I missed Age of Empires II so much, more now that the third came out.

User Rating: 7.3 | Age of Empires III PC
By srocciso | Review Date:
First off let me tell you the game's graphics are the best that I've seen since Warcraft III series. The physics are really well thought out with cannons droping back with a shot, cannon balls continuing to move even after hitting a group of poor halbediers, and marvelous caravels that rock back and forth with the waves while reflecting on the marvelous water. So with this stated let me say that I really missed the hand to hand combat which I was really looking forward to before buying this game. The thought of having 20 musketeers standing in front of 15 tomahawks doesn't appeal to me that much as watching, say the vikings axes clashing with some british swords. I would agree that the campaing be on the new world, but to we have to be limited to the America's in skirmish too ?? What about the mighty japanesse infantry or the marvelous naval warfare the vikings could accomplish ?? This things should be included in skirmish as the Conquerors expansion on AoE II did perfectly. They should upgrade the graphics engine on AoE II and THAT would be the RTS of the century. Imagine the beautiful graphics and EAX sound applied to the great gameplay that AoE II had. Hmmm hours of gametime.
I think Ensemble tried to mix AoE II with Warcraft III (the greatest game of all time) without taking advantage of those games strenghts (AoE II's huge number of civilizations and Warcraft III's cinematics) and without offering a true RTS experience. And what's up with the home city ?? It's really a drag to be traveling back and forth to the home city to send "cards" to my town, I think it unbalances the game since you can actually win a skirmish game without building a barracks or a stable (you could call soldiers from home city and wait till you get the mighty fort to build more troops).
Overall I think the game improves a lot on the eye candy part but leaves out the substance from the previous game. The micromanagement is not really good on this game (where in hell do villagers put all the coin they gather ?? and why do plantations gather coin if they look like a more improved mill ?? Instead of a plantation we should have an underground mine or a metal workshop perhaps. So if all you like is a nonsense warfare (much like USA's wars against "terrorists" ) you'll love the game, but if you are interested in a more realistic civilization don't expect to much from this title.
I still recommend it even over Rome Total War (it's too slow paced for me) but it is very well under the Warcraft saga.

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