AoE III will be loved by its fans but new players will find a better game in the genre. Best RTS to date? You tell me.
The main new feature of the game is the Home City. You choose from the selected civs, choose a name for your city, a name for your explorer, and which game setting you are playing with (Death match or Supremacy). You get experience points for killing enemy soldier, raiding enemy buildings, and building units. You use this experience points to choose new cards. These cards are used for shipments that you can send from your home city. The strategy for the cards comes into play when you only get to choose twenty cards. The major down side to this is that you can’t use your leveled up Home City in online mode. You have to create another Home City and start back at one. So what is the point of playing the game offline then?
Nothing has really changed about the game play of AoE III. You gather resources, you develop your town, and you crush your enemies. There are a lot of little things that ES did that I found to be a great new addition. One is, instead of having to get a villager to repair a building; you can just click on the building then hit the repair button. That’s it! The main that is really missing from AoE III is the formations! During the course of the development of the game ES was really pushing the formations. But THERE ARE NONE IN AOE III!!! You can still group together units but as father as formations go, there is nothing there at all. The new physics engine is really a wonderful add on. I really enjoy hitting my enemies with cannons so I can watch there body fly.
The sounds in AoE III are something that really adds to the realism of the game. When your army of soldiers wins a battle they throw out a big yea with guns in the air. The soundtrack is typical for that age. There are a lot of screams when there is a big fight going on. You hear people moan and groan as they take a hit and fall dead. I really like how the music picks up when you start to fight, especially when you are defending your town. It makes you rush in order to save your people.
The real problem with AoE III is that in the manual they really don’t cover the basics. I had to ask online or mesh around with the game in order to figure out things that came easier in AoE II. The real let down of the game was the formations. It would have really helped when it comes to battles. Like in AoE II when you can choose a formation that would put your siege weapon in the middle of a square surrounded by soldiers to protect it. There still are a couple of bugs that can be fixed with patches, so that isn’t a major problem. The best thing about AoE III is that, you can still run the game if you don’t have the Mini. Req. I don’t have the mini, but I can still run the game. I don’t have the high end graphics but the game does look like AoE II.
The smell of burning wood fills the air. Ash snow flakes fill the air. You can smell the burning of human flesh as my enemy throws corpses of my allies onto the fire. I’m brought to the general and I offer him my surrender. All in all a good game but not a great one. If you love AoE II you will love AoE III. But if you want a RTS game that is going to change the RTS genre then you need to look somewhere else.