 Whoa, hey wait a second, this isn't a Super Nintendo game. Yeah, that's right, it's Age of Mythology which came out for PC in 2002, one of my absolute favorite games of all time. It's a real-time strategy game that's kind of a spin-off from Age of Empires 2. Conceptually, the game combined actual events in history with a mythology of the Greek, Egyptian, and Norse cultures. Each culture has three gods to choose from, giving you nine total gods, so there's a lot of variety. It's a creative idea and the game has a lot of quirks and personality as a result, not to mention the game is fundamentally outstanding, one of the best strategy games you'll find to this day. Now to me, Age of Mythology is best played in versus mode against another person or even against the computer, so like any other strategy game, the goal is to build your civilization from scratch with your villagers gathering food, wood, and gold, and then to build up an army and destroy or conquer the enemy clogging up your map. However, you must also appease your god by building favor. Each civilization has a different way of doing this. Greeks bow to a temple, Egyptians build huge statues, but my favorite is the Norse, who simply just fight stuff. Yeah, you want to appease Loki? Go fight a fucking lion. Yeah. So what do you do with favor? You create myth units and get certain upgrades. The Greek have Minotars, Centaurs, Hydras, Cyclopsis, the Egyptians have Mummies, Anubites, and Sphinx. The Norse have trolls, fire giants, Valkyries. Really, it's the myth and god stuff that makes this game so much fun. Your civilization has four ages to advance to, much like the Age of Empires games, but along the way, you get four god powers, granted to you by, uh, sub gods, I guess? So each age you advance to, you get two sub gods to choose from. And these god powers are fucking sweet. There's lightning bolts, meteor showers, earthquakes, you can turn an army into pigs. Check out this sequence here. I'm storming my opponent's town center and have used my flaming weapons god power. My opponent counters with a god power that freezes me where I stand, leaving my army totally vulnerable, but I get to counter with a fucking dragon. Hell yeah. So cool. But yeah, besides the fun god powers, the game also does a great job presenting distinct advantages each civilization has. For the Egyptians, lots of basic stuff like houses are free of charge, and everything is cheaper in general. And you can put obelisks all over the map that allow you to see what your enemy is up to at all times. For the Norse, your wooden gold gathering houses are mobile, so you don't have to keep building them everywhere. And the fight for favor mechanic makes myth units appear automatically in the middle battle, which is very cool. And the sheer variety of the Greek army makes it really fun to plan and fight battles with. There's all sorts of different archers, infantry, cavalry, as well as nearly a dozen heroes you can spawn. One of my favorite things about age mythology is the little snippets of dialogue each person says when you click on them and make them go do something. The developers use the language and the dialect at the time to help the game feel more authentic. That's very cool. But it also makes it kind of silly. What did he say? Ski puns? I remember running into a person who also loved this game, and I swear we went back and forth for like five minutes just saying these phrases. I know it's so stupid, but I love it. One thing that stands out today is how well the game holds up graphically. The animations are very smooth and detailed, and the battles look really nice. And of course the god powers look awesome. Now age of mythology does have a single player campaign that's very good. You play as the Greek Archantos, chasing a Cyclops who's trying to destroy Atlantis. He gives you a taste of every civilization you can play as, as well as every major god and minor god. So if you're into that, that's available. There's 32 scenarios to play through, so it's plenty long. But I think the game is better realized against another player. It may sound silly to play against the computer, but the AI in this game is seriously amazing. They must have tested the hell out of this game for months and months to get the AI this good, because this game could be a heck of a challenge without feeling unfair. And the replay value is always going to be there, because there's always different strategies you can implement with different civilizations and different gods. Now let's get to the reason I made this video. I love to pick random games, but this one isn't so random. It just so happens that age of mythology is going to have an HD re-release soon, and I cannot freaking wait. See the link in the video description for details. I hope to do a review of that version once it comes out as well. In the meantime, if you've never played age of mythology, well I've probably spent more hours on this game than any other game in my entire life, and there's a reason for that. This game is fun and addicting with a ton of variety, a ton of personality. Age of mythology is a unique creative idea that is brilliantly realized even to this day.