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.
It includes a new campaign called The Last Kanes.More than 200 hours of campaign spanning more than a millennium of human history.In its essence, we are facing the same game, but with significantly better graphics, a remastered soundtrack and a few interesting new features such as an AI with a more efficient behavior or improvements in the use of commands.Ĭelebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the most acclaimed strategy games in history. It has been nearly a quarter of a century since the first version was released and more than two decades since Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings.ĪoE II, considered as the great debut of the series, places us after the fall of the Roman Empire and leaves in our hands the destiny of Humanity during the period of time between the barbarian invasions and the end of the Medieval Age.Īge of Empires II: Definitive Edition is the definitive remastering of this great game, released to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. Age of Empires is one of the best real-time strategy videogame sagas in the history of videogames and one of the great favorites among lovers of the genre.