Overview
Primal Fury is the third expansion for Age of Wonders 4 and adds a brand-new culture, The Primal Culture. Much like Dragon’s Dawn, Primal Fury is on the smaller (and less expensive) side of DLC expansions. It doesn’t bring any new story realms, but the handful of things it does add expands Age of Wonders 4 in pleasant ways.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!
The Wolf Update also launched for free alongside Primal Fury. While not directly part of the review, I’ll go over a couple of cool changes contained in the update as well.
| Gideon’s Bias | Primal Fury Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: No | Publisher: Paradox Interactive |
| Hours Played: 20+ | Type: Expansion DLC |
| Reviewed On: Xbox Series X | Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5. |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: 4x, Turn Based Strategy |
| Mode Played: Variety | Price: $9.99 |
Primal Culture
The largest addition in Primal Fury is undoubtedly the Primal Culture. Although it’s a single culture, there are 7 variants you can play as. To me, one of the biggest strengths that Age of Wonders 4 has, is the ability to come up with a faction idea and allow the roleplaying concept behind that faction to influence your gameplay decisions.
The Primal culture helps you expand on previously inaccessible ideas, by giving you a semi-nature-based faction that isn’t Barbaric. The Primal Culture follows one of 7 animal spirits that greatly influence who they are.
Followers of the Ash Sabertooth, for example, are adapted to desolate terrain and gain bonuses from it. When they channel the fury of their animal spirit, they ignite nearby enemies when they attack. The Mammoth on the other hand favors snow and allows its followers to freeze enemies in place.
To put it in plain terms, a unit builds Primal Fury with each attack, and after five stacks it turns into an offensive boon that varies depending on which spirit animal you picked.
I’ve made pack-hunting wolves that follow the Sylvan Wolf, Jotun Frostgiants with the Mammoth spirit, an evil spider queen empowered by the Tunneling Spider, and Poisonous Toads of the Mire who follow the Mire Crocodile. The Primal culture is yet another tool you can use to shape the gameplay with your creativity.
The Culture’s units also work in pretty neat ways. The Darter, for example, has a shorter range than most ranged units, but can jump out of an enemy’s zone of control and shoot them at the same time. The Primal Shield unit can tap into their fury to heal themselves. The Primal culture also gets a tier 3 spear unit, which is something that the roster has been missing.
Finally, they can gain the ability to actually summon units of their primal spirit in combat, each of which has different strengths. It’s a strong summon, especially in the early and mid-game. I often forgo many other combat spells and summon a primal animal every turn.
It gives the Primal culture a unique sense of “I’m not alone, the spirits are with me” and it means an army of primal units is never quite as small as they appear.
It’s a great new addition to the game, but I can’t help but feel the same way that I did about the Reaver culture added in the last expansion. The Primal culture has such unique gameplay mechanics that the base game cultures can feel undercooked by comparison. To be fair, however, some of them have received a makeover since Primal Fury’s release.
Primal Tomes
Primal Fury adds two new tomes. The Tome of The Fey Mists and Tome of The Stormborne. The new Tomes feature dual aspects, just like every other tome added since the game was released. In this case, Nature and Astral.
The Tome of The Fey Mists requires a pretty deep commitment to use effectively but offers some pretty unique benefits in return. By tapping into the Fey you can cover your regions in mist, blinding and weakening armies within.
You will need to make your own units immune to mists, however, and commit to spreading the mists among your lands. Doing so can make any attempt to raid your lands a treacherous endeavor, after all, one of the most common tropes in any mythology is,that you do not mess with the fey folk!
The Tome of the Stormborne, on the other hand, is a much-needed nautical-focused tome. It allows you to summon lightning storms and rain, improve your bounty from the sea, and Transform your units with the Serpentine bodies of the Naga, making them amphibious. The ocean side of Age of Wonders 4 has been one of its weaker elements, and the Tome of The Stormborne is certainly a step in the right direction.
Both new Tomes offer unique new units, spells, and advantages and further expand the choices you can make during the game, and that’s great.
Forms, Mounts, & Other Additions
Primal Fury adds the Lupine and Goatkin forms, allowing you to make factions of wolves and goat people. Forms are purely cosmetic, but variety is always welcome. There are a variety of special mounts you can give a faction through the trait system, and Primal Fury added two new exclusive mounts. Elephants, and Mammoths. It also adds a few new standard animal mounts and some new animal wildlife you can encounter.
I do have to voice my disappointment in the lack of new Wonders. The game is called Age of Wonders after all, and wonders are a rather important aspect that’s been lacking variety for a while. It feels like this would be a good opportunity to include some new nature-focused ones.
Heck, I’d be happy if current ones were retooled for more variety, why does a den of spiders always add serpents to the Rally of Lieges, for example?
It’s a personal gripe, but one I’ll continue to have for the time being.
Wolf Update
With every new expansion also comes a substantial but free patch that often retools aspects of the game. I have to applaud Paradox and Triumph Studios for continuing the trend, and there are a few things I want to touch on.
One of the big ones is the new ascension traits. Rulers that ascend to your Pantheon now have a choice of really cool ascension traits to choose from, based on they were played. They also keep their transformations, which is super cool.
The Hero system has been retooled to be less reliant on cities, and stacking heroes has been made less effective. Free Cities have modifiers that dictate what type of units they might provide and transformations they can have. Realm Traits can be randomized, and there are some new form traits, such as Herbivore, which allow units to eat plants during battle to heal themselves.
The content and changes in the Wolf Patch rival the size of the Primal Fury expansion itself. This is always the case when Triumph releases a new DLC, and why I opt to cover at least a piece of them during my reviews.
The ascension traits in particular add a flare of uniqueness to pantheon rulers that I really enjoy, and it makes me look forward to ascending them.
Verdict
Primal Fury is an excellent DLC for its asking price that further expands the sandbox nature of Age of Wonder’s 4 with a great new culture and two new tomes. Most of the additions beyond that, however, are largely cosmetic, superficial, or came with the free Wolf Patch that dropped alongside the DLC.
The additions are great and worth the price, but I can’t help but feel myself wanting a bit more. A couple of new wonders would have gone a long way toward dousing that desire. Additionally, I still feel that a couple of the base game factions are due for an overhaul.
That said, I’ve been slow to actually put this review out, and at least one faction has been overhauled since Primal Fury was released. (More on that in my upcoming Eldritch Realms Review).
Regardless, I very much enjoy the new Primal Culture and all of the faction ideas it can help me bring to life.
