I'm a huge fan of AOE. I have all three including a couple expansion packs. The third one is simply not as engrossing and is more aimed towards presentation and graphics. These things are cool and exciting, yet gameplay and features suffer to some degree which for people who love AOE will notice immediately. The campaign is on the short side as well which was disappointing to me even though a Deathmatch is always my route of fun. The graphics are pretty cool though so it isn't a complete waste of time. Anyone who likes strategy games, history, and war should try this one out. I think maybe I'm more partial to European history like in Rise of Rome, but the American part of this game was still quite interesting. I didn't like the made-up characters in this one, but it got the job done in getting me to understand how to play this one as each of the games are somewhat different in controls and features. The main menu is pretty cool as its your home city and you can go in depth and design it to your preferences...doesn't necessarily change gameplay experience though. Big negative for me was the fact that there's very few nations to play with, though expansions probably make up for this fact to some degree. Guns were the coolest part about this game and everything looked crisp and felt realistic and interesting to observe. Overall it wasn't as engrossing, but was certainly interesting enough for me to enjoy...just not as long as I thought I was going to be addicted to it.
