Does Age of Empires III have the power to please us?
More then 5 years have past now since we first played Age of Empires II.
The next game in the Age of Empires franchise is here.
Does AoE III have the power to please us?
The Age of Empires games have always been connected to a certain era.
AoE I situated itself in the time of the Greek and the Romans. And AoE II was situated in the middle ages (castle ages).
AoE III is situated in the 16e - 17e century, where European nations started colonizing the recently discovered New World .
All the basic features of an RTS game can be found in this game. You need to gather resources, create buildings, train units and complete the given objectives. To build your army you can chose from the following types of units: infantry, ranged units, cavalry, artillery and naval units.
AoE III contains some new features to the AoE serie. For instance, there is the implementation of the home city. The home city is a new feature that represents the capital city of your nation. Throughout the game you will get experience for gathering recourses, destroying enemy units and buildings, finding treasures and completing objectives. When you have gained enough experience your home city will go up 1 level. Every level will give you the possibility to send goods or troops from your home city to the New World to help you completing your objective.
Another new feature in the AoE series is the presence of Native Americans (Indians), which are located on the map. You can ally with these natives to help you with your objective.
There are 4 game modes in AoE III: 1) Story based Campaign; 2) Single-player Skirmish; 3) Random Map; 4) Online & LAN multiplayer mode. In AoE III you can command 8 different civilizations: Spanish, British, French, Portuguese, Russian, Ottoman, German and Dutch.
I am not going to tell anything about the storyline here, so I won’t spoil your gaming pleasure. But what I can say is that every mission is connected with the next one and slides easily from one mission into the other with the help of nice in-game movies.
AoE III has a good storyline, it’s rather short, but that depends on the difficulty you want to play. I have to say that the easy mode is very easy this time. You should only play that way if this is one of the first RTS games you play.
The graphics of the game look good, not superb, but still good enough for these types of games. The details in the textures are quite good. Thanks to the 3D engine you can zoom in and out, but it’s easier to keep an overview when you are fully zoomed out. Every building, unit or object also has a real-time shadow, which adds just that little more realism in the game.
Buildings no longer just turn on fire when you attack them, they literally fall apart. When you are attacking walls with your cannons, big pieces of stone will come of and fall down. You will even see the earth shake when it hits the ground. Trees fall down realistic when you hit them with cannonballs. This is all very nice to watch. You really get sucked into the battle by these graphical enhancements. When firing a canon on enemy infantry, they will get blown away. If you hit a group of soldiers you will blow away even more.
The sounds in this game are just right. The weapons sound realistic, people’ death screams sound real, cannon fire can be heard from a distance and the ambient sounds of nature don’t get annoying.
The music that plays in the background fits well with the theme of AoE. It wouldn’t hurt if there was a little bit more music, because sometime you’ll really miss those tunes.
Conclusion: Age of Empires III was definitely worth waiting for. The graphics are good; sounds are good only the storyline could be worked out better. AoE III surely has pleased us in different ways and is sure worth buying it.