Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition gets a free starter edition

I played AoE III quite a bit. Can't find the base game installation CD these days... My favourite nation was Portugal, for their organ light cannons

Both AoE 3 and AoE 4 have a review rating of 83-86%.

Meanwhile AoE 2 is rated at 94%

Similar to Civilization V (96%) vs Civilization VI (85%)

Proof that low effort 3D versions aren't automatically better than 2D or old-school graphics.

I really don't understand what is so damn hard -- if Age of Empires verbatim copied the 2D sprite style in 3D and the exact mechanics 1:1 their game would score in the 92-98% easy.

All this "New Crap" just annoys me and other gamers too -- like "swear filters" taking the fun out of modern games.

Games of all things should not be influenced by "the church" of modernity (but that's a detail that I could write entire essays about).

Maybe by the time they make Age of Empires 5 they'll find a way to make it free-to-play and finally get the 3D right. In any case garnering more interest in the series is a smart move -- they should have done this with 2 -- then the masses would be in a swarm to play and buy more.

Edit: to clarify -- If swear filters or gore are things a person wants -- they should be "opt in" and not "opt out" -- Serious Sam 3 is the perfect example of this where they replace all blood sfx with hippie flowers and it's just so much fun -- because games are supposed to be games and not real life.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 3 August 2023 at 9:54 pm UTC

Quoting: ElectricPrismBoth AoE 3 and AoE 4 have a review rating of 83-86%.

Meanwhile AoE 2 is rated at 94%

Similar to Civilization V (96%) vs Civilization VI (85%)

Proof that low effort 3D versions aren't automatically better than 2D or old-school graphics.

I really don't understand what is so damn hard -- if Age of Empires verbatim copied the 2D sprite style in 3D and the exact mechanics 1:1 their game would score in the 92-98% easy.

All this "New Crap" just annoys me and other gamers too -- like "swear filters" taking the fun out of modern games.

Games of all things should not be influenced by "the church" of modernity (but that's a detail that I could write entire essays about).

Maybe by the time they make Age of Empires 5 they'll find a way to make it free-to-play and finally get the 3D right. In any case garnering more interest in the series is a smart move -- they should have done this with 2 -- then the masses would be in a swarm to play and buy more.

Edit: to clarify -- If swear filters or gore are things a person wants -- they should be "opt in" and not "opt out" -- Serious Sam 3 is the perfect example of this where they replace all blood sfx with hippie flowers and it's just so much fun -- because games are supposed to be games and not real life.

Age of Empires 3 was not that bad IMO.
The art was still colorful and vibrant.
Age of Empires 4 however - i could never get into. It looked bland and flat and lifeless. I got it as a gift and i feel bad for barely touching it.

As for the filters , i can't say. My friends and I usually play versus AI and i have to mute them since they spam the taunts non stop.

Quoting: ElectricPrismsnip...

All this "New Crap" just annoys me and other gamers too -- like "swear filters" taking the fun out of modern games.

Games of all things should not be influenced by "the church" of modernity (but that's a detail that I could write entire essays about).

I dunno. Old man yells at clouds!. I've seen [presumably] kids post some pretty vile, offensive and downright illegal stuff in gaming lobbies. If I have to rework my vocabulary a little so that others can't abuse then I'm fine with that.

Every time I've tried AOE3 over the years I've had issues with sound effects and music either not playing or cutting out. Is it working better now?

Quoting: ElectricPrismBoth AoE 3 and AoE 4 have a review rating of 83-86%.

Meanwhile AoE 2 is rated at 94%

Similar to Civilization V (96%) vs Civilization VI (85%)

Proof that low effort 3D versions aren't automatically better than 2D or old-school graphics.

I wouldn't call AoE III low effort. (Low-poly, for the original release, sure, though the DE release is a lot better.)

To establish my bonafides, I got AoE II at the age of 11 two years after it came out, and it was one of the formative games of my childhood (the first game I played online, on a dial-up modem to boot!). I've put a combined 400 hours into the 2013 HD remake and DE, and who knows how many hours into the original CD version as a kid, where it was pretty much the only thing I played for two years. I was…disappointed that AoE III wasn't "AoE II but in the New World", but I gave it a fair shake even though it never quite clicked for me. While it may not be the game that I or a lot of AoE II players were expecting (or wanted), it's a solid game in its own right, with clearly a ton of work that into making it.

I'm reminded of the saying that Firaxis is said to follow for each successive Civilization game: "one-third the same, one-third improved, one-third new". I feel like AoE III may have skewed a bit harder than one-third on the "new" (home city shipments! fixed on-map trade routes! "hero unit" explorers! etc., etc.), and that might be partly why it wasn't as well received. Or it may just be really hard to recapture the lighting-in-a-bottle that was AoE II. But regardless of my personal feelings about AoE III, I think it's a disservice to the developers to call it "low effort".

(Also I'm not sure what your point about Civilization is, since it's been 3D since Civilization IV. )