Age of Empires 3

Basics: AOEIII is a game by Ensemble Studios, Publisher Microsoft Games. Rated Teen for blood and violence. It is a Real-Time Simulation.

Before I say anything I should say that this game has some mighty big army boots to fill. The original age games shook the RTS gaming world, and arguably laid the foundation for almost every RTS game since. So now we have Age of empires 3 the long anticipated next installment in the series. Well, it certainly is a solid game with undeniably good graphics and a few new touches. But when it comes down to it just feels like age of mythology with a new coat of paint slapped on, Havoc physics, and a couple new features. Don’t get me wrong its an excellent game, but it really is a bit of a let down.

So about the home city feature. Your home city represents the base of your civilization across the Atlantic (the entire game is based in the new world from its discovery to around when America became independent). The home city system works a little like a character in a Role Playing Game. At the start of the game you select a home city of one of 8 (you can have more then one home city at once). As you go along in the game playing skirmishes and things like that. You get experience for pretty much every action from gathering resources to building to eliminating enemy soldiers. Each time you home city levels up you can buy a new shipment card which are things you can use during a game like extra soldiers or technologies.

As note on the physics engine. Its fairly realistic, buildings explode convincingly and soldiers hit by cannons fly about realistically but I have yet to have had an experience a situation where this affected game play.

Another thing of note is the Native American settlements. There are many different settlements like this of many different types on each map. Building a trade post next to them gives you special technologies and soldiers. This is fairly innovative and offers for some exciting gameplay.

The singleplayer campaign is fairly good. It consists of 3 different time periods all following members of the fictional black family and revolving around the search for the “fountain of youth”. It is a good campaign and will keep you busy for a while.

The multiplayer is good enough it doesn’t offer a lot of new innovations either although the home city feature does carry over to it.

All in all AOEIII is a decent game that doesn’t quite live up to its predecessors.

6.8/10