The demo for Age of Empires III came out last week, and I’ve been meaning to talk about it, but haven’t quite had the time. It’s a busy life I lead. So anyway, now that I’ve had a chance to play with it a few times, I thought I’d share my thoughts.
Let me preface by saying I am a Real Time Strategy fan. I have been working on RTS games on and off for 5 years now. So I think I know a little something about them. Looking at the screenshots of the game, I was impressed. I thought, “Wow, that looks fantastic!” But, of course, the demo doesn’t look anywhere near as good as the screenshots. Or screenshops as one of my co-workers likes to call them. Perhaps they were enhanced just a little bit in Photoshop. Just a little. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I made sure I had all the graphical settings set to their maximum highness in the options screen. And I’m sure my Nvidia 6800 Pro can handle anything they’re throwing at it.
So that’s disappointment number one. Then, there’s the gameplay. So far, not impressed. Everything is pretty typical RTS fare. Build some buildings, gather some resources, train some units. They made some very bizarre decisions that I found maddening as a “hardcore” RTS player. Most RTS games have a notion of population capacity, or popcap. You can only support X number of units, and if you want to train more, you must build some buildings to support them. Well, ok, fine, pretty standard. But. Age III has popcap, but they don’t display it anywhere! So I get messages telling me I can’t build because I’m exceeding popcap, but how do I know what it is? Turns out there’s some obscure option you can turn on, buried deep in the settings screen that will display popcap in the UI. But who would ever want it turned off??? You can’t play that way!
There are some good things, of course. Some really cute touches. For example, you can build a place to train sheep. Yup, you can buy you some sheep. Then, they hang out there and fatten up for the slaughter. The great part is that they actually get fatter and fatter until they look like little white clouds of inflated sheep. Nice.
Everyone is so excited about the physics engine. Yes, Age III had physics. Yippee. Yes, building chunks fly off and look cool, and little soldiers fall and splash in the water. But. That’s not gameplay. That’s eye candy. Where are the new gameplay innovations?
The biggest gameplay add is the idea of Home Cities. You have this persistent City that gains experience as you play and let’s you construct a “deck” to bring into battles. As you play, you can get shipments of supplies from your City to the frontier. The choice of shipments is dependent on the “deck” of options your City is stocked with. Seeing as the demo was so limited, I’ll just wait to pass judgement on this until I can see the full game in action.
Overall, I’m not thrilled. It looks like a solid RTS. It looks good - don’t get me wrong. Just not as good as I had hoped it could look. The terrain in the screenshots looks fantastic. The terrain in the demo looks merely ok. But ultimately, I will be buying the game when it comes out. I will play the campaign. But will I continue to play it in MP long after that? We’ll see.
One Response to “Age of Empires III Demo Review”
I was really dissapointed too. I just expected it to be amazing, and it just seems kinda standard. Although I did like having bears on your team! That was pretty cool. But I don’t think it’s enough to make me want to go out there and buy it. Maybe it’s because Lionhead studios has promised an amazing RTS system with their sequel, “Black and White 2″. They promise the players so much, that it’s hard to go back. I think Battle for Middle Earth 2 is looking pretty snazy as well. But to leave my good friend ages will be hard to do, indeed.