Revelations is an expansion for Age Of Wonders: Planetfall developed by Triumph Studios. It is available on Humble Bundle, Steam, the Paradox Store, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Joseph Pugh conducted this review on PC.

The Humble Bundle link is a referral link, I get a small commission if you purchase the game through it.

Overview

When I reviewed Age of Wonders: Planetfall. It turned out to be one of my favorite games of the year. Revelations is a content expansion that adds a brand new secret tech, NPC faction, mini-campaign, and some juicy new game mechanics.

The campaign is focused on a faction of Syndicate rebels attempting to uncover the secrets of the Es’teq of the past and the inheritors of the present. It plays much like the campaign missions in the base game. You have a lot of personal choice in how you complete the objectives and the decisions you make can have an impact on the campaign.

Two new marauder types to encounter, like the assassin robot reapers.

The campaign itself does a great job of introducing you to the new features of Revelations in an organic way even if it doesn’t really play differently from the base game campaign missions.

Anomalous Sites

Anomalous Sites are a new type of encounter on the game map. You need a hero to activate them and they launch into a multistage mini-adventure that takes several turns to complete. As the adventure plays out, you will be presented with several choices in a form similar to a choose your own adventure book.

These choices, however, are influenced by both, your faction and secret tech. You can have more or fewer choices depending on your identity. Completing these Anomalous sites can grant a wide variety of rewards, including techs themselves.

Anomalous sites are multistage encounters with several choices, some based on your factions identity.

The techs granted to you in this way do not require you to have researched the prerequisite techs. This can greatly benefit you as you can be granted techs you weren’t planning on researching, giving you more adaptability and combos that you may not have thought of.

Anomalous sites also add more strategy to the game. They grant experience to the hero that takes part and the rewards are often great. But it also leaves that hero tied up for several turns. They are a solid addition to the game.

Heritor Tech And The Forgotten

Revelations features a new secret tech and NPC faction. The Heritor secret tech is focused on a new damage type called entropy and new mechanic based on essence charges. Their units can gain essence charges that increase their damage output. These charges can also be spent to fuel abilities.

The tech also grants weapons and mods you can use to grant the essence charge mechanic to your faction’s own units. Many of the operations also mess around with these essence charges.

The Heritor secret tech adds a new research tree, units, operations, and mods.

The Forgotten are essentially walking corpses in different forms. Due to their nature, their units are visually varied, a mechanical serpent, and a large golem for example. They consume the corpses of units they slay healing themselves in the process.

Both additions add a great deal of variety to a game that already had it in spades. The Heritor tech can combo well with any faction and the Forgotten are a lot of fun to use and fight against. I particularly like the visual designs of the Forgotten. Both have new mechanics that set them apart from existing factions. The new damage type and essence mechanic add a lot of new potential strategys when paired with the various factions.

Threats And Free Content

Revelations brings new marauder threats in the form of Reaper Robots and Bio-pigs. Yes, you read that right. Planetfall is a type of game that really benefits from additional variety of any kind. Both types of units work well and are fun to fight against. The Reapers, in particular, look super cool. One of them seemingly inspired by the Droideka from Star Wars.

Yet I must also question the pigs. In a world of aliens and space travel, only the imagination limits what could be added to the fold. We got Bioengineered pigs that went rabid. I can’t help but feel that they are uninspired compared to the rest of the expansion.

Why pigs?

At the same time, the way the piglet packs run is so cute I have a hard time being angry about it. In any case, the addition of two new marauder types does enhance the game quite a bit, adding more variety to your potential encounters.

The following comes free, even if you don’t buy the expansion, but they are worth mentioning. You can now take over imperial defenses on the strategic map instead of just destroying them. Doing so grants you new operations and other benefits.

If you don’t like the results of an auto-battle you can choose to try again manually. Finally, you can research and create Orbital relays that allow for quicker transportation across your regions. I really can’t understate how great these features are, especially the orbital relays as it makes late-game unit movement much less painful.

Verdict

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that Revelations didn’t bring a whole new faction to the game. However, the new secret tech and NPC faction still add a great deal more flexibility to Planetfall. The Anomalous site mechanic is fantastic adding even more strategical choices to the game and the new marauders are nice, even if I find the bio-pigs a strange choice.

The new NPC faction follows the base game themes of being very unique.

You can get a decent amount of playtime from the two new campaign missions and Revelations also adds new locations and pickups across the board on the strategy map and new world scenario based on the Heritors.

Revelations features plenty of new content even without a brand new faction and is worth the price. Planetfall was already great, now it is even better.

Confused? Check out my review of the base game. Age Of Wonders: Planetfall

A copy of Revelations was provided for Gideon’s Gaming by Paradox Interactive.

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Pros

New Secret tech and NPC faction are unique and fun

The mini-campaign does a great job of introducing you to the expansions new content

New marauders, locations, and pickups add even more variety

Anomalous sites are a great new mechanic that enhances strategic play

Cons

Of all the possible additions, why bioengineered pigs?

The mini-campaign is focused on the Syndicate, if you don’t like to play them, you are out of luck

No new core faction

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