With a name like Age of Wonders, you'd be very surprised to find this is a World War II first-person shooter, wouldn't you? And you'd be right because, as the name might suggest, Take 2's latest has more in common with Heroes of Might and Magic than Hidden and Dangerous.
Andy Smith

Age of Wonders? A fantasy role-playing action adventure perchance?
Bang on. Almost. It's more a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy world with some role-playing elements thrown in for good measure.

Not another one. Haven't we had enough of these?
If you look around, there aren't that many games of this type around. There's your Heroes of Might and Magic, as mentioned earlier, and the Warlords series of games, but those are about it.

Oh. So, spill...
Alrighty. Let's deal with the single-player aspect of the game first. Here the game revolves around an unfolding plot with multiple endings, shaped by the player's decisions, and broken down into single missions strung together. Essentially, the player picks one of 12 races (such as Frostlings, who come, not unsurprisingly, from the cold regions of the game world, and Dark Elves) and then has to either forge alliances with other races or fight the ones who want to play rough.

Fantasy battles, eh?
Oh yes. Which means you're going to be chucking spells around a fair bit, and not just your common or garden fireballs either. There are spells to alter the landscape so you can get volcanoes to erupt, snowy wastes to turn to grassy meadows and lowlands to be flooded. This will make tactics important in battles so don't expect to spend your time Orc-rushing the enemy all the time.