Has Age of Empires Gone Too Far?

For over five years, I've been a loyal patron of the Age of Empires series. The original installment captured my attention in middle school, and quickly sucked me in. I was ecstatic when The Age of Kings and its expansion came out. AoE II: The Conquerors was the pinnacle of gaming for me. And then rumors of a new edition met my ears. I could barely wait until Christmas.

The first thing I noticed about this game was that I had no idea what was going on. Unlike the other games in the series, this wasn't really a game that you can just "pick up and go." Before starting a game, you have to establish a Home City and build up a deck. Having just opened the game for the first time, I had no idea what any of this meant. So I retreated to the instruction manual (noticably thicker than previous editions).

Once I had a basic idea of what was going on, I headed back over to the game. Basically, AoE III has a different feel to it compared to the first two versions. This one puts more emphasis on building up your civilization and receiving aid from your home city (the aforementioned "cards" in your deck provide shipments of resources, units, or technologies to your colony). The overall game puts emphasis on progressive buildup across games: gaining experience in games raises your home city level, which allows you to unlock more cards for use in your deck. While this pays off once you've been playing for a while, it's frustrating at first, and discourages experimenting with other civilizations.

The campaign mode, the hallmark of the series that still has me playing the second edition, is vastly changed as well. Instead of multiple different campaigns to try, you play in the midst of a single story unfolding across centuries of American exploration. The campaign is punctuated with brilliant cinematics. While this type of campaign is not necessarily worse that those in previous games, it is... different. The sense of accomplishment found in leading France to victory against Britain, then moving straight on to command Saladin's army against the crusaders just isn't there.

There are plenty of subtle changes, too. The monks can't convert enemy units, and their healing power is limited by a regeneration period after each heal. Villagers can build mills and plantations, which provide neverending supplies of food and coin, respectively. This means that there's no more hunting for more resources late in the game. For me, this seems like a cop-out. But that's just me. I fear change.

On the bright side, there have been numerous improvements as well. There is a much wider selection of units available to create, from swordsmen through musketeers, from tiny fishing ships to absolutely massive galleons that cause my computer to freeze up every time they move! The game's selection of seige weaponry is stocked with multiple types of powerful cannon, from anti-infantry to anti-building. In addition to your own civilization's units (which vary greatly from civ to civ), you can create trading posts on Native encampments, allowing you to build native warriors, which handily don't count toward your own population limit.

The graphics are a step up from previous editions, of course, and terrain features are beautifully detailed. Trees blow in the wind, artillery fire causes buildings to visibly crumble, and visible wakes protrude from behind elegant ships. Similarly, the game's sound takes leaps and bounds forward. While I don't play with the music on (I have an older computer, so I don't want to lag too much), the sound matches the different maps perfectly. Waves crash against the sandy white beaches in the Caribbean map, and coyotes howl in the Southwestern area. The sounds of battle are realistically detailed, as well, especially cannon fire that booms across the landscape, so you can hear it even if you're focusing on an area halfway across the map.

Overall, this is a good game, but it doesn't seem to fit in with the previous titles in the series. It's a much more involved game, relying on you to build up your civilization, rather than just walk in and play. And while that may appeal to some gamers, it doesn't work as well for me.