Where Age of Empires 2 received several expansions over the last decade, including an all-new one for the Definitive Edition, there are no new campaigns here beyond the base game and its two expansions released at the time-that's 27 campaigns versus eight (twelve if you charitably count separate acts as campaigns). For a game gloating about its updated physics engine, it's strange that the physicality of its combat makes it seem like everyone's wielding weapons and armour forged from monopole north-facing magnets.Īge of Empires 3 remains a solid skirmish-style RTS that would fare better were it not released shortly after a game that's so clearly Microsoft's favourite strategy baby. This kind of stuff was understandable in 1999 in Age of Empires 2, but a bit iffy in 2005 when you already had games like Total War or Battle for Middle-Earth finding ways to make combat feel impactful. Send your cavalry to death-or-glory Rohirrim charge an enemy line and they'll stop just before impact, politely sword-swiping at foes who can turn to face you instantaneously without a turning animation.
Combat neither looks nor feels great try to execute a special move with a hero unit, and instead of shoulder-barging their way through to the front of the skirmish they'll back out like a scrawny kid at a metal concert and go all the way around, by which time your target may well be dead or gone. The problems with Age of Empires 3 really start when you zoom in, seeing how messy and stilted things are up close. The fact that it squeezes five technological ages into just the colonial era means you don't see the same dramatic evolution as you do across the eras in Age of Empires 2 (which stretches from the Dark Ages to the Colonial era), but it's still a satisfying journey punctuated by flashy new units that reflect your progres. There's an enjoyable card system too, which lets you set up a deck between battles, then call in supplies from your Home City on a timer.Īll this makes for a fast-flowing game that condenses centuries worth of military and technological progress into battles that last between 10 minutes and an hour. You now only have three resources to worry about rather than the four of previous games, there's a big clear button that automatically sends you to the next idle villager, and you no longer need special buildings to store resources, cutting down on menial micromanagement. Whatever your preference, the options are there, and you can resize the initially oversized UI too.įurther smoothing things out are various mechanical tweaks. For most, though, the 'Definitive' UI is probably the way to go, making those precious resource counters displayed large and clear at the top of your screen. Nostalgics can opt for a cleaner version of the original UI minus the excess of wooden veneer that boxed in the action in the 2005 version (I, for one, would like to have had the original UI in all its screen-hogging glory).
It may be demanding and intense, but Age of Empires 3 is also deceptively simple. It may be demanding and intense, but Age of Empires 3 is also deceptively simple, and a whole lot less fiddly than its predecessor thanks to a mix of modernisations it made back in 2005 and now with the definitive edition. In this sense, even the campaign missions feel like warmups for online play rather than strong stories to immerse yourself in. It doesn't suffer fools or the fumble-fingered, and even prologue missions can be gruelling without a refresher on the hotkeys for jumping to the town centre, queueing up villager production, and jumping between hero units. Age of Empires 3 requires cohesive strategy, fast clicking, and the mental motivation to learn a thousand hotkeys.
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