Building on past successful titles, Age of Mythology seamlessly blends together elements of city-building and real-time strategy to create a game that combines the best of both worlds - the ancient history of the Atlanteans, the siege of Troy, Norse invaders, and Egyptian kingdoms, along with the intrigue of god-like powers available at the click of a button.  While I have never played either of the earlier games by Ensemble & Microsoft - Age of Empires or Age of Kings, anyone familiar with real-time strategy games will have no problems grasping the concepts behind Age of Mythology.  With easy to master gameplay, rich graphics and amazing sound effects, Age of Mythology successfully captures your imagination and brings you into a world full of victory and defeat.

Age of Mythology is extremely easy to understand and learn, gameplay-wise.  If you've ever played a real-time strategy (RTS) game, there should be no problem here - in the past, the only other RTS game I had played was Starcraft, still one of my all-time favorites.  The idea is simple - gather resources (here: food, gold & wood) to build various structures - from temples to houses to armories.  With the basic foundation laid for your city, you can work on expanding your army.  Through the use of the aforementioned structures, you can train a vast amount of army types - from archers to minotaurs to catapults.  With the army built, you're ready to go conquer the world - or perhaps just complete the scenario you've been put in.  Age of Mythology offers a wide array of various scenarios for the single player type and, with so many different army types, offers unlimited combinations for multiplayer head-to-head battles.

Age of Mythology isn't the most graphically advanced computer game to come along in the past few months, but what it is able to boast is adequate performance across a wide range of computers.  I am reviewing this copy on an AMD Athlon XP1900 with 512 MB RAM and an ATI Radeon 128 with 64 MB RAM - minimum requirements are: 450 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, 1.5 GB free hard drive space, 16 MB video card and 56.6k for online gaming.  While I had absolutely no problem running the game with the best options (1024x768, 32 bit color), with no loss of frames, I was also able to play this on a friend's computer running at 400 MHz with only 128 MB RAM and an older graphics card (not sure of the exact model).  Sure, the graphics were diminished, but in a RTS game, they aren't the most important feature.  As long as you're able to see what's going on - able to move your units, able to do battle, able to build your city - you're able to play this game. 

Age of Mythology, while not incredibly graphically advanced does sport some nice graphics at the high-end.  Characters are highly detailed and the backgrounds sport great detail that adds to the realism.  Add to this the rendering of the god-like powers over everything on screen and the graphics engine proves what it can do.  While, at times, it may be hard to distinguish between different types of archers or infantry as more and more characters appear on the screen, there is no problem distinguishing between the unique character types - from heroes to archers to myth units.  Overall, while not a graphics powerhouse, the graphics do impress at times and are more than adequate for a real-time strategy game.

The audio presented in Age of Mythology is nothing special, but it's also nothing that you would notice on the deficient side.  Overall, the audio is: sufficient.  You get the usual hand to hand combat sounds, the whoosh of the arrows flying through the air, and the acknowledgement of your armies as you select them, but other than that, nothing special.  The ambient music is nothing to write home about - although it does provide a decent background to the game.

In conclusion, if you're a fan of real-time strategy games, you'll really enjoy Age of Mythology.  While the graphics and audio are 'sufficient,' the gameplay stands out and raises this game above the myriad of other games that you can select on your next visit to the electronics store.  With three different civilizations to play: Greek, Norse & Egyptian along with various time periods, different minor gods which alter your strategy, and the huge assortment of different character types, there's enough here to keep you busy for quite a while.  The single player mode, while a bit repetitive at times, is fun to play - and has 4 different difficulty levels to choose from - Easy, Medium, Hard and Titan.  Multiplayer mode offers two different choices - cooperative play against another team or head-to-head action.  I was unable to test online play on a 56.6 as is the minimum requirement, but it runs very smoothly on broadband and offers another level of play.  Rather than having a certain task to complete, it's a lot of fun to try and outwit another human player.

Overall, Age of Mythology is worth every penny of the price.  Highly recommended.