If ever there were a game deserving a 3 and a half hour long video about it, it is undoubtedly this one. Criminally underrated masterpiece, I hope we're living in a timeline where Retold does well enough to justify a level of support comparable to what Age 2 is currently getting.
@@singularleaf3895 yeah actually, even if the bad guys have him as a major god, the story at least shows that poseidon is the one causing trouble this time
@@12anbufan I really do kinda think they threw Hades in as the major god for that mission just to cover all the bases. The Erebus missions are no-build missions, so having him there admittedly would've gimped things gameplay-wise, even if it would've made sense.
to this day i refuse to unlearn that osiris' quartered remains were dragged across the desert by a ragtag group of greek and egyptian heroes for his resurrection
Most of my mythological knowledge comes from playing this game. It was so awesome learning about all the different gods while doing battle with their creatures and cultures.
Hades be like: 'Back in the basement, dad! I still haven't forgiven you for eating me as a baby! If you didn't want kids, why didn't you castrate yourself with a sickle, just like you did with grandpa Ouranos? Or were you afraid another beautiful women like aunt Aphrodite would rise from the sea, if you chucked in your own?' I love greek myth.
It was almost a joke in my old friend circle how like 70% of us learned our ancient mythologies through those unit info pages. I remember my bro and I playing this game back in the day, he was partial to the Norse and their more aggro playstyle, whereas I tended towards Egypt cause I liked their myth units more. So many good memories, we might even still have the physical disks back home buried somewhere, if any of our computers can run it.
@@jawdroper22 Good news for you, they're not gonna be in base Retold - they're being reworked entirely as DLC, along with a promise of another DLC faction that we do not yet know.
@@TARDISEShope it's mesopomia, or any of the south American pantheons. I know it wouldnt really work geographically but dammit it would be really cool to see them in a video game.
@@HoodedLord There's not even a chronological overlap between the base game pantheons. I don't think geographical distance is gonna matter either as long as they're well implemented.
Okay so, one reason I think you had Set as the patron God in Mission 13 (the tug of war mission) is probably because of the betrayal right at the start of the NEXT mission - most likely it shows that the base you used for mission 13 was actually worshipping Set, and thus turned on you the moment you got the God piece. I thought it was a fairly smart piece of foreshadowing, while also giving you a chance to test Set stuff for a bit in the campaign.
Interesting, though visually it's really not clear that both sc13's and sc14's bases are the same (building placement, mountains...). Scenario 13's base is a war camp, white 14's looks more like a city. I would have loved more visual connections between 12, 13 and 14 regarding the shape and look of places, because they feel so disconnected of each other :/
The fun thing with Colossae you didn't mention is that they can heal by eating gold mines or trees. It's an awful exchange rate resource/hp wise, but you can retreat these guys to just out of defense range, and then literally eat up your enemy's resources and heal your showstopper units. This game has so many cool things you can do with a little creativity it's insane.
That sounds horrifying. Imagine being a peasant who hears about these giant metal monsters ravaging the countryside and slaughtering the king's men, and then you turn and see one off in the distance, literally eating a gold mine.
@@flamboyantwarlock7101 I think the idea of you and a squad of guys get sent to kill it, and once it's clear that it won't survive instead of fighting back to the death it just starts eating trees like candy is hilarious
arkantos: ANY WHO THREATENS MY HOME, AND MY FAMILIES... WILL SOON HAVE A PLACE IN MY DREAMS... ^thats the most memorable badass line from arkantos that would stay in my nostalgic childhood memories forever... though as adult, looking back to it now... i;ve understand its a terrifying statement that arkantos will force his enemies to fight him ad infinitum in his dream arena and kill them again and again...
A 3.5 hour video on a 2 decade old RTS game and it's at nearly a MILLION views?! What godly power is this? Definitely deserves it though. This was a love letter to a game that stands the test of time. And yes I did watch all 3.5 hours of it and it was worth it. Justice for Sobek!
Dunno if you still read comments here, but according to the Xbox games showcase deep dive from today, they've renamed the laser crocs to 'petsobek' (at 33 : 48 in that video) You did it.
What’s insane is that Arkantos is basically retired by the time Fall of the Trident begins. There’s so much back story behind his character that I would love to see in the form of campaigns in the new aom Retold
Glad to see you branching out to UA-cam shorts Grant. I really think it will benefit you in the long run to have these short and low effort videos for some consistent content.
Age of Mythology was one of the first PC games i played as a kid. It came out when i was 7 or 8 years old and saw my father playing it and wanted to play it too, so i did. I loved it so much, that i even did drawings of the heros and monsters.
Thats how Exactly how I got into AOE2, AOE1 and counter strike. Watching my dad and uncles play it but we only had the one PC so I had to watch my dad play until he got off or gave me some play time. When he saw that I was legitimately good at the games right away he got me my own pc! That was a happy day Some of my best memories with my dad are finally being able to game with him instead of just watching.
My original PC Gaming Experience was Civilization 3, Age of Mythology from disc, Oldschool Runescape before it was called Oldschool, and Bloons Tower Defense 3. My console gaming was all of Pokemon Gen 4 on the DS lite, Mario Party Seven on the GAMECUBE, Need For speed Underground 2 on the PS2. I'm an OG Gen Z and I'm proud of it. Needless to say AoM was a big part of why I like Strategy Games.
I played this game when I was 10 yo and used to draw every single thing, from buildings to the units in detail. I went to the (incredible) length of making "tabletop RPG" off of it (without even knowing by that time that such thing existed), which I would pick the drawings of the units, and use popsicle sticks on each turn to "build" buldings and catapults, to defend and to attack others. Pretty simple mechanics but I used to have so much fun bringing that game --- which I invented myself based on AOM --- to school, to play with my friends there. Seriously, this game is by far the one who single-handedly made me a history nerd, my biggest scores were always in history exams and to this day I remember every single detail from Age of Mythology. Guys at Ensemble Studios managed to be part of a whole generation. Thankful for having lived such time.
This is my second listen through - and I just wanted to say that your enthusiasm and passion is absolutely infectious and brightened up my day! This game was also a massive part of my childhood so it is nice to be able to re-experience it with a guide.
Fun fact about Osiris in myth: his wife, your “patron goddess who shall not be named” was able to find every part of his body except one. The one missing part was the one most important for *cough* husbandly duties. So she made a replacement out of gold, brought him back to life and he lived exactly long enough to *cough* perform once, before dying again.
@@rama-n-i the patron goddess was ISIS, he didnt want the youtube auto algorithm system to cause problems and hide the video, due to the history of the ISIS organisation as mentioned in the video. ESet & ASet arent an issue no?
No one played the Chinese campaign, but I remember seeing that in one of the missions there's a merchant who is looking for a piece of Osiris that ended up in China for some reason. My head cannon is... Well, that box held the "lost part" lol.
Small fact regarding the market introduction at Troy mission 2. The market at the center of Troy is connected to the smaller city on the right side of the map and the settlement near your base is just for unit expansion/supply. If you explored the map a bit more you’d see the trading units going between the main market and smaller city, and there are also relics in the smaller city. Also, there is gold on the smaller ocean islands, incentivizing new players to explore.
I got this at a scholastic book fair when I was kid. My parents were a little annoyed because I was supposed to buy books of course. But once I showed my dad some game play and talked about the mythological aspect and the strategy elements he was sold and even played with me. Really excited youre covering this!
9:39 Arkantos does say he'll go to Troy, and simply grab the trident on his way, so they do explain that Troy is where he's headed next. Also, the way they hint at the whole Skult being Loki thing is also why you play as Set in tug of war, that's why when Amanra leaves you're suddenly surrounded by Set units because you brought the piece to a town controlled by Set.
One fun little crossing of narrative and gameplay happens during the mission "Unlikely Heroes" (if I remember correctly). There's a moment where a Nidhogg shows up to attack you and one of the dwarfs says that Reginleif is the only one who can slay it. It comes across as this, "only the destined hero can slay the beast" kind of thing, but since Reginleif is the only ranged hero you have, and the Nidhogg flies, she really is quite literally the only one that can slay it. :)
@@notdax3620 I actually started planning a deathless AoM run recently; I'm probably not going to actually do it because I don't have the energy, but it would be very possible, if a bit of a bastard.
@@alicedruitt4805 without remembering all the missions i believe its pretty impossible with all the lighting storms , especially the dream mission with the lighting statues
@@vicdansanch Yeah that'd be the tough one. I checked the speedrun for AoM though (Which exists!) and I think it would be possible (you never build a base and instead rush your forces up the coast to the wonder) but it'd require some *careful* savescumming.
You probably wont see this as this video has been out for a month but I just want to thank you for making this. I has been years since I have played this but it was and possibly still is my favorite game. Your whole style of video reminded me of the joy I had when I was younger playing it and your commentary and editing were phenomenal and hilarious. I have been smiling so hard for the last 3.5 hours to the point I am almost crying so thank you.
Almost another month later, I second your comment like the 95 people before me. I do a PhD on knowledge transfert, and this video is the second one from @GiantGrantGames that made it onto the list to be analysed. It is just so amazing what time he invests into scripting and designing this experience, so from the bottom of my heart and from a samplesize of 729 curated videos: Thank you Grant for your work, and everything you do, did do and will do. Wishing you all the best and keep it up :)
This is truly a cinematic masterpiece. You were able to come up and execute something that a very small fraction of the content creators are able to do. Grant, you created a 3 and a half hour project which was worth investing every second into. RTS has been a pretty big part of my life too, so having somebody like you to share this passion with is incredible. You are truly awesome! Thank you for making this video and thank you for opening my eyes to one of the most interesting and unique RTS games out there! Continue doing what you do, I am sure there is a lot more ahead of you. I, and everybody here I am sure, will be with you, always!
The audio is literally the most memorable part of this game for me. Music especially but hearing the troops speak when ordered brings back so many memories
😊@@ebenpurgahn4714Shorthand explanation: Video Length + 100% Watchtime (because you are sleeping and can't click off) + Time of day based recommendations = Popular Long Video you are interested in (IE watched before)
This is awesome! It is a massive shame that YT doesn't encourage or properly incentivise creators to make this kind of content, cause this is a great video - thanks for taking the time to put this together! AoM was a huge part of my childhood, laid the foundation for a lifelong love of RTS - its a pity we don't tend to see in-game choices for tech trees like this anymore
Also fun fact, this game's editor was so complete you literally had the option to make cutscenes with it. And the programming was just as good as you say, Grant. You could make it do ANYTHING. Buuut I was a dumb kid and all those trees and technical words scared me so I never actually did complete my custom map about the Guardian with it.
I thought the same, but then I learned, at least according to fans who actually made maps and scenarios with proper triggers and cutscenes, that the editor is actually *notoriously* difficult to work with without investing dozens of hours into it.
I think I spent as much time playing as I did reading everything about the units, buildings, weapons, missions, etc. It was literally an encyclopedia and even had passages from a lot of works from their civilizations. I kid you not, this inspired me to read the classics when I was younger.
I played this campaign probably 10 years ago and was completely shocked by how many of these missions I remembered. Not only did I remember the major story beats as you went over them, there were so many times when you talked about a mission's gimmick and I was like "oh yeah, I remember that mission". I think that's the mark of a really well made game.
I came back to this game as an adult during Covid and could literally remember where all the secrets were. This was one of those rare games that, as a kid, had me motivated to find literally EVERYTHING. (And yet it wasn't until this video that I learned pharaohs can't increase villager build speed because, as Grant says, there's nothing about it in the ingame encyclopedia and childhood me didn't have a Wiki).
2:32:00 - Scarabs and Behemoths have one rather large difference. Behemoths regenerate. It's not slow, either, it's 2 health per second. So if you can keep them alive (even if only barely) between fights, Behemoths can keep tanking for you, whereas Scarabs you want to throw in to tank for a long time and then explode over the enemy.
@@oom-3262 Not really. Both have the save attack. Scarabs do have 1/5 more HP than a Behemoth. Pound for pound the Behemoth is a weaker counterpart of the Scarab which can regen (2 hp/s base and if you go Hecate you can double that).
My god... Age of Mythology. This game was such a wonderful part of my childhood. Maybe some day I can recover the disk I had. Its so nice to see this game get the recognition it deserves and its nice to see so many people have had similar experiences!
@@yarro1965 It is, but at this point it's probably best to just wait for the Retold version to come out. The team behind that has done great work on the other three definitive upgrades of the Age franchise, so Retold should be pretty good.
The Trojan horse mission is definitely doable with not letting any attacks escape. There is a relic out there that makes your cavalry faster, so your already slightly faster prodomos can now outrun them reliably. In addition, pre planning some cavalry to cut off their escape during the fight means you can get in their way and hit them before they get too far
Another way is to use minotaurs, there abylity to knock enemies away allow you to flank around and throw then away when they try and escape, letting you collapse on them, or just shoot them, the masterbolt works for cleanup if you mess up
I remember just for fun i tried to see if it was even remotely possible to ignore building the horse and assault Troy itself. Yeah...in hindsight that was a dumb idea but it was really fun creating a huge death fortress and army only to run into gates made out of god flesh that ignore all damage while a legion of enemies tripled the size of my army just waltzed out and clowned on me.
My thoughts exactly. You just need to focus on cavalry and the occasional defensive structures. @joshua kim It is possible to beat the mission without the Horse. It's a pain and requires a lot of resources (and Apollo's god power) but it can be done as you just have to destory the 3 fortresses and you've won. Would be way easier without the restricted tech tree though.
Also, you can underworld passage outside the walls, on the cliff, near the the TC between the 2 fortresses left of the main gate and then hoplites ONLY and villagers can glitch through the walls and you can kill all the trojan fortresses and destroy most of the base. Too bad you don't have petrobolos for a more normal siege but you make do with what you have 🤣
@@joshuakim5240 That is possible though, I did it on my last playthrough (Titan). The tiresome part are the death canyons of towers on cliffs, which took a lot of time to clear out, but past that it was perfectly feasible.
Same. Weirdly enough my dad was a gang banging youngin. Went to school n got n electrical engineering degree and in his words became friends with some awesome "G(r)eeks" who introduced him to AoM and in turn led me to the BEAUTIFUL game of mythology
I remember my dad getting this game thinking it was a movie 💀 (to his defense he’s pretty old) and m still revisiting it after so many years, such a good game.
Grant makes a 3+ hours video on Age of mythology ? Must be a let's play of some of the campaigns map, right ? NO, it's actually really a retrospective in the style of Mandalore (the humor and especially the whole "crocodiles with lasers" meltdown). This is such a great video, I hope he does more of this style on other games. -I knew this game didn't sell as well as its older brother AoE2, but I didn't realise a Stronghold title, of all things, sold twice as much, such a shame. Best RTS of its time until I got warcraft 3 not that much later (which is like making a great movie that releases the same year as The godfather). -The campaign had a pretty cool story overall but so much cutscene incompetence on display it was eye-rolling - every other map the heroes would let the bad guy run away or "Chiron, you know, you could have stayed on the good side of the rockslide" moments. -I remember the buildings being pretty, but the atlantean ones at the mythic age look like something from 2015 ! Fun fact about the ingame codex : when Ajax is transformed into a boar, if you look at the unit info it says something along the lines of : this form may be better suited to his personnality ^^
1. I love that Age of Mythology in recent years has basically gotten a second lease on life. What was once an underappreciated gem is now rightfully treated as a classic of the RTS genre and I *love it* 2. Its actually crazy how many things were cut for the sake of time and budget. Ranging from extended lines of dialogue that actually make more sense than what we got and give us more of the characters, to massive ships that show the units that are using them, functional bridges etc. They really had a lot of ideas with this game its just a shame not *everything* could fit into a clear vision due to the hardware of the time. Plus, the small plot holes in the story here and there don't help in how rushed some parts are. (Like how dafuq the Atlanteans got stranded if Ajax and Odysseus were leading them home. Did something separate them? Why did nobody look for them? Were they forbidden by Agammemnon fro doing so, as its implied the other Greek colonies are envious of Atlantis and this was a form of payback. You'd think both Ajax and Odysseus would try harder to at least find Kastor, their friend's SON? Were they presumed dead then? Making the reveal of Kastor attacking everyone more shocking. Small stuff but it adds up the more you think about it and that's JUST the Titans Expansion, and speaking of....) 3. To this day I am still salty at the fact that the Titans Expansion ends on kind of a whimper. I mean, yeah, summoning Gaia to fight Kronos is awesome but you'd expect that with all the buildup to the MAIN VILLAIN of the entire game, that it would feel more *apocalyptic* and maybe stretched out into multiple missions with all the factions in the game coming together to hold off Kronos to summon Gaia in time. 4. The music is iconic. Nuff' said. PS: Fixed some errors
TBH, they really should've referenced the opening cutscene when Kronos found his keys. You know, how there were legions of myth units and Kronos himself was calling down meteors in an extremely epic cinematic.
Bro that is irrelevant because this is a strategy game and not an rpg. The goal of the campaign was to introduce the civilizations, and the mechanics of the game such as raiding, booming, forward basing, etc. The story was secondary, and honestly it was entertaining
@@strahinja95 not saying it wasn't entertaining or that it didn't serve its purpose. But plenty of RTSs had excellent storytelling to boot alongside their gameplay and presentation. Hell,Warcraft 3 came out a few months before this game so its completely valid criticism.
@@filipvadas7602 i agree, and i think that warcraft 3 is the best game ever made along with WoW. I would guess that Esemble studios was not as big as Blizzard to polish the game to that degree. Lack of $. And also, Blizzard was the highest quality you could get back in the day
You are absolutely correct in how anyone who has played this game still lovingly remembers it, I was one of those kids. My sister got Age of Mythology one day from a random DVD and CD store somewhere back in 2007, and I saw her playing and was immediately drawn into the world. The units, the animations, the visuals, the language, everything was so well done and mesmerizing. I admittedly was a terrible RTS player back then during my kid and teen days, and I don't know how I'd fare today but even if I don't talk about the game for many many years at a time, I will always remember this game.
My dad got AoM after we both really enjoyed Starcraft 1, and it introduced me to the greek, egyptian, and norse mythologies and did a good job of getting across key elements of all three. It got me to dig into those myths and legends (most notably the greek ones) and is responsible for an entire phase of childhood enjoyment for me. It was a fantastic game and I greatly appreciate it for bringing such old stories to a new generation of kids that might have otherwise never have heard of them until they were older and unlikely to be as interested. Great video!
Yup, this was the game that got me hooked on mythology. Sure, I watched Hercules along with everyone else, but it wasn't until I read Hades' in-game wiki article that I really started getting into it and loving Hades as a concept. And that in-game wiki really helped me understand the concept of the Underworld so much better.
I got the game simply for the Egyptian mythology bit. I loved it as a child, still do, but there as no entertainment media available with it. Everything was all Greek, Greek, Greek. Yes, yes, cool, done to death, NEXT!
I'm no expert at RTS games, but this one in particular was such a huge part of my personal gaming history. I'm so glad my dad was a weird gamer in the early 00s. I've never watched your channel before, but thank you for a love letter to a game that was so significant to me. :)
My Dad was a PC gamer in the 2000s and I think I was playing this I was about 4 years old (: It got me really into mythology and stuff and it played a huge part in my childhood
I'm no expert either, but I still find the time to play through the campaign every few years. I was very obsessed with it as a kid when I managed to get the demo and play it. Eventually I got the actual game and it's still sitting on my shelf even though the disk no longer works properly.
Age of Mythology alongside C&C and Heroes 3 were playing huge part in my childhood. For some reason i enjoyed it far more than Age of Empires series. I'm glad to see this entire Video Essay (Director Cut) (Extended Edition) (Unlimited Words Expansion Pack) (Steal the Human Attention DLC) about it.
Yeah, and I also played this games alongside Warcraft 3 and Dawn of War series (I loved RTS back in the day and still do). Heck, I even played Star Wars Empire at War.
@@АлексейТабаков-ы8в Same here, thats basically my childhood, I even became friends with my "almost a brother" / "brother from another mother" best friend because He mentioned Star Wars: EaW during a class in highschool, and I JUST had to talk to him.
47:42 In Rise of Legends, the three factions each have separate campaigns, but they're knit so tightly it feels more like it was one story split into three parts. The main character is the same throughout, while pieces of your original faction make returns as they were brought along from the previous part. The story also follows this, in that you're fighting to stop the same villain, whose plans are growing increasingly desperate and dangerous as you thwart him in the previous part, before he escapes into the territory of the next faction. edit for the road: KRIOS HAS SUPPLIED US WITH ANOTHER FIRE SIPHON
I was going to say the same thing. That game has a great campaign. It has so many heroes that you could use and all the upgrades to get in the campaign. The little touch I really liked is you could see the area the next campaign was set in at the edge of the map.
I would like Grant to try this RTS, it is very cool and serves as a kind of Age of Mythology from the Rise of Nations series. A lot of mechanics from the main series look rather strange in Rise of Legends, but still fun. The global mode surprisingly makes sense. Also the leaders of the two main factions are two waifu who want the main character lol
I'm currently replaying Rise of Legends! It's a ton of fun, but boy howdy did it need a few more months of development. It definitely has the same amount of sheer dumb fun with ridiculous over the top nonsense as Age of Mythology, but it really feels unfinished in places, and the mission design isn't nearly as good as AoM's. That's when missions even have a design, most are just 'a skirmish map but you start with the army you built on the campaign map'. Still! Well worth a try, if you can, erh, acquire it. Which is its own challenge.
Just a side note Rise of Legends campaigns can be cheesed by not attacking and defending (or retake it) your territory, you can farm campaing points (like tech and military), then steam roll it with a maxed out army.
Dude, AoM was THE game of my childhood. I remember going to my grandma's house (where my uncle's "good" PC was) and playing all day long throught my school holidays. It's been 20 years, my grandma passed away in 2021 and your video brought back a lot of good memories for me. Thank you so much for your effort and amazing work :) Cheers from Brazil!
You never had a childhood. You came out of your mom fully grown & by the time that happened. This game was already long over. So, you're a liar. Apologize to me for wasting my dang time, you pretender.
I don't often leave likes on UA-cam, but seeing 3.5 hours long tribute to one of my favorite games, the one nobody talks about... Man, I liked it in the very first minute! Amazing job, thank you!
i honestly have to thank youtubes recommendations and algorithms for this video. this was a fantastic video about one the games that defined my childhood, Age of Mythology and age of empires were some of the best and most entertaining RTS's. such a great video to reminisce about what made age of mythology such a great game, of course i should mention the random map which you only slightly talked about but had endless variety and possible fun, cheers
Yeah like most aoe games, the random map script is a very fun gameplay quirk in the franchise. It's interesting that in aoe2 and aoe1 the players know by muscle memory how close each resource will spawn to your base or to adjacent resources, Aom's random map script is a little more advanced because of the calculation of settlement distance, relics, more varied wild animal spawns, the sentry towers...
I spent many an hour building massive armies and having them clash together in that editor. It was like action figures for me. I would try to build balanced and usable maps for real games, but would end up giving myself huge advantages in resources or position just because it was fun to completely demolish my opponents.
I never figured out how to upgrade units in the editor. There’s a button for it, but it’s always shaded out or something and I’ve never figured out how to activate it.
Nottud's editor superpack. Great stuff. You could achieve absolutely wild things in this editor. Idk if anyone remembers Oscar's Adventurers? Gorgeous level design.
@@davidD3968-dd Aoe3's custom editor actually incorporated an upgrade function where it would give all the units in the editor maximum upgrades but Aom's didn't had such a thing. You had to use the trigger "set tech status" and playtest the scenario for that :)
I find it funny that everytime i slide off a few auto play videos i end up back to this video. Generally while i am sleeping. Waking up to either a Sobek rant or the chiron death scene rant.
The fact that Arkantos and Arthas shared the same voice actor in the spanish version of these games made my childhood 10x better. AoM and WC3, two of my fav games of old days.
Man, I feel kinda silly. I was pretty sad when Chiron was killed. Maybe because I played this when I was fairly young, but the latter half of the norse campaign I was angry and wanted revenge, so the cutscene of Ajax chopping of Gargarensis was very cathartic, and then the cutscene after made me angry again
Don't worry, so did I. I actually thought he was a good character, and maybe I was just reading into it (or dipping too much into the IRL mythology) but he seemed to be the smart one of the crew, like the Professor X or the Obi Wan. I actually felt his sacrifice when I was a kid, I definitely didn't just think of him as "a non-human hero who they shuffled off to make room." Reginleif and Setna, on the other hand, I was quite underwhelmed by. But Chiron was, no joke, my favourite of the core heroes.
I LOVED Age of Mythology, It's such a shame it didn't get more recognition. My (nostalgic) memory of the campaign is that it was really fun too for an RTS.
At first i though "this being 3 hours long was a bad idea, i probably won't watch it" and now im kinda obssesed with revisiting this amazing game through here, probably will buy it and play it later
The remaster is on steam! And has a pretty active community and working online servers! The custom maps are so cool, like the recreation of earth on a mega large map.
The nostalgia that blasts you like a freakin tsunami when the main menu music hits you full volume when you relaunch the game after a few years is just so spot on.
The Egyptian Favour mechanic is super unique There are 5 monuments that you build to produce favour, each guarded by a progressively higher build cost.
I am so glad that you went ahead and spoke about a game that simply deserves so much more respect than it currently gets. Some of the first PC games I remember playing were AoE1 and 2, and my brother did get this game when it was brand new, and still can remember the both of us sitting behind the computer screen, watching all of this new and exciting things to try out. AoE woke up inside of me my undying curiosity towards history, still lasting to this day, and AoM followed up by waking up inside of me my undying curiosity towards mythology and its many different corners. And the gameplay was just so much fun. It took what worked in AoE and just added god powers, hero units outside of the campaign, and all sorts of fun stuff to play with. As a kid I didn't even care it may have been unbalanced or unfair, there were few things as fun as aiming Zeus' Lightning at other units and killing them instantly, or using Thoth's Meteors and (maybe) deleting an enemy base, or even Tyr's Fimbulwinter, giving you the definitive "Screw you" to all enemies. I still own my original copies from back in the day, and I am so glad I own the steam version for convenience, but I am hoping deep down that the remaster brings this game into the spotlight it not only needs, but truly deserves.
@@sirki2885 I doubt they'll mess it up they did a great job remastering aoe 2 and 3. Adding new civs in updating the graphics but keeping the same gameplay I expect the same for aom
@@donutsrgood4491 yeah i made the statementt before reaching the part of who is doing the remaster will prob pick it up on release/shortly after.. looking forward to see if they going to make any fixes/changes to the chinese trash...
Thank you very much for making such a detailed documentary of my favorite RTS game! Can't wait to see you cover Retold. Few comments: • It did a lot better than people think. By 2006, it had sold over 1 million copies in the US + UK alone - it's fairly safe to estimate up to 2 million sales globally. And then the Extended Edition sold north of 2 million copies. It's no flop by any means. • Multiplayer and competitive 1v1 do exist, and the shiny myth units and god powers are generally speaking not creating a hellish balance landscape - they can be significant power spikes though. Most myth units are rather expensive, hard to get by, with heroes handling them rather well. God Powers are quite counterable too. Earthquake for example won't wipe out a base that is fortified enough - simply place some extra barracks and upgrade Masons - it will hit a damage cap. • I would love to see exploration of reusable god powers that cost resources in an Age of Mythology 2. Right along with utilizing an AoE 4-like landmark system where you can visibly dedicate yourself to the gods, instead of just clicking an upgrade image. This would be fantastic for multiplayer, adding significant hype moments, and opening up sneaky strategic possibilities of hiding what god you went. It would be sin to not explore options for these! • The Tale of the Dragon DLC's development was a complete mess - it was technically Forgotten Empires doing the heavy lifting, with Skybox being the support studio - I was working on the Chinese civ as a designer, and on rebalancing the classic civs at the time. This kickstarted my game dev career, but on the flipside was an awful experience. We were denied any and all resources, so that a simultaneously developed Age of Empires 2 DLC (The African Kingdoms) could be made into a quality product - which it did. I think there was a ton of potential in the Chinese faction, but cutting corners at every opportunity, and the low production quality and poor narrative of the campaign wasted all said potential. I have a video on my channel called "Is Age of Mythology: Definitive Edition Happening?" where I discuss this, and other problems of the game in detail. I do not blame you for not covering it in this video. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in learning more.
I think something as simple as Wonders regenerating or respeccing god powers would get a lot of work done. You could design them so that you could choose to save them for the biggest effect at late ages, or use them immediately to rush for a victory or a Wonder construction for a second shot.
@@benedict6962 Only an extremely low percentage of games make it to the wonder stage. I've been casting tournaments for years, and it's been at most a handful times for that. This is not the way if you want people to experience the dopamine rush of multi-use god powers.
@@benedict6962 Empire earth addresses that problem. Completely agree with Nakamura that AoAK took a lot of the studio's development time from Tales of the Dork but i would mostly associate of a issue on Microsoft crunching them for 2 things in the same year and obviously FE could just have denied development and work on AoAK first till finalization phase and begin on Tales of the Dork. What actually happened was Rushing Tales of the Dork with no beta testing, no paid scenario designers or paid late*, quickly recorded voice lines with no emotion behind them and the entirety of the asset creation process of reusing and butchering existing units, models or textures. At least FE recouped their Development costs by releasing another HD dlc which everybody and their mother had no problem buying on release even when it introduced the lumberjack issue. That being said, i still think there are awesome people in FE that did give EE life support in the complete neglect microsoft gave and tools for those modding the game.
There is quite a bit of cut dialogue that was supposed to play in the cutscenes. Most of what was cut was giving more contextual information on what was happening or why. For example, when you first meet Amanra there is quite a bit of cut dialogue explaining what is going on in Egypt and why she is after the parts of Osiris and her rivalry with Kemsyt.
This game was my entire childhood, i remember how i finished the campaign and found you can make custom games and entire custom maps. I poured so many hours into the game, just playing custom games vs bots and i had a lot of fun with it, even with campaign story though i didnt know almost any words in english.
I keep coming back to this retrospective. What I love about it is how you talk about every single level, breaking down it's design and goals and how it works or doesn't. It really helps to understand the thought behind each level and heck even helped me to think more deeply about my own custom levels in another game. The bursts of humour also keep me greatly entertained and the video itself is pretty relaxing. Very well done. I hope to see more stuff like this. Having campaign broken down to each level and their strenghts, weaknesses and design philosophies is super interesting.
I never usually comment on videos that much but just wanted to say that this was a very enjoyable watch in which your passion and enthusiasm really shone through, tremendous stuff Grant!
58:18 That is foreshadowing about the next mission, where the people you were working with during the tug of war betray you and Amanra has to pull everybody out of the fire with just Myth units.
That is the story reason probably, the gameplay reason is that they probably tested it with ra or the major god that shall not be named and one specific unit wins the mission by itself: The Son of Osiris, you start with enough stuff for the mythic age and they probably saw that rushing your pharaoh forward and upgrading it would trivialize the mission, so they gave you the one major god that couldn't (not that it matters since you can win in 7 mins without training a single unit anyways even on titan but w/e). Plus, for a campaign they wanted to give you a mission on each major god at least once, so set had to fit somewhere-
@bigmen0 I mean they just could have locked you out of getting that god power, it was definitely a hint to what will come, particularly as we see that we play as loki when he tricks us, the main reason for the betrayal would likely be so you can have gameplay as each of the gods in each faction
@@calebbarnhouse496 Disabling godpowers for the player is something outrageous to do for scenario design in AoM, from a game design perspective Set was chosen to fit the role of playing every major at least once and the rest is to fit the lore with the logic behind it. Giving you Tornado/Meteor at the start would make the scenario very easy because you could just kill the ambush forces and easily retrieve the cart. As for the scenario, it's rather obvious why are you playing Set here, he has the best Chariot archers and chariot archers in this scenario are the key to victory.
I finished the whole video in 3 days piece by piece. Amazing retrospective review. AoM was a piece of my childhood. You did great video to honor the game. I hope the new AoM Retold gets better.
Just finished. What a great game. When you started the Atlantean campaign, I couldn't help but to pause, and play through each of the missions before watching yours. It's fun to see what things we both found easy or challenging, and even more interesting to see what things we found the opposite. Thanks for shining the spotlight on such a wonderful game.
Dude “cumulative creativity of the entire human race” was such a good line. Had literal chills thinking about what would be done with this sort of fantasy setting! You’re a king Grant
I completely agree, because this has been my personal sentiment ever since I started hearing about these great stories from my dad, aunts, uncles, etc. when I was a wee kid (they're all historians & storytellers). And to be fair, the MCU DID try doing it with Thor: Love & Thunder. But... tsk, yeah...
I can't believe I watched a 3 hour, 33 minute and 33 second youtube video, without skipping, to the end, and enjoyed every second of it. Excellent video, you're a legend, I look forward to playing Age of Mythology retold and hope it does the game justice. This was my favourite game growing up, and I'm glad you could memorialize it the way it deserves.
You have SO MUCH POTENTIAL! Your voice is perfect for long video content. It’s not annoying and is calming. You are spectacular at articulating everything in a non repetitive way. It’s like a masterfully written essay that is a smooth read that’s clear and concise. Please keep going with this long content and you’ll have tons of watch time and be a HUGE HUGE UA-camr!
I was just thinking the same ! Lol... im english and rarely ever like to listen to most english accents late at night when im sleepy . What if this guy isnt human though ? 🤔
1:39:30 Funnily enough, one of my most memorable moments in AoM was when I played a 1v7 on Titan difficulty, but I just used the Pandoras Box cheat over and over to fight them all off. That cheat gives you 4 random god powers, and can be used repeatedly, replacing what you rolled before. So as you might imagine, that game turned into the most hilarious, chaotic mess of god powers imaginable. Lightning Storm there, meteors here, turn that army to pigs, and only the gods know what happens next. Just throw balance right out the window, bring some popcorn and enjoy the fireworks.
choose atlanteans, use resources cheats and build a mighty unstoppable army of hekatonkeiros where they'll terraform every land into jumbled spiky mess😂
28:25 The reason the cyclops have goat legs in this game is probably the same reason the medusas have bows: Ray Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans. Guy had a lot of influence on early fantasy games.
I have spent YEARS wondering why the Trojan market that triggers them to say the thing about trade was buried so deep in the Trojan base! It totally makes sense that they meant it to be where the town center is. As soon as you pointed that out in the video, I knew I'd be watching the whole thing. Nooo regrets. Also, you gave that second expansion exactly as much time as it deserved. 10/10 analysis
Thank you so much Grant for putting out an over 3 hour video of one of my favorite games of all time. You are one of my favorite content creators, stay awesome!
I'm so glad this video did well. This means that there is a possibility in the future that Grant will do more of those essays. I loved every second of it
I really enjoyed this AoM documentary, thanks for taking a chance on it Grant! I watched it in 20 minute chunks over a few weeks and it kept pulling me back in :D
Something not mentioned but which got me really excited when I first played Age of Mythology is that the Trojan Siege takes exactly 6 missions. Just as much as every campaign in AoE 2 had in total. So I thought back then in the sixth mission that this would be it and was already a bit disappointed that there was only one campaign visible in the start menu. But then after the mission a cutscene shows some unknown cyclops citing poems, talking about everything going according to plan and excavating some crypt. This was the moment I knew that this campaign only just started...
I spent so much of my teenage years and childhood in this absolute underrated gem. It's the pinnacle of edutainment, where recorded info and gameplay go hand in hand and the in-game wiki gives you a snapshot of the real myths each unit is based on.
i played Age of Mythology as a youngster and this video unlocked many core memories from so long ago. Its amazing that i can still remember the campaign, and it speaks to how fantastic/badass it still is.
Prostagma?
Volume!
Etimos!
Lege!
Best race 🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷
BEAR NOISE *pew pew pew*
Excuse you "Never Played". This game was my childhood
Fun fact. Athena in AOM has the same voice actress as Athena in God Of War
Same, still the age of Game i Liked the Most.
Same
Finished the entire campaign at least 10 times, played it for thousands of hours.
@@itaishturm1 Same. I am still terrible at the game though because young me liked cheats too much
If ever there were a game deserving a 3 and a half hour long video about it, it is undoubtedly this one. Criminally underrated masterpiece, I hope we're living in a timeline where Retold does well enough to justify a level of support comparable to what Age 2 is currently getting.
I hope Hades gets reportraied as a chill dude for once.
@Ondrej Mrazek at least he isn't shown as the Evil guy in this game. That's actually reserved to his brother.
@@singularleaf3895 yeah actually, even if the bad guys have him as a major god, the story at least shows that poseidon is the one causing trouble this time
@@12anbufan I really do kinda think they threw Hades in as the major god for that mission just to cover all the bases. The Erebus missions are no-build missions, so having him there admittedly would've gimped things gameplay-wise, even if it would've made sense.
Need a better spectating function in the remake for that to happen
Came for a retrospective of my favorite childhood RTS, stayed for the Crocodile rants. Justice for Sobek
Justice for Sobek indeed
For the snappy water doggos!
Cheese🧀
All hail the Sperm Lord
All hail Sobek! All hail the lord of Semen!
The Petsuchos is called the Petsobek in the remake. Congratulations, you did it.
I also came to comment that, but did they add Sobek to the game?
Man that'd be awesome, just swap out hathor for sobek
can you timestamp please? q-q
@@skullzans ua-cam.com/video/27-tJxIepmo/v-deo.htmlsi=6x7lxh_a6ibIsr5g&t=3652
Holy shit they really did it.
This was the game that introduced me to both strategy games and ancient mythologies. Thank you for the wonderful memories mom.
Same for me. I loved the game so much I even did a oral presentation about it when I was 10. XD
to this day i refuse to unlearn that osiris' quartered remains were dragged across the desert by a ragtag group of greek and egyptian heroes for his resurrection
Funnily enough it was the ds version that then got me into the computer.
Mom coming through with the childhood nostalgia building as usual. Thanks, mom.
Most of my mythological knowledge comes from playing this game. It was so awesome learning about all the different gods while doing battle with their creatures and cultures.
47:04 Hades also has a massive reason for helping the heroes keep Tartarus closed seeing as he lives next door.
Not even next door. Tartarus is basically his basement.
I can't help but imagine Kronos bursting from the floor and wrecking the living room on his way out while Hades is just like "Excuse me what the fuck"
@@GarmrKiDar pulls spear out "back back I say"
Hades be like: 'Back in the basement, dad! I still haven't forgiven you for eating me as a baby!
If you didn't want kids, why didn't you castrate yourself with a sickle, just like you did with grandpa Ouranos? Or were you afraid another beautiful women like aunt Aphrodite would rise from the sea, if you chucked in your own?'
I love greek myth.
Though to be fair, Hades WAS the one that casted the Serpent power on your cadre when they were passing by the ruins.
I love that the resolution to the conflict with Kronos is to call his mom
Kronos: I can't believe you called my mom on me.
Atlanteans: “You know what you did!”
his mom and his wife at the same time
@@alzaphon no his wife is Rhea, Gaia is the wife of Uranos
Mom and grandma at the same time
THEY CHANGED HATHOR TO SOBEK IN RETOLD, THEY LISTENED GRANT!!!
And look at what the upgraded petsuchos is called
this made me instantly rewatch and think of this video
It was almost a joke in my old friend circle how like 70% of us learned our ancient mythologies through those unit info pages. I remember my bro and I playing this game back in the day, he was partial to the Norse and their more aggro playstyle, whereas I tended towards Egypt cause I liked their myth units more. So many good memories, we might even still have the physical disks back home buried somewhere, if any of our computers can run it.
nowadays we learn it through Rick Riordan
History: Age of empires
Mythology: This game
That was awesome thanks
It’s available on Steam.
Man,me and a couple of friends reinstalled the game and played,also did some editor creation😋
You are so right about sound design. Hearing the voice lines from the units was an instant nostalgia hit. Far bigger than any of the visuals.
Prostagma?
@@none62092 Talos
Even my mom still recognizes those from hearing me play this in the background 20 years ago xD
@@none62092 Vulume!
@@jacobp.4593 Kalos!
GGG: "Atlanteans, the 4th and final faction in AOM"
China: "Am I a joke to you"
Everyone else: " Yes, yes you are"
I did not like the Chinese expansion at all
@@jawdroper22 Good news for you, they're not gonna be in base Retold - they're being reworked entirely as DLC, along with a promise of another DLC faction that we do not yet know.
@@TARDISEShope it's mesopomia, or any of the south American pantheons.
I know it wouldnt really work geographically but dammit it would be really cool to see them in a video game.
@@HoodedLord There's not even a chronological overlap between the base game pantheons. I don't think geographical distance is gonna matter either as long as they're well implemented.
@@TARDISES that is also very true
Okay so, one reason I think you had Set as the patron God in Mission 13 (the tug of war mission) is probably because of the betrayal right at the start of the NEXT mission - most likely it shows that the base you used for mission 13 was actually worshipping Set, and thus turned on you the moment you got the God piece. I thought it was a fairly smart piece of foreshadowing, while also giving you a chance to test Set stuff for a bit in the campaign.
I think there was also an offhand line about rogue priests of Set who wanted to help you if I remember correctly
Interesting, though visually it's really not clear that both sc13's and sc14's bases are the same (building placement, mountains...). Scenario 13's base is a war camp, white 14's looks more like a city. I would have loved more visual connections between 12, 13 and 14 regarding the shape and look of places, because they feel so disconnected of each other :/
The fun thing with Colossae you didn't mention is that they can heal by eating gold mines or trees. It's an awful exchange rate resource/hp wise, but you can retreat these guys to just out of defense range, and then literally eat up your enemy's resources and heal your showstopper units. This game has so many cool things you can do with a little creativity it's insane.
Another cool thing about it is that let's you cut down forests that people use to make free walls without putting villagers at risk
That sounds horrifying. Imagine being a peasant who hears about these giant metal monsters ravaging the countryside and slaughtering the king's men, and then you turn and see one off in the distance, literally eating a gold mine.
@@flamboyantwarlock7101 I think the idea of you and a squad of guys get sent to kill it, and once it's clear that it won't survive instead of fighting back to the death it just starts eating trees like candy is hilarious
if only the animations were smoother. And attack move is kinda bad.
I've played this game since 2006 and i never thought of doing that with collossus. Pretty good strategy
“A place in my dreams” is such a badass mission name considering that’s how all the foes akantos has slain are described.
Arkantos is the chad
arkantos: ANY WHO THREATENS MY HOME, AND MY FAMILIES... WILL SOON HAVE A PLACE IN MY DREAMS...
^thats the most memorable badass line from arkantos that would stay in my nostalgic childhood memories forever... though as adult, looking back to it now... i;ve understand its a terrifying statement that arkantos will force his enemies to fight him ad infinitum in his dream arena and kill them again and again...
A 3.5 hour video on a 2 decade old RTS game and it's at nearly a MILLION views?! What godly power is this? Definitely deserves it though. This was a love letter to a game that stands the test of time. And yes I did watch all 3.5 hours of it and it was worth it. Justice for Sobek!
Took me 2 days to finish but I loved it.
Sometimes justice exists.
it´s the power of clickbait
Alot of people figured they were special and the only ones who played this.
@@ninjaAsassasin1212 ikr, this was at least million kids childhood, statistically.
Dunno if you still read comments here, but according to the Xbox games showcase deep dive from today, they've renamed the laser crocs to 'petsobek' (at 33 : 48 in that video) You did it.
Came here to say the same thing! He really did it!!
What’s insane is that Arkantos is basically retired by the time Fall of the Trident begins. There’s so much back story behind his character that I would love to see in the form of campaigns in the new aom Retold
Cheese🧀
The fanmade campaigns you mean?
Just give us a better editor, more in depth, with moddoanility and the game will flourish.
@@boguslav9502Ah yes, Age of Mythology randomizer
Glad to see you branching out to UA-cam shorts Grant.
I really think it will benefit you in the long run to have these short and low effort videos for some consistent content.
"Short"s XD
I agree. While i will miss the older quality content, this will suffice.
Even though this was a short , it would be nice to have just a little bit longer video
Age of Mythology was one of the first PC games i played as a kid. It came out when i was 7 or 8 years old and saw my father playing it and wanted to play it too, so i did. I loved it so much, that i even did drawings of the heros and monsters.
Thats how Exactly how I got into AOE2, AOE1 and counter strike. Watching my dad and uncles play it but we only had the one PC so I had to watch my dad play until he got off or gave me some play time. When he saw that I was legitimately good at the games right away he got me my own pc! That was a happy day
Some of my best memories with my dad are finally being able to game with him instead of just watching.
I am glad to see that other kids had the same childhood for myself.
My original PC Gaming Experience was Civilization 3, Age of Mythology from disc, Oldschool Runescape before it was called Oldschool, and Bloons Tower Defense 3. My console gaming was all of Pokemon Gen 4 on the DS lite, Mario Party Seven on the GAMECUBE, Need For speed Underground 2 on the PS2.
I'm an OG Gen Z and I'm proud of it. Needless to say AoM was a big part of why I like Strategy Games.
I played this game when I was 10 yo and used to draw every single thing, from buildings to the units in detail. I went to the (incredible) length of making "tabletop RPG" off of it (without even knowing by that time that such thing existed), which I would pick the drawings of the units, and use popsicle sticks on each turn to "build" buldings and catapults, to defend and to attack others. Pretty simple mechanics but I used to have so much fun bringing that game --- which I invented myself based on AOM --- to school, to play with my friends there.
Seriously, this game is by far the one who single-handedly made me a history nerd, my biggest scores were always in history exams and to this day I remember every single detail from Age of Mythology. Guys at Ensemble Studios managed to be part of a whole generation. Thankful for having lived such time.
This is my second listen through - and I just wanted to say that your enthusiasm and passion is absolutely infectious and brightened up my day!
This game was also a massive part of my childhood so it is nice to be able to re-experience it with a guide.
Fun fact about Osiris in myth: his wife, your “patron goddess who shall not be named” was able to find every part of his body except one. The one missing part was the one most important for *cough* husbandly duties. So she made a replacement out of gold, brought him back to life and he lived exactly long enough to *cough* perform once, before dying again.
He put all of his lifeforce into one last shagging. So, I just wonder, what is the moral of this story?
Why couldn’t he say Eset or Aset, or is that still pushing it?
@@rama-n-i the patron goddess was ISIS, he didnt want the youtube auto algorithm system to cause problems and hide the video, due to the history of the ISIS organisation as mentioned in the video.
ESet & ASet arent an issue no?
@@Yell0wPhoenix Ah, thanks for the info.
No one played the Chinese campaign, but I remember seeing that in one of the missions there's a merchant who is looking for a piece of Osiris that ended up in China for some reason. My head cannon is... Well, that box held the "lost part" lol.
Small fact regarding the market introduction at Troy mission 2. The market at the center of Troy is connected to the smaller city on the right side of the map and the settlement near your base is just for unit expansion/supply. If you explored the map a bit more you’d see the trading units going between the main market and smaller city, and there are also relics in the smaller city. Also, there is gold on the smaller ocean islands, incentivizing new players to explore.
He even showed a ship going past that island with gold on it, but said nothing about it.
One of my favourite scenarios! So much to do in that one
"Smaller city" That's f*cking _Tyre._
Also the island filled with gold that would put you in contact with the left town
Classic youtuber/streamer blindness :D
I got this at a scholastic book fair when I was kid. My parents were a little annoyed because I was supposed to buy books of course. But once I showed my dad some game play and talked about the mythological aspect and the strategy elements he was sold and even played with me. Really excited youre covering this!
Thats a cool story, for me it was actually the other way around. Some of my best childhood memories are playing AoM with my dad. Good times :)
You're so lucky my never had games
9:39
Arkantos does say he'll go to Troy, and simply grab the trident on his way, so they do explain that Troy is where he's headed next.
Also, the way they hint at the whole Skult being Loki thing is also why you play as Set in tug of war, that's why when Amanra leaves you're suddenly surrounded by Set units because you brought the piece to a town controlled by Set.
oh yea, that's a good catch.
One fun little crossing of narrative and gameplay happens during the mission "Unlikely Heroes" (if I remember correctly). There's a moment where a Nidhogg shows up to attack you and one of the dwarfs says that Reginleif is the only one who can slay it. It comes across as this, "only the destined hero can slay the beast" kind of thing, but since Reginleif is the only ranged hero you have, and the Nidhogg flies, she really is quite literally the only one that can slay it. :)
Lmao I don't remember that, that's hilarious
You do technically get at that point other ranged units that can hurt it but Reginleif does the most damage :)
God, a 3 and a half hour breakdown about one of my favorite childhood games from one of my favorite content creators; it's like Christmas
Wow I can't believe Grant promised us he would do an AOM deathless run, how kind of him :^) looking forward to it.
I am going to guess that it's as hard as not getting killed by CAS in War Thunder.
no
@@notdax3620 I actually started planning a deathless AoM run recently; I'm probably not going to actually do it because I don't have the energy, but it would be very possible, if a bit of a bastard.
@@alicedruitt4805 without remembering all the missions i believe its pretty impossible with all the lighting storms , especially the dream mission with the lighting statues
@@vicdansanch Yeah that'd be the tough one. I checked the speedrun for AoM though (Which exists!) and I think it would be possible (you never build a base and instead rush your forces up the coast to the wonder) but it'd require some *careful* savescumming.
2:41:00 The reference ''as the raids keep coming and they dont stop coming'' really got me
You probably wont see this as this video has been out for a month but I just want to thank you for making this. I has been years since I have played this but it was and possibly still is my favorite game. Your whole style of video reminded me of the joy I had when I was younger playing it and your commentary and editing were phenomenal and hilarious. I have been smiling so hard for the last 3.5 hours to the point I am almost crying so thank you.
Almost another month later, I second your comment like the 95 people before me. I do a PhD on knowledge transfert, and this video is the second one from @GiantGrantGames that made it onto the list to be analysed. It is just so amazing what time he invests into scripting and designing this experience, so from the bottom of my heart and from a samplesize of 729 curated videos: Thank you Grant for your work, and everything you do, did do and will do. Wishing you all the best and keep it up :)
you can still play, there are some online lobby's and people all pretend Chinese civs don't exist which is a good thing!
he might not but we all do see it
500 agreements later. Good stuff.
I can tell you they are making a remaster/remake in the aoe 3 de engine called retold !
This is truly a cinematic masterpiece. You were able to come up and execute something that a very small fraction of the content creators are able to do. Grant, you created a 3 and a half hour project which was worth investing every second into. RTS has been a pretty big part of my life too, so having somebody like you to share this passion with is incredible. You are truly awesome! Thank you for making this video and thank you for opening my eyes to one of the most interesting and unique RTS games out there! Continue doing what you do, I am sure there is a lot more ahead of you. I, and everybody here I am sure, will be with you, always!
The audio is literally the most memorable part of this game for me. Music especially but hearing the troops speak when ordered brings back so many memories
reminded me of the original Warcraft 2. "at once my lord" lmao
Prostagma!
@@jeffsmith1867 couldn't have said it better myself
@@jeffsmith1867 Voulume!
@@ArawnOfAnnwn Izvoli!
Every time I leave youtube on autoplay, it ends up playing this video at some point 😂😅
Same to me as well
Why is this always what auto play leads to
😊@@ebenpurgahn4714Shorthand explanation:
Video Length + 100% Watchtime (because you are sleeping and can't click off) + Time of day based recommendations = Popular Long Video you are interested in (IE watched before)
happend to me aswell haha
Because it's really long
This is awesome! It is a massive shame that YT doesn't encourage or properly incentivise creators to make this kind of content, cause this is a great video - thanks for taking the time to put this together! AoM was a huge part of my childhood, laid the foundation for a lifelong love of RTS - its a pity we don't tend to see in-game choices for tech trees like this anymore
It's sad people nowadays no longer show love for RTS as more casual hack and slash MMORPG's are prominent these days
601k views. I think the incentive is there
Also fun fact, this game's editor was so complete you literally had the option to make cutscenes with it. And the programming was just as good as you say, Grant. You could make it do ANYTHING.
Buuut I was a dumb kid and all those trees and technical words scared me so I never actually did complete my custom map about the Guardian with it.
I thought the same, but then I learned, at least according to fans who actually made maps and scenarios with proper triggers and cutscenes, that the editor is actually *notoriously* difficult to work with without investing dozens of hours into it.
@@filipvadas7602 Well, I wouldn't be surprised. The more powerful a program tends to be, the less user friendly it also tends to be.
I think I spent as much time playing as I did reading everything about the units, buildings, weapons, missions, etc. It was literally an encyclopedia and even had passages from a lot of works from their civilizations. I kid you not, this inspired me to read the classics when I was younger.
I was obsessed with reading all the descriptions as a kid!
I played this campaign probably 10 years ago and was completely shocked by how many of these missions I remembered. Not only did I remember the major story beats as you went over them, there were so many times when you talked about a mission's gimmick and I was like "oh yeah, I remember that mission". I think that's the mark of a really well made game.
Same, I recalled a surprising number of missions as well. From map layouts to even objectives on some of them.
I came back to this game as an adult during Covid and could literally remember where all the secrets were. This was one of those rare games that, as a kid, had me motivated to find literally EVERYTHING. (And yet it wasn't until this video that I learned pharaohs can't increase villager build speed because, as Grant says, there's nothing about it in the ingame encyclopedia and childhood me didn't have a Wiki).
I LOVED THIS GAME SO MUCH
2:32:00 - Scarabs and Behemoths have one rather large difference. Behemoths regenerate. It's not slow, either, it's 2 health per second. So if you can keep them alive (even if only barely) between fights, Behemoths can keep tanking for you, whereas Scarabs you want to throw in to tank for a long time and then explode over the enemy.
plus scarabs have like way harder attack, dont they?
@@oom-3262 Not really. Both have the save attack. Scarabs do have 1/5 more HP than a Behemoth. Pound for pound the Behemoth is a weaker counterpart of the Scarab which can regen (2 hp/s base and if you go Hecate you can double that).
I grew up with this classic, glad its getting some recognition.
You grew up with? No, you didn't. It's an inanimate object, it doesn't grow. Now, that you're a proven liar. Apologize to your mom.
My god... Age of Mythology. This game was such a wonderful part of my childhood. Maybe some day I can recover the disk I had. Its so nice to see this game get the recognition it deserves and its nice to see so many people have had similar experiences!
It's on Steam!
@@yarro1965 It is, but at this point it's probably best to just wait for the Retold version to come out. The team behind that has done great work on the other three definitive upgrades of the Age franchise, so Retold should be pretty good.
@@debesys6306
I loved it too played it a lot back in the day
The Trojan horse mission is definitely doable with not letting any attacks escape. There is a relic out there that makes your cavalry faster, so your already slightly faster prodomos can now outrun them reliably. In addition, pre planning some cavalry to cut off their escape during the fight means you can get in their way and hit them before they get too far
Another way is to use minotaurs, there abylity to knock enemies away allow you to flank around and throw then away when they try and escape, letting you collapse on them, or just shoot them, the masterbolt works for cleanup if you mess up
I remember just for fun i tried to see if it was even remotely possible to ignore building the horse and assault Troy itself. Yeah...in hindsight that was a dumb idea but it was really fun creating a huge death fortress and army only to run into gates made out of god flesh that ignore all damage while a legion of enemies tripled the size of my army just waltzed out and clowned on me.
My thoughts exactly. You just need to focus on cavalry and the occasional defensive structures.
@joshua kim It is possible to beat the mission without the Horse. It's a pain and requires a lot of resources (and Apollo's god power) but it can be done as you just have to destory the 3 fortresses and you've won. Would be way easier without the restricted tech tree though.
Also, you can underworld passage outside the walls, on the cliff, near the the TC between the 2 fortresses left of the main gate and then hoplites ONLY and villagers can glitch through the walls and you can kill all the trojan fortresses and destroy most of the base. Too bad you don't have petrobolos for a more normal siege but you make do with what you have 🤣
@@joshuakim5240 That is possible though, I did it on my last playthrough (Titan). The tiresome part are the death canyons of towers on cliffs, which took a lot of time to clear out, but past that it was perfectly feasible.
I'm glad AOM is still getting love. This was the first RTS game I played, and my dad introduced me to it.
Same. Weirdly enough my dad was a gang banging youngin. Went to school n got n electrical engineering degree and in his words became friends with some awesome "G(r)eeks" who introduced him to AoM and in turn led me to the BEAUTIFUL game of mythology
Same i used to play it when i was 6 or 7 my dad introduced it to me too
Same
Me too my dad bought me the disc 15 years ago at sams.
W dad
As a kid this was by far my most played game. So glad people still appreciate it!
I remember my dad getting this game thinking it was a movie 💀 (to his defense he’s pretty old) and m still revisiting it after so many years, such a good game.
It kinda is 😂
This lad made it a feature length documentary/mythos epic
I can't remember exactly where I got this game but it definitely wasn't a retail store. I think a school book fair
@@cipher4edamn, i picked this game up at target in 2004.
Grant makes a 3+ hours video on Age of mythology ? Must be a let's play of some of the campaigns map, right ? NO, it's actually really a retrospective in the style of Mandalore (the humor and especially the whole "crocodiles with lasers" meltdown). This is such a great video, I hope he does more of this style on other games.
-I knew this game didn't sell as well as its older brother AoE2, but I didn't realise a Stronghold title, of all things, sold twice as much, such a shame. Best RTS of its time until I got warcraft 3 not that much later (which is like making a great movie that releases the same year as The godfather).
-The campaign had a pretty cool story overall but so much cutscene incompetence on display it was eye-rolling - every other map the heroes would let the bad guy run away or "Chiron, you know, you could have stayed on the good side of the rockslide" moments.
-I remember the buildings being pretty, but the atlantean ones at the mythic age look like something from 2015 !
Fun fact about the ingame codex : when Ajax is transformed into a boar, if you look at the unit info it says something along the lines of : this form may be better suited to his personnality ^^
JUSTICE FOR PETSOBEK
1. I love that Age of Mythology in recent years has basically gotten a second lease on life. What was once an underappreciated gem is now rightfully treated as a classic of the RTS genre and I *love it*
2. Its actually crazy how many things were cut for the sake of time and budget. Ranging from extended lines of dialogue that actually make more sense than what we got and give us more of the characters, to massive ships that show the units that are using them, functional bridges etc. They really had a lot of ideas with this game its just a shame not *everything* could fit into a clear vision due to the hardware of the time.
Plus, the small plot holes in the story here and there don't help in how rushed some parts are.
(Like how dafuq the Atlanteans got stranded if Ajax and Odysseus were leading them home. Did something separate them? Why did nobody look for them? Were they forbidden by Agammemnon fro doing so, as its implied the other Greek colonies are envious of Atlantis and this was a form of payback. You'd think both Ajax and Odysseus would try harder to at least find Kastor, their friend's SON? Were they presumed dead then? Making the reveal of Kastor attacking everyone more shocking. Small stuff but it adds up the more you think about it and that's JUST the Titans Expansion, and speaking of....)
3. To this day I am still salty at the fact that the Titans Expansion ends on kind of a whimper. I mean, yeah, summoning Gaia to fight Kronos is awesome but you'd expect that with all the buildup to the MAIN VILLAIN of the entire game, that it would feel more *apocalyptic* and maybe stretched out into multiple missions with all the factions in the game coming together to hold off Kronos to summon Gaia in time.
4. The music is iconic. Nuff' said.
PS:
Fixed some errors
TBH, they really should've referenced the opening cutscene when Kronos found his keys. You know, how there were legions of myth units and Kronos himself was calling down meteors in an extremely epic cinematic.
@@bluesbest1 would have been a cool callback. Making the opening cinematic feel almost like a prophecy that finally came to life.
Bro that is irrelevant because this is a strategy game and not an rpg. The goal of the campaign was to introduce the civilizations, and the mechanics of the game such as raiding, booming, forward basing, etc. The story was secondary, and honestly it was entertaining
@@strahinja95 not saying it wasn't entertaining or that it didn't serve its purpose. But plenty of RTSs had excellent storytelling to boot alongside their gameplay and presentation. Hell,Warcraft 3 came out a few months before this game so its completely valid criticism.
@@filipvadas7602 i agree, and i think that warcraft 3 is the best game ever made along with WoW. I would guess that Esemble studios was not as big as Blizzard to polish the game to that degree. Lack of $. And also, Blizzard was the highest quality you could get back in the day
You are absolutely correct in how anyone who has played this game still lovingly remembers it, I was one of those kids.
My sister got Age of Mythology one day from a random DVD and CD store somewhere back in 2007, and I saw her playing and was immediately drawn into the world. The units, the animations, the visuals, the language, everything was so well done and mesmerizing. I admittedly was a terrible RTS player back then during my kid and teen days, and I don't know how I'd fare today but even if I don't talk about the game for many many years at a time, I will always remember this game.
My dad got AoM after we both really enjoyed Starcraft 1, and it introduced me to the greek, egyptian, and norse mythologies and did a good job of getting across key elements of all three. It got me to dig into those myths and legends (most notably the greek ones) and is responsible for an entire phase of childhood enjoyment for me. It was a fantastic game and I greatly appreciate it for bringing such old stories to a new generation of kids that might have otherwise never have heard of them until they were older and unlikely to be as interested. Great video!
Yup, this was the game that got me hooked on mythology. Sure, I watched Hercules along with everyone else, but it wasn't until I read Hades' in-game wiki article that I really started getting into it and loving Hades as a concept. And that in-game wiki really helped me understand the concept of the Underworld so much better.
same, the incredible amount of love the game had for the Ancient Times where Gods walked the earth, great game i cant wait for the remastered.
I got the game simply for the Egyptian mythology bit. I loved it as a child, still do, but there as no entertainment media available with it. Everything was all Greek, Greek, Greek. Yes, yes, cool, done to death, NEXT!
"If this bombs I spent 4 months working on a dud"
*Becomes the most popular video in the channel by far*
3 hours of Content People Losten to is proof of skill
This video is the reason I discovered and suscribed to this guy. Amazing tribute to my favourite game of all time
I'm no expert at RTS games, but this one in particular was such a huge part of my personal gaming history. I'm so glad my dad was a weird gamer in the early 00s. I've never watched your channel before, but thank you for a love letter to a game that was so significant to me. :)
I’m looking at this game cause I was looking for a game like Black and white 2 is it anything like it
My Dad was a PC gamer in the 2000s and I think I was playing this I was about 4 years old (:
It got me really into mythology and stuff and it played a huge part in my childhood
this is how i got into gaming
Why weird?
I'm no expert either, but I still find the time to play through the campaign every few years. I was very obsessed with it as a kid when I managed to get the demo and play it. Eventually I got the actual game and it's still sitting on my shelf even though the disk no longer works properly.
This is my second or third time watching this video this year. I love it ! This is some high quality good content , keep it up !
Age of Mythology alongside C&C and Heroes 3 were playing huge part in my childhood. For some reason i enjoyed it far more than Age of Empires series. I'm glad to see this entire Video Essay (Director Cut) (Extended Edition) (Unlimited Words Expansion Pack) (Steal the Human Attention DLC) about it.
Yeah, and I also played this games alongside Warcraft 3 and Dawn of War series (I loved RTS back in the day and still do). Heck, I even played Star Wars Empire at War.
Nice seeing you here. Love your C&C playthroughs!
@@АлексейТабаков-ы8в
Same here, thats basically my childhood, I even became friends with my "almost a brother" / "brother from another mother" best friend because He mentioned Star Wars: EaW during a class in highschool, and I JUST had to talk to him.
47:42 In Rise of Legends, the three factions each have separate campaigns, but they're knit so tightly it feels more like it was one story split into three parts.
The main character is the same throughout, while pieces of your original faction make returns as they were brought along from the previous part.
The story also follows this, in that you're fighting to stop the same villain, whose plans are growing increasingly desperate and dangerous as you thwart him in the previous part, before he escapes into the territory of the next faction.
edit for the road: KRIOS HAS SUPPLIED US WITH ANOTHER FIRE SIPHON
I was going to say the same thing. That game has a great campaign. It has so many heroes that you could use and all the upgrades to get in the campaign. The little touch I really liked is you could see the area the next campaign was set in at the edge of the map.
I loved Rise of Legends as a kid, sucks that it isn't available on Steam.
I would like Grant to try this RTS, it is very cool and serves as a kind of Age of Mythology from the Rise of Nations series. A lot of mechanics from the main series look rather strange in Rise of Legends, but still fun. The global mode surprisingly makes sense. Also the leaders of the two main factions are two waifu who want the main character lol
I'm currently replaying Rise of Legends! It's a ton of fun, but boy howdy did it need a few more months of development. It definitely has the same amount of sheer dumb fun with ridiculous over the top nonsense as Age of Mythology, but it really feels unfinished in places, and the mission design isn't nearly as good as AoM's. That's when missions even have a design, most are just 'a skirmish map but you start with the army you built on the campaign map'.
Still! Well worth a try, if you can, erh, acquire it. Which is its own challenge.
Just a side note Rise of Legends campaigns can be cheesed by not attacking and defending (or retake it) your territory, you can farm campaing points (like tech and military), then steam roll it with a maxed out army.
This video made me realise how some people are destined to make great work out of their passion.
Grant himself also did use his own passion and made this 3 hr long video and smashed his previous record of most views
Watched this all the way through. Thank you for making it, it brought tears to my eyes, true nostalgia.
Amazing video.
Dude, AoM was THE game of my childhood. I remember going to my grandma's house (where my uncle's "good" PC was) and playing all day long throught my school holidays. It's been 20 years, my grandma passed away in 2021 and your video brought back a lot of good memories for me. Thank you so much for your effort and amazing work :) Cheers from Brazil!
You never had a childhood. You came out of your mom fully grown & by the time that happened. This game was already long over. So, you're a liar. Apologize to me for wasting my dang time, you pretender.
"They send loads of hero units like Hercules, Achilles and Jason but that is Argonaut my problem"
I love you, good sir.
I grew up watching my brother play this alongside aoe2 and remember loving the story even back then. what a great nostalgia trip. Thank you.
This video is so well-made. I can't believe I watched a 3 hrs 27 minutes video. Thanks for letting me relive my most favorite childhood game man
I don't often leave likes on UA-cam, but seeing 3.5 hours long tribute to one of my favorite games, the one nobody talks about... Man, I liked it in the very first minute! Amazing job, thank you!
S
i honestly have to thank youtubes recommendations and algorithms for this video. this was a fantastic video about one the games that defined my childhood, Age of Mythology and age of empires were some of the best and most entertaining RTS's. such a great video to reminisce about what made age of mythology such a great game, of course i should mention the random map which you only slightly talked about but had endless variety and possible fun, cheers
Yeah like most aoe games, the random map script is a very fun gameplay quirk in the franchise. It's interesting that in aoe2 and aoe1 the players know by muscle memory how close each resource will spawn to your base or to adjacent resources, Aom's random map script is a little more advanced because of the calculation of settlement distance, relics, more varied wild animal spawns, the sentry towers...
3 and half hours on AOM and you don’t even mention the incredible editor this game had!
I spent many an hour building massive armies and having them clash together in that editor. It was like action figures for me. I would try to build balanced and usable maps for real games, but would end up giving myself huge advantages in resources or position just because it was fun to completely demolish my opponents.
I never figured out how to upgrade units in the editor. There’s a button for it, but it’s always shaded out or something and I’ve never figured out how to activate it.
@@davidD3968-dd you can change the age level somewhere, and they will have all tech for that era done
Nottud's editor superpack. Great stuff. You could achieve absolutely wild things in this editor. Idk if anyone remembers Oscar's Adventurers? Gorgeous level design.
@@davidD3968-dd Aoe3's custom editor actually incorporated an upgrade function where it would give all the units in the editor maximum upgrades but Aom's didn't had such a thing.
You had to use the trigger "set tech status" and playtest the scenario for that :)
I find it funny that everytime i slide off a few auto play videos i end up back to this video. Generally while i am sleeping. Waking up to either a Sobek rant or the chiron death scene rant.
Age of mythology and warcraft 3 were my childhood. This game made me obsessed with mythology, especially the greek one
This. I love this game.
Same !
Agamemnon not having a weapon and was instead punching people was always very funny 😂
The fact that Arkantos and Arthas shared the same voice actor in the spanish version of these games made my childhood 10x better. AoM and WC3, two of my fav games of old days.
Man, I feel kinda silly. I was pretty sad when Chiron was killed. Maybe because I played this when I was fairly young, but the latter half of the norse campaign I was angry and wanted revenge, so the cutscene of Ajax chopping of Gargarensis was very cathartic, and then the cutscene after made me angry again
Don't worry, so did I. I actually thought he was a good character, and maybe I was just reading into it (or dipping too much into the IRL mythology) but he seemed to be the smart one of the crew, like the Professor X or the Obi Wan. I actually felt his sacrifice when I was a kid, I definitely didn't just think of him as "a non-human hero who they shuffled off to make room."
Reginleif and Setna, on the other hand, I was quite underwhelmed by. But Chiron was, no joke, my favourite of the core heroes.
I LOVED Age of Mythology, It's such a shame it didn't get more recognition. My (nostalgic) memory of the campaign is that it was really fun too for an RTS.
Well, if its any consolation, this video and the views its getting is proof that this hidden gem has a strong cult following
At first i though "this being 3 hours long was a bad idea, i probably won't watch it" and now im kinda obssesed with revisiting this amazing game through here, probably will buy it and play it later
The remaster is on steam! And has a pretty active community and working online servers! The custom maps are so cool, like the recreation of earth on a mega large map.
The nostalgia that blasts you like a freakin tsunami when the main menu music hits you full volume when you relaunch the game after a few years is just so spot on.
the way the video ended... with that music :' )
soo accurate
The Egyptian Favour mechanic is super unique
There are 5 monuments that you build to produce favour, each guarded by a progressively higher build cost.
I am so glad that you went ahead and spoke about a game that simply deserves so much more respect than it currently gets.
Some of the first PC games I remember playing were AoE1 and 2, and my brother did get this game when it was brand new, and still can remember the both of us sitting behind the computer screen, watching all of this new and exciting things to try out. AoE woke up inside of me my undying curiosity towards history, still lasting to this day, and AoM followed up by waking up inside of me my undying curiosity towards mythology and its many different corners.
And the gameplay was just so much fun. It took what worked in AoE and just added god powers, hero units outside of the campaign, and all sorts of fun stuff to play with. As a kid I didn't even care it may have been unbalanced or unfair, there were few things as fun as aiming Zeus' Lightning at other units and killing them instantly, or using Thoth's Meteors and (maybe) deleting an enemy base, or even Tyr's Fimbulwinter, giving you the definitive "Screw you" to all enemies.
I still own my original copies from back in the day, and I am so glad I own the steam version for convenience, but I am hoping deep down that the remaster brings this game into the spotlight it not only needs, but truly deserves.
yeah when the remaster comes out i will 100% grab it unless they do a W3 refailed situation
@@sirki2885 I doubt they'll mess it up they did a great job remastering aoe 2 and 3. Adding new civs in updating the graphics but keeping the same gameplay I expect the same for aom
weird opening statement cuz this RTS is routinely put in top 10 best RTS games of all times lists
@@donutsrgood4491 yeah i made the statementt before reaching the part of who is doing the remaster will prob pick it up on release/shortly after.. looking forward to see if they going to make any fixes/changes to the chinese trash...
@@sirki2885 They really screwed up the remaster of AOE3 so I'm not holding out much hope.
Thank you very much for making such a detailed documentary of my favorite RTS game! Can't wait to see you cover Retold.
Few comments:
• It did a lot better than people think. By 2006, it had sold over 1 million copies in the US + UK alone - it's fairly safe to estimate up to 2 million sales globally. And then the Extended Edition sold north of 2 million copies. It's no flop by any means.
• Multiplayer and competitive 1v1 do exist, and the shiny myth units and god powers are generally speaking not creating a hellish balance landscape - they can be significant power spikes though. Most myth units are rather expensive, hard to get by, with heroes handling them rather well. God Powers are quite counterable too. Earthquake for example won't wipe out a base that is fortified enough - simply place some extra barracks and upgrade Masons - it will hit a damage cap.
• I would love to see exploration of reusable god powers that cost resources in an Age of Mythology 2. Right along with utilizing an AoE 4-like landmark system where you can visibly dedicate yourself to the gods, instead of just clicking an upgrade image. This would be fantastic for multiplayer, adding significant hype moments, and opening up sneaky strategic possibilities of hiding what god you went. It would be sin to not explore options for these!
• The Tale of the Dragon DLC's development was a complete mess - it was technically Forgotten Empires doing the heavy lifting, with Skybox being the support studio - I was working on the Chinese civ as a designer, and on rebalancing the classic civs at the time. This kickstarted my game dev career, but on the flipside was an awful experience. We were denied any and all resources, so that a simultaneously developed Age of Empires 2 DLC (The African Kingdoms) could be made into a quality product - which it did. I think there was a ton of potential in the Chinese faction, but cutting corners at every opportunity, and the low production quality and poor narrative of the campaign wasted all said potential. I have a video on my channel called "Is Age of Mythology: Definitive Edition Happening?" where I discuss this, and other problems of the game in detail. I do not blame you for not covering it in this video. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in learning more.
I think something as simple as Wonders regenerating or respeccing god powers would get a lot of work done. You could design them so that you could choose to save them for the biggest effect at late ages, or use them immediately to rush for a victory or a Wonder construction for a second shot.
@@benedict6962 Only an extremely low percentage of games make it to the wonder stage. I've been casting tournaments for years, and it's been at most a handful times for that. This is not the way if you want people to experience the dopamine rush of multi-use god powers.
@@benedict6962 Empire earth addresses that problem.
Completely agree with Nakamura that AoAK took a lot of the studio's development time from Tales of the Dork but i would mostly associate of a issue on Microsoft crunching them for 2 things in the same year and obviously FE could just have denied development and work on AoAK first till finalization phase and begin on Tales of the Dork.
What actually happened was Rushing Tales of the Dork with no beta testing, no paid scenario designers or paid late*, quickly recorded voice lines with no emotion behind them and the entirety of the asset creation process of reusing and butchering existing units, models or textures.
At least FE recouped their Development costs by releasing another HD dlc which everybody and their mother had no problem buying on release even when it introduced the lumberjack issue.
That being said, i still think there are awesome people in FE that did give EE life support in the complete neglect microsoft gave and tools for those modding the game.
I absolutely loved this game when I was a kid. It kinda made me a mythology nerd.
You'll be pleased to know Retold changed Hathor to Sobek and Petsobek are now the upgraded form of Petsuchos.
it made me instantly think of this video
There is quite a bit of cut dialogue that was supposed to play in the cutscenes. Most of what was cut was giving more contextual information on what was happening or why. For example, when you first meet Amanra there is quite a bit of cut dialogue explaining what is going on in Egypt and why she is after the parts of Osiris and her rivalry with Kemsyt.
they also cut the 20 minute sex cutscene between Amanra and Arkantos too
I devoted YEARS to this game man… feels just like yesterday I guided Arkantos through a sinking Atlantis…
This game was my entire childhood, i remember how i finished the campaign and found you can make custom games and entire custom maps. I poured so many hours into the game, just playing custom games vs bots and i had a lot of fun with it, even with campaign story though i didnt know almost any words in english.
I keep coming back to this retrospective. What I love about it is how you talk about every single level, breaking down it's design and goals and how it works or doesn't. It really helps to understand the thought behind each level and heck even helped me to think more deeply about my own custom levels in another game. The bursts of humour also keep me greatly entertained and the video itself is pretty relaxing.
Very well done. I hope to see more stuff like this. Having campaign broken down to each level and their strenghts, weaknesses and design philosophies is super interesting.
I never usually comment on videos that much but just wanted to say that this was a very enjoyable watch in which your passion and enthusiasm really shone through, tremendous stuff Grant!
58:18 That is foreshadowing about the next mission, where the people you were working with during the tug of war betray you and Amanra has to pull everybody out of the fire with just Myth units.
I thought the base was the same city that you sieged in the previous mission xD
That is the story reason probably, the gameplay reason is that they probably tested it with ra or the major god that shall not be named and one specific unit wins the mission by itself: The Son of Osiris, you start with enough stuff for the mythic age and they probably saw that rushing your pharaoh forward and upgrading it would trivialize the mission, so they gave you the one major god that couldn't (not that it matters since you can win in 7 mins without training a single unit anyways even on titan but w/e). Plus, for a campaign they wanted to give you a mission on each major god at least once, so set had to fit somewhere-
@@bigmen0 indeed
@bigmen0 I mean they just could have locked you out of getting that god power, it was definitely a hint to what will come, particularly as we see that we play as loki when he tricks us, the main reason for the betrayal would likely be so you can have gameplay as each of the gods in each faction
@@calebbarnhouse496 Disabling godpowers for the player is something outrageous to do for scenario design in AoM, from a game design perspective Set was chosen to fit the role of playing every major at least once and the rest is to fit the lore with the logic behind it. Giving you Tornado/Meteor at the start would make the scenario very easy because you could just kill the ambush forces and easily retrieve the cart.
As for the scenario, it's rather obvious why are you playing Set here, he has the best Chariot archers and chariot archers in this scenario are the key to victory.
I didn't know I needed a three and a half hour Grant video talking about something he adores, but now I need more of it
I finished the whole video in 3 days piece by piece. Amazing retrospective review. AoM was a piece of my childhood. You did great video to honor the game. I hope the new AoM Retold gets better.
Just finished. What a great game. When you started the Atlantean campaign, I couldn't help but to pause, and play through each of the missions before watching yours. It's fun to see what things we both found easy or challenging, and even more interesting to see what things we found the opposite. Thanks for shining the spotlight on such a wonderful game.
Dude “cumulative creativity of the entire human race” was such a good line. Had literal chills thinking about what would be done with this sort of fantasy setting! You’re a king Grant
I completely agree, because this has been my personal sentiment ever since I started hearing about these great stories from my dad, aunts, uncles, etc. when I was a wee kid (they're all historians & storytellers). And to be fair, the MCU DID try doing it with Thor: Love & Thunder. But... tsk, yeah...
I can't believe I watched a 3 hour, 33 minute and 33 second youtube video, without skipping, to the end, and enjoyed every second of it. Excellent video, you're a legend, I look forward to playing Age of Mythology retold and hope it does the game justice. This was my favourite game growing up, and I'm glad you could memorialize it the way it deserves.
I just love when people have genuine passion for something and share it for other people to enjoy, good video grant i know you enjoyed and so did we
You have SO MUCH POTENTIAL! Your voice is perfect for long video content. It’s not annoying and is calming. You are spectacular at articulating everything in a non repetitive way. It’s like a masterfully written essay that is a smooth read that’s clear and concise. Please keep going with this long content and you’ll have tons of watch time and be a HUGE HUGE UA-camr!
He really does
I was just thinking the same ! Lol... im english and rarely ever like to listen to most english accents late at night when im sleepy
.
What if this guy isnt human though ? 🤔
True
1:39:30 Funnily enough, one of my most memorable moments in AoM was when I played a 1v7 on Titan difficulty, but I just used the Pandoras Box cheat over and over to fight them all off. That cheat gives you 4 random god powers, and can be used repeatedly, replacing what you rolled before. So as you might imagine, that game turned into the most hilarious, chaotic mess of god powers imaginable. Lightning Storm there, meteors here, turn that army to pigs, and only the gods know what happens next. Just throw balance right out the window, bring some popcorn and enjoy the fireworks.
choose atlanteans, use resources cheats and build a mighty unstoppable army of hekatonkeiros where they'll terraform every land into jumbled spiky mess😂
Notorhet 'O CANADA' - send a Canadian bear shooting laser beams after them ... Which is just as silly as it is fun 😂
WRATH OF THE GODS. DIVINE INTERVENTION.
28:25 The reason the cyclops have goat legs in this game is probably the same reason the medusas have bows: Ray Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans. Guy had a lot of influence on early fantasy games.
Wait “medusas” ? There are multiple of her now
Alright who is gonna tell Perseus about this
@@Whiskers4169 a lot of myth units in this game fall under the "a kind of one" trope, so you can have multiple minotaurs, nemean lions, hydras etc
@@itsmesnacks yes I am avare it was a mythology joke about how Perseus will have to cut so many more heads off
@@Whiskers4169 Im late but, this was even true in greek myth to my knowledge. Hence, gorgons...
@@Haduuna_Wrur I know but they are not Medusa they are gorgons
A Love letter to a wonderful game. I'm glad you took the time for this.
I have spent YEARS wondering why the Trojan market that triggers them to say the thing about trade was buried so deep in the Trojan base! It totally makes sense that they meant it to be where the town center is. As soon as you pointed that out in the video, I knew I'd be watching the whole thing. Nooo regrets. Also, you gave that second expansion exactly as much time as it deserved. 10/10 analysis
Thank you so much Grant for putting out an over 3 hour video of one of my favorite games of all time. You are one of my favorite content creators, stay awesome!
I'm so glad this video did well. This means that there is a possibility in the future that Grant will do more of those essays. I loved every second of it
I really enjoyed this AoM documentary, thanks for taking a chance on it Grant!
I watched it in 20 minute chunks over a few weeks and it kept pulling me back in :D
Something not mentioned but which got me really excited when I first played Age of Mythology is that the Trojan Siege takes exactly 6 missions. Just as much as every campaign in AoE 2 had in total. So I thought back then in the sixth mission that this would be it and was already a bit disappointed that there was only one campaign visible in the start menu. But then after the mission a cutscene shows some unknown cyclops citing poems, talking about everything going according to plan and excavating some crypt. This was the moment I knew that this campaign only just started...
Well there is technically 7 scenarios in total with 3 being just for cinematic reasons. But it's 4 playable ones.
I spent so much of my teenage years and childhood in this absolute underrated gem. It's the pinnacle of edutainment, where recorded info and gameplay go hand in hand and the in-game wiki gives you a snapshot of the real myths each unit is based on.
Dude You unlocked some memories I never knew I had, I forgot all about this game, is my one and only RTS I ever played
i played Age of Mythology as a youngster and this video unlocked many core memories from so long ago. Its amazing that i can still remember the campaign, and it speaks to how fantastic/badass it still is.