Century: Age of Ashes is a new action game where you fly in the skies riding dragons and kill everything that comes in your path. Technically, there is nothing in your path apart from other players and their dragons but you get the idea. Century: Age of Ashes is a dragon battle title developed by Playwing and has been out in Early Access for some time. Now, with their full release, Playwing has launched a fairly decent dragon battle title that is both fun and challenging. This is our review of Century: Age of Ashes in which we fly around in dragons and burn other players to crisp.
The gameplay naturally involves you flying around dragons. While the dragons fly automatically, you can accelerate and boost around to increase your speed. The left joystick or the mouse controls the direction of your flight, and you can accelerate to increase your speed of use boost to gain a massive surge of speed if you are trying to chase an enemy or get away from their attacks. Apart from this, every dragon in the game has two basic attacks which are fireball and flamebreath. Fireballs are long-range balls of fire that you shoot at enemies that are automatically locked-on when you are close to them and flamebreath is like a shotgun of fire which is most effective when you are closely chasing your enemies.
You do not have to hard-aim on your enemies as your dragon automatically aims at your enemies for both fireballs and flamebreath but still, you need to closely follow your enemies, so it is not that easy to just shoot at your enemies. To dodge your enemies, the levels are designed with plenty of obstacles and areas to circle around quickly. For boosting around, you also need Stamina which you can gain by flying over the green energy over the water that the game calls energy rifts. Once you store enough rift energy, you will be able to boost around until you deplete your energy and collect more.
Apart from this, each class offers a different power and ability as well. Three classes at launch include Marauder, Windguard, and Phantom. Each class has its own dragons, abilities, and powers. If you love tracking your enemies and then killing them, the Mauraduer class is for you however if you prefer playing support, you will love Windguard. For players who want to stay in the shadows and lay down traps for their enemies, you will stick to Phantom class. The dragons are plenty however every dragon has plenty of skins, so they offer the same performance, just different aesthetics.
Winning matches in Century: Age of Ashes is a combination of both good gameplay and teamwork. It is not just a blind shooter where you just chase your enemies and shoot fireballs at them but so far I have seen that you must have a clear sense of attack and defense strategy. You will need to understand the paths of your enemies and then ambush them and also make sure that your team is alright. This is essentially a team game, and all classes complement each other so if you are a good team player in the game, you will see yourself winning more matches. This could work well in the future when we get more classes in the game.
The levels have various pickups for you too to spice up the gameplay including shields which allow you to take additional damage, Life Essence that heals you, and Wind Blessing, which is found in specific modes only, but it gives you unlimited stamina for a short time. While these are not enough, they still offer some good bonuses while you are playing the game. However, I would love to see additional powerups added to the game in the future ass updates to make the gameplay even more interesting. The new ones could be limited to certain gameplay modes as well which brings me to the next aspect of the title.
Century: Age of Ashes currently has four interesting game modes for you to play. You can pick whatever mode you want in the Unranked section however for playing Ranked, you must play and level up in the Unranked before you join ranks with the big boys. You have Gates of Fire mode where you must fly through gates while holding a flag in order to score points for your team. If you love more killing, you can jump in the Carnage or the Skirmish Mode. Carnage Mode offers a single match for a time where you must kill your enemies. Each kill earns you a point and in the end, the team with the highest points wins the game.
Skirmish is all about killing as well however each match is divided into rounds and the team with the most kills at the end of each round wins the round. Win enough rounds and your team wins the entire match. The rounds are fairly short so these rounds tend to end quickly. Finally, you have your Spoils of War mode where you must collect and have the most amount of gold at the end of the round. You must shoot enemy gold carriers and players to get their gold and store them at your own base to collect it. In the end, the player with the most gold is the winner.
Century: Age of Ashes offers a great deal of customization as well. Ranging from your rider to your banner, you can customize everything for a more personal experience. Apart from switching dragons, you can change their heads, torso, tails, etc to further customize them. You can change your rider’s helmets, dresses, and even weapons. It is worth pointing out here that all of these changes and items are purely cosmetic, and they do not have any effect on the actual gameplay to keep matches fair between the players. You can use your coins or gems to purchase new dragons, items, and gear that you can equip in this customization menu. All dragons have the same specs as well and different and fancier models are just cosmetic and do not affect the gameplay in any way.
If you want to take a break from the action, you can head down to your Dragon nest and look after your eggs. As you progress in the game, you will often get Dragon Eggs that you can hatch by completing missions. As you complete missions, you eventually hatch the egg, and a baby dragon comes out. Now, you must nurture it and grow it to a full-sized dragon before you can ride it into battle. All of this growth is done via missions. Simply complete the assigned missions and you will quickly grow your dragon. You can equip one egg at a time and once your current dragon is fully grown, you can equip another egg and then hatch and grow a brand-new dragon.
Apart from hatching and raising new dragons in the Nest, you can head over to the Bestiary where you will find information about all of the dragons found in the game. You will be able to deeply analyze the dragons you have already obtained or hatched and also get information on how you can get more dragons. The Bestiary holds information such as how you get more dragons
Naturally, Century: Age of Ashes comes with an in-game store filled with different cosmetic items that you can purchase with different currencies. You have two currencies in the game which are Coins and Gems. Coins are the in-game currency, and you earn more Coins by playing matches. Gems on the other hand are a premium currency and after you’ve exhausted your welcoming amounts, you must dish out real-world money to buy more gems. The best-looking items are locked behind gems however there is a decent number of items that you can buy with your Coins as well if you are not wishing to spend real money on the title.
Coming to the technical aspects of Century: Age of Ashes, despite the title launching in Early Access first, the game is still in the need of optimization. I first played the title when it launched in Early Access and even now, I felt one of the biggest problems with the game when it comes to balancing. After completing your tutorial and jumping in your first few matches, you are matched with players of very high ranks and those who have been playing for quite some time. That did not bother me since I have been playing the title for quite some time however it causes big balancing issues for players who are just jumping into the game and are getting the grips with the controller.
I like the fact that Century: Age of Ashes offers a smaller tier 3v3 option where new players can first get their hands settled on the title however a little bit more balancing would make the online experience really good. I did not encounter any sort of hackers or cheaters during my gameplay and the game held pretty well when it came to servers. I understand that at this point the traffic is not really stressing but the servers are holding on pretty well and matchmaking is pretty decent. I was able to find matches in less than a minute nearly every time. The community seems to be pretty good as well.
There is not much teamwork at this point but since new players are just jumping in the title, we can expect players to become proficient with the classes and start working together in order to take down their enemies. Overall, Century: Age of Ashes is a great dragon shooter and presents a challenge that few titles currently offer on PC. A little bit of control tweaking will really make the game better for players who are using the mouse to steer their dragons. I have been playing with a controller this entire time, but I did try with a mouse, and I did not like it in its current state. The controller seems to be the best option for playing the game for now despite it being a shooter.
Final Verdict:
While it may look like a traditional free-to-play title, on its core Century: Age of Ashes does offer quite a lot of fun that sadly deteriorates the more time you spend in the game. At this point, the number of classes and maps is not enough to keep players entertained for a long time. While the game modes are pretty varied and combat is decent, the lack of classes and maps might lead to players leaving the title after a few weeks. While the developer has planned new classes for the future, we will have to wait and see what sort of future content arrives in the game to keep it entertained for a long time. My suggestion will be to wait for a little and then jump in the game but since it is a free-to-play title, there is no harm in jumping in it right now as well. The combat is fun and explosive, and the visuals are pretty. If you love competitive shooters with a twist, Century: Age of Ashes will keep you entertained for a long time.
Final Score: 7.5/10
