The campaign plot of tale of the dragon is easily the worst from age of mythology and perhaps the worst part of the game as a whole. It deserves a complete rewrite to render it acceptable to the standards of the game. I have written up the problems I have found with it.
- Painfully generic plot- The plot is so basic that with minimal tweaks you could slot it into a generic fantasy and not really be able to tell the difference.
- Painfully generic characters- both the heroes and the villain are so bland that they likewise could be slotted into a generic fantasy and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Where’s the hot-headed sidekick, badass queen or poetry spewing cyclops and minotaur pirate minion?
- Lack of interaction with other mythologies/rest of the plot- Part of the fun of age of mythology is seeing different mythologies interact with each other. There is no such thing in tale of the dragon aside from maybe a few myth units. Who cares if it doesn’t make sense? The versions of Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse lived thousands of years apart from each other and the former two and the latter had minimal interactions with each other in their respective times aside from maybe a few token trade routes.
- Lack of interaction with its own mythology- For the base game and its first expansion, your major god was a major plot point- going from Poseidon to Zeus during the siege of Troy was a major turning point, while sometimes, subtle shifts in the major god of a scenario cued you into something else going on behind the scenes, like the one scenario where you played as Loki in “fall of the trident” gave you the hint that you were being deceived. I felt no such thing with tale of the dragon’s as it often seemed like whatever god you played under had no bearing on the plot and changed randomly based on however the devs thought the they wanted the game to play on that level.