Video Gamers Podcast - Video Games Quick Take - Age of Wonder

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

From video games hosts Josh, Paul, and Ryan we're bringing you even more video games content each week.  Video Games Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon.

But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these quick takes are a little more laid back and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax and enjoy this quick take episode. Shazam! Boom! Hey, everybody. It's Josh, back with another Gaming Quick Takes episode.

Oh, my goodness. We are just flying through these things. I don't know how many we have at this point, honestly. I feel like we're up into the 80 or 90 range at this point. But you know what? You all out there, you deserve them. We hope you enjoy them. It's one of the ways we say thank you for supporting the show. And we hope that you find value there. Honestly, we couldn't do this podcast without your support. So number one, everybody that listens to this show should be thanking you. But Paul and I, it's one of those things where we want to show our gratitude and we hope that these Quick Takes episodes are something that you all enjoy. We try to keep them short so that you

can consume them and enjoy them and you don't feel obligated to have to take away from the main shows or anything like that. And hopefully they just kind of brighten up your day. Maybe it's a game recommendation that you heard of and you checked out and it's a game you enjoy. That's really the goal. Maybe you learn a little bit more about me and Paul. Maybe you get a chuckle out of one of these, but you know, whatever it is, we really hope that you enjoy them. Today, I'm going to talk to you about a couple game recommendations or kind of like a type of game or a series. I'm going to include a couple different ones in here. Some of them are a little bit older. You might have heard of these. If they're your style of game, I think you'll really, really enjoy them. I know I've put in many,

many hours into this type of game, and I'm going to talk to you about a couple series. These are games that the two that I want to mention are basically, there's one called Age of Wonders, and then the other one is called the Heroes of Might and Magic series. So what these games are, they are turn-based strategy games where you need to build an empire, grow an army, manage an empire, and then go and wreck face in turn-based combat. Now, I know what you're saying. You're like, hey, wait, that sounds an awful lot like some of these 4X games where they're very, very time intensive. You're managing planets and civilizations and research and diplomacy and things like that. These games are a little bit different in the sense that they don't focus quite as much on that aspect of the empire building and things like that. These are more about an overworld exploration to where you explore a map. Maybe you find treasures, maybe you find units that you can recruit into your army. Maybe you find an outpost that you can capture

and then have that provide resources to your empire and train new units or something like that. So don't kind of put it off right away because like I said, they are a little bit more simplistic than some of these really complicated 4X type games. They're a lot easier to get into. And honestly, I find them to be a lot more fun because there's a little bit more action involved as well. So what these games are, like I said, you know, they kind of take place in an overworld map. That's the overall gist of it. It's usually very fantastical, fantasy-based setting, very colorful and that sort of stuff. As you move your character around, you explore the map and you will find different things of stuff. As you move your character around, you explore the map and you will find different things of interest. Like I said, you might find a treasure chest on the ground that gives you

a new spell, right? Or maybe you find an ore mine that allows you to mine ore as a resource. You usually have a home base or a castle or a city or something like that. And that is where you manage everything from. But you don't necessarily spend a lot of time there. So occasionally, you need to go back to your main base, and you will recruit different units in your army. Maybe you'll build a church that will allow you to then have clerics as a unit that you can put into your army, or something along those lines. We'll get into the combat and the different units here in a little bit. But basically you have that hub and that's kind of where you manage your empire.

But to do that, you need to have resources and you need to go out into the world and explore and kind of find things. And that aspect of these types of games is honestly a lot of fun because there's different scenarios that you'll run into. You'll find kind of cool things out there. Think like side quests almost. But exploration plays a big part there. So what do you do other than looking around this big giant overworld map and building units in a city? Well, the heart of these games, in my opinion, is the combat. And so what happens in the combat in these games is you build up an army using various units that you might come across. And it really depends because most of the time you can play as multiple

different factions in these games as well. So maybe you're orcs, maybe you're elves, maybe you're demons, maybe you are knights in some kind of medieval cast as far as that goes. Maybe you're an elf princess. And so you can recruit like unicorns and griffins and stuff like that. If you're demons, you know, you've got access to like hellhounds and imps and those sorts of creatures. You know, the list goes on and on. There's like undead, like you're like a necromancer.

So you can have zombies and ghosts and vampires and that kind of stuff is your army units. So basically what you do is you recruit all these units and the units themselves actually have different abilities. So vampires might be able to drain life from people. Zombies might be really hard to kill or if the enemy does kill them uh you automatically get another zombie right like it replenishes that unit or you know things along those lines so each unit actually has something built into it as an ability and when you put them all together you get into combat it warps you to a battlefield that's usually grid based your army is on one side the enemy army is on the other. These are usually single player games, although some of them do have multiplayer components.

And then what you do is you pick your unit. You move it a certain number of spaces. You can make it attack other units. And this is basically like playing chess at this point because it's a lot of a rock, paper, scissors type thing. Some units are strong against others. Other units are strong against others. Other units are weak against them. And you get to control your hero, which usually has very strong capabilities like spells. Sometimes you can move your hero into combat, but you risk the chance of them dying. And it's just turn-based combat at that point.

Everybody kind of knows what turn-based combat is. But what makes it really fun are the options that you have in how you strategize and how you win these fights with these units that you have. So that's one of the cool things about this that makes the combat so much fun. There's a lot of these types of games out there. Like I said, we have Age of Wonders, Heroes of Might and Magic. There's a few others out there as well. I think those are the two. King's Bounty is another one. There's a King's Bounty series that played into this genre. I don't even know what the genre is called, to be honest, but it is a lot of fun. I have played a lot of games in this genre because I find them to just be very chill, very enjoyable. The combat and the tactics in that regard are a

lot of fun. The world management and how you manage your city and the buildings that you build so that you can hire new units and stuff like that is also a lot of fun. So no one aspect is overly complicated. But when you put everything together, it really makes for these very fun games. So I highly recommend, if nothing else, check out a few of them. Again, King's Bounty is a good series. Age of Wonder is a good series. And probably one of the more popular ones is the Heroes of Might and Magic. And I think they go from like one through six or something like that.

There's actually a pretty good bit of them. But check them out. Let me know what you think. If you're a fan of the genre, whatever that genre is called, let me know. I'd love to chat with some thoughts there and maybe some of the fun that we've had in those games. But definitely check them out. I think they're worth your time. These games are a little bit older.

Now, they're not super old, but that just means that they generally are a lot cheaper as well. They usually go on sale for just a few dollars at this point. So I highly recommend you look into them and at least give one of them a try. You might be pleasantly surprised. All right. Well, that's it for me on this bonus episode.

Thank you again for the support. We really do appreciate it. We could not do this without you. So it really does mean the world to us. Thanks a lot. And I will see you on the next episode.