific cheese or exploit the developers expected you to use, which is just poor design.

By the time I reached the Norse section of the campaign, I was already fatigued. Some of these missions were lasting over thirty minutes, not even counting the restarts caused by cheap shots. The thought of learning an entirely new faction and playstyle was too much. I switched to Story Mode just to get through it, but that's when I discovered a long-standing issue: the Norse campaign was reportedly the most rushed part of the original game. Even on the easiest difficulty, the missions were so profoundly dull that I had to drop it. I tried again yesterday and just couldn't continue.

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After a break playing Arena of the Gods, I jumped into the Atlantis campaign, which was a vast improvement in pacing and mission variety. Being more familiar with the game now, I started on Titan before bumping it up to Ludicrous. While this campaign had about three problematically designed missions, most were genuinely fun and could be beaten blind even on Titan. I don't care for the Dwarf campaign and will be skipping that. The Chinese one is supposedly quite unique, so I might give that a go. However, the upcoming Japanese DLC is something I will absolutely be playing.

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Next is the PvE/co-op mode, Arena of the Gods. Like many, I was disappointed. This mode has so much potential and a solid foundation. It's clearly the co-op PvE experience a large part of the fanbase has been craving, but it feels like it was developed on a minimal budget. My friends and I went in expecting something akin to StarCraft II's Co-op Commanders mode, which we used to enjoy. While the mode is still a fun co-op experience, it's incredibly barebones. The roguelite elements, the balance of the blessings, and the mission design all need a lot of work. Thankfully, the developers have stated they will be improving it with the Japanese DLC.

The roguelite blessings are a perfect example of this shallow implementation. Out of more than twenty options, perhaps five are genuinely usable on Extreme difficulty. This forces a rigid meta where the pool of viable gods and playstyles can be counted on one hand. For example, several scenarios on the second page are 1v3 fights. If you're playing solo, you essentially have to pick a hero-focused build with blessings for health regeneration or movement speed just to stand a chance, all while exploiting the AI, some of which no longer works as of the current patch. I still enjoy it solo or occasionally with my friend, but it could be so much more.

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Now for the other problems. The pathing is, to put it mildly, atrocious. There have been countless times my units have managed to get themselves stuck inside a patch of trees they can't get out of, despite somehow getting in there in the first place.

The new automated worker AI sounds great on paper as a way to lower the APM requirement and let you chill. The problem is, it feels like it was programmed with the most basic logic imaginable. It has no checks for danger or distance. It doesn't prioritise fully fattened animals or enhanced resources. Villagers don't automatically seek shelter when attacked, instead of fighting back weaker units that they can definitely beat, they just stand there or walk erratically until they die. It feels like a bot made for the original 2002 game, not something from the 2020s. I cannot tell you how many times I've sworn as my automated workers decided to walk out the main gate and 100 metres away for a resource while my base was actively under attack. And because they're automated, you can't just order them back; the system will simply send another group of villagers to their doom until you waste precious time disabling the automation entirely. It feels familiar...Oh, it's a bit like a generative AI workflow: technically functional, but lacking any real intelligence or context.

This lack of intelligent automation extends to combat units too. If you send an army to attack an enemy town without a specific target, there's a good chance they'll completely ignore the critical Town Center to chase the first worker they see, breaking formation and getting picked off one by one. They'll be attacking a building, see a newly spawned unit, and the entire group will just abandon their objective to pursue it. And while a smaller issue, the UI remains a problem. It's visually plain, and the button placements can be annoying, with the minimap's location being a frequent source of frustration.

On the audio front, the background music is mostly fun and chill to listen to, matching the game's themes quite well. I have no complaints there. The voice acting, however, is a mixed bag. The standouts for me were Kastor, whose accent adds welcome flavour, and Gaia, whose exaggerated flair was a nice touch. In contrast, the performances for Amanra and Loki felt the most lacking.