"Maxwell McGee is new to the Age of Wonders series, but had no trouble diving into and understanding Age of Wonders III. And even after a dozen campaigns, he still discovers something new with every battle."

Interesting. And yet the reviewer cites: "In the end, your class and race selections simply apply subtle variations on the same core set of units, and as a result, encounters can start to feel similar in spite of the game's elements of randomness." Which anyone who has actually played the beta can tell you is a bogus statement. Yes there are racial variations of each of the class units, but there are also racial units completely unique to each race. Not to mention bringing independents under your wing, along with acquiring different mounts and items which can completely change your army set-up, and class specific summons.

"However, when you're ready to take the fight online, you may experience some hiccups. On two different machines, I encountered connection errors with the developer's servers, which prompted me to seek aid outside of the game through the developer's website. If you're not already well versed in firewall port forwarding, you may find their solutions woefully underdeveloped." And were these machines behind the same firewall or proxy? Judging by the feedback on the AOW3 website, this is very much the exception rather than the norm. So while my sympathies rest with the reviewer for having these troubles I would also suggest that this could be a location based hardware issue.

I'm also not thrilled to find that the video and stills provided in this article are of the very early campaign, and of the what looks like the first battle of a random scenario play through on a magical site. Now unless I missed something on the review in progress, this does make me question the validity of the first statement in this post and also makes me seriously question the reviewer's stance on the perceived unit problem.

While I understand that reviews are subjective by their very nature, my feelings here are that the reviewer is not as experienced as he claims.

Great list! Thoroughly approve... acej2000 wrote: btw, i hope grey fox makes a comeback in mgs4 , Meryl does so I don't see why he can't So... the fact that he got beaten up by Snake, had his arm lopped off by a fricken' big lazer, got severely crushed against a solid concrete wall AND was promptly smushed beneath Metal Gear Rex's heel means you see absolutely NO reason why he can't come back? Gee... I personally thought the massive pool of blood and gibbly gibbed corpse gave it away, but oh well. Its also worth noting that MGS had two endings, and in the reality when you save Meryl it makes no mention of Otacon actually dying. So there's your answer. She survives, the Nuke attack is never actually called on the bunker (if you listened to the dialogue with 'tin o' soup' Campbel at the end), Otacon does not glow green and she escapes on a Snow Mobile with Snake. The End! (Best, Boss, Eva!)