Navigation takes place on a world map that has one surface level and two subterranean levels. This adds quite a bit to play because you may have blocked that mountain pass with your armies, but did you forget about the cavern entrance behind you? Combat takes place on a different map that varies by where a battle is taking place. The battle system is a bit simplistic and the enemy AI is mediocre, but things are still pretty fun. If you get sick of running battles, there's a choice that lets all battles be handled automatically for you.
But is it good? Yeah, you betcha! My weekend went faster than salmonella through a duck. The single-player game is set up in a string of missions covering your journey to the Valley of Wonders. The missions you get to run depend on whether you play a good guy or bad guy, and there are some places where you can choose from a few possibilities. This gives you a lot of replayability, since once you beat it as the bad guys, you can go for it as the good guys and play completely different levels. They could have copped out and made a random mission generator, but instead they did the smart thing and hand-crafted exquisite and balanced maps that each hold a ton of fun and many ways to win.
The game play is not perfect though (Is it ever? Yes, Outcast!) The AI can act in a variety of ways, but it's none too bright and often makes blunders only the most amateur person would make. And when you have tons of units and a lot of territory, keeping track of everything can get a bit tedious. But these are really minor quibbles compared to the quality of the game play.
The graphics of AoW are 2D and pleasant to behold. Water shimmers and spells glitter with a great fantasy feel. You can't really compare the graphics of a 2D game to those of 3D games, but we can say that the artists for AoW did an excellent job. Our only beef with the graphics is that, on a Celeron 450 with a Voodoo3 2000 PCI, there was a noticeable slow-down at 1024x768 and higher. Also, at higher resolutions, we wish we could speed up the mouse to cover ground quicker. Again, these are minor quibbles to an otherwise excellent looking game.