Age of Mythology: Retold

*[sample]* : Please refer to EDIT(2026/04/28) Age of Mythology is for me a very nostalgic game, it never had the footprint of Empires, but it always had more character. The game is good, and from what I've played, retold does a good job of polishing it up for modern machines. That said, I've refunded the game. I bought the "Premium Edition", under the impression that it would get me all but the most recent DLC at time of writing (Obsidian Mirror). This wound up being only half-true. For whatever reason, this game has decided to paywall blood behind a DLC that isnt available for purchase on the steam storefront, its instead been obfuscated and rolled into the expansion pass bundle, along with acess to the individually purchasable obsidian mirror expansion, and two other cosmetic DLC. To be clear, thius means that if you expect to see blood in a war game, you can also expect to pay $34.99 (CAD) on top of the upfront cost of buying the game, and you may not know this untill you've already played longer than the traditional refund window allows. Furthermore, if you could swallow the petty removal of extant cosmetic features, *you cant even buy back the parts you want, rather the development team has grouped them together so the desire to own any single one of them runs the cost up to that of a bundle.* Notably a bundle uncovered by the "Premium" edition, which is marketed as "all but the obsidian mirror". It's sneaky, dishonest, and anti-consumer. Seems to me like the devs are interested in obfuscating their monitization practices just long enough that they will have locked in your purchase. I REALLY WANT to like this game, but I cant stomach this kind of malicious anti-consumer behaviour. It doesnt bode well, and makes me think I'll be faced with more microtransactions tacked on to a childhood classic. I'd rather avoid that future, and advise anyone else to avoid it too. So its going to be a thumb down from me. Devs: Please dont treat people like they're dumb cattle. It degrades yourselves, your product, and your customers. EDIT (2026/04/28): I wrote this review the same day as my refund request (2026/04/17) Four days later (2026/04/21) the developers placed each of the bundled DLC for direct singular purchase on the storefront, well done devs. However, there is one exception; Blood & Bones, which is available to view, but not to directly purchase at time of writing, simply being priced as "N/A". So my critique that "the desire to own any single one of them runs the cost up to that of a bundle." is no longer 100% applicable. That said, the keystone DLC required to complete the remaster is STILL paywalled behind the "Expansion Pass". This makes it abundantly clear to me that the bundling effort was done exclusively to bait more expense from the nostalgic fanbase, rather than those who are interested in improving the base game with new features.

Not particularly good blood/corpse effects cost as much as the base game. I mean, seriously? Hard pass. Save your money. Greediest developers I have bought from.