Daar be dragons in them hills!
Yes, though technically, they are Wyverns but moving on, Century: Age of Ashes is a free to play class based aerial combat game with winged lizards that breathe fire and shoot fireballs at their foes!
The game is very fast-paced and players need to keep their heads on a swivel while soaring through the skies. I quite enjoy swooping down and hearing the wind gush in my ears while I race to the rivers that replenish my boost charges. The game has a bit of an arcade feel with the various power ups that you can find, ranging from shield, to speed boosts and even rage mode (if you kill the berserk dragon NPC).
The classes are what you’d expect. There is a healer class, an assassin class and a general soldier class and a new weird lightning class that I do not understand at all, but he looks like a mad Viking on a big Dragon, so that’s cool? Yes? I quite like the Nazgul looking ‘Phantom’ who is essentially an assassin. His dragon can go invisible for either sneaking up on an unsuspecting player or to quickly get away from attack. The maps are well designed too, and I’m intrigued by this world full of dragons and Gothic looking knights. There are tight canyons, broken castles and craggy shores to fly around and it requires quick reflexes to dodge all of these environmental hazards because crashing hurts… a lot.
One thing I have noticed is you cannot out run an attacker behind you, especially when they are breathing fire on you. The best thing to do is outmanoeuvre them. Running is death.
The game has simple controls, and that is a good and bad point. It’s good because after a few matches it is easy to understand and play, but the bad is that when you do understand the controls, it feels a tad shallow. I would have loved if it had a spin mechanic of some sort. I think moving on the axis would make it a little harder, but add more variety in how you can control your dragon.
Players also earn eggs that hatch as you complete objectives, giving them a new dragon skin, though these eggs are random. I have yet to get a dragon egg that is for my favoured class.
Century: Age of Ashes is free on Xbox, PlayStation and PC and is crossplay!
