Age of Fear: The Free World

Where do I start? The game has no real progression, and is pretty glitchy. There isn't a story line. I don't mean that there is a weak or poorly written one. There simply isn't one. Every race uses the same main map, and there isn't any progression exploring through it. You just randomly hop around to select mini-maps. That combined with everything being scaled to your progression makes evolving your units pointless. If you go through the whole game without evolving a single unit, it will be the same as evolving them all fully. The glitchiness is also annoying. For instance, multi magic missile is supposed to be able to target up to three enemies, yet you cannot. A few times it hit one target three times, but then it stopped doing that as well. Buffs that target your own units in a chain tend to veer away from the units you want it to target. Upgrading some units in a way that states they will get more HP, does not give them more HP (goblin archers, wolves, etc). Some aspects of the game are cool, but not enough to make up for the glitches and lack of exploration/campaign progression.

"Age of Fear: The Free World" is barely what counts as a game, it's basically an advertisement for a series of stupidly overpriced abandonware/DOS tier retro RPGs... all of them badly written, incoherent in places, riddled with bugs, and wow... I mentioned overpriced, right? The cheapest of the games this is advertising starts at an eye watering $25 USD, and this "advert" keeps throwing popups at you to try get you to shell out for these stupidly overpriced games. You can't make this up, the products that this is advertising add up to an insane TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY UNITED STATES DOLLARS... and that's before DLC. While this advertisement conveys an old school tabletop/retro wargame/RPG feel, it's clunky, unprofessionally made, lacks polish and lacks general interest for gamers. This isn't something with gameplay as deep and rich as games like the Dominions series, nor does it come close to actual abanonware RPGs like the Ultima series or the Gold Box Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games (in fact despite the outdated looks and cheer clunkiness of this advertisement, it's only 5 years old)! The advert features really lacklustre 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs to pretend they're mobile phones or Commodore 64s. This is only free in the same way that adverts on Youtube and banner ads in your browser are. This is a game demo that's been dumped on Steam to advertise another Steam store page in the hopes of raking in some cash from other products. Just because advertisements are free, doesn't mean they're worth your time. Bearing in mind that advertisements don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.

Great free intro to a great franchise of Warhammer-like fantasy skirmish games. It's got fun and addictive gameplay with dice-based rng and lots of power options for you and your troops as you level up. Layout and graphics are fine, reminds me of old flash games. Nested icons and menus, cursor-centric selection buttons, and a bright cartoonish artstyle- that sort of thing. Things were very intuitive and designed familiarly. There are classic generic fantasy factions with generic fantasy troops (and tropes) with generic fantasy landscapes to fight in, although things do get fleshed out and expanded on quite a bit in the later games. You can pick Humans, Dwarves, Forest Fae, Demons, etc. with varied troop types with diverse skills. Your troops talk a lot. I mean a lot. It may not be your thing but I found it charming. There's not much story other than side-quests and encounters with slight narrative but nothing to an end it seems. However, the overall feel of the game is very nostalgic for me and the mechanics are very sound, especially the shop-system. Overall, I give this a strong 7/10. Good for an introduction into the series, or strategem practice, or just quick fun but I do think it's a tad empty and repetitive at times, although the sequels improve upon the formula drastically.

I will say what Maybe to my dismay first: The number of troop varairity is lacking The style is nice but won't get any awards Other than that I wholeheartedly recommend this game to all who like strategy games but has not have the time to buy and play the latest release or the more demanding games, I go to school, I have work, and two kids and I still manage to play at least 30 a day thanks to how nice this game is to my computer and how easy it is to modify to my awful skill level, there is supposed ease at modding but there is very little posted online to what I could see, and frankly I do not have the time, energy, or knowhow to do so, this game I believe could benefit most of an even easier system for modification and personalization, I know that at times the creator of the game can come off as stressed or angry, but I know it is hard and hope they manage to dedicate more time into what is my mental health lifeline at the moment If you are to add anything please add more personalization or more troops, something so content is maybe even procidually generated would be fun, but then again I know nothing of the subject and wish you all the best.

Very good game. Like this kind of started as a demo for the franchise it seems, and just became a full on game that they actively update. ♥♥♥♥♥ weird, but ♥♥♥♥♥ cool. Good stuff, worth a try I reckon.

Not bad for a free sandbox style tabletop-like turn-based RPG. Has a handful of factions and quite a few different troops the player can employ in their merry band to explore and conquer the game world. Really nice when you can play a turn-based game like this without the grid/hex structure to movement.

Well downloaded this awhile ago and just recently tried it. I must say it is pretty good considering made from java ya I would like to dive more you get into a certain point and you cant really progress any further I understand. I like the necromancers lol get an army of skeletons no worry about buying troops ever again. It worth the time I personally enjoyed it better then say age of wonders 1. It has a king field vibe to it as well the early 90s one.

good game