Customer Reviews

Age of Empires III

5 star:		(90)
4 star:		(62)
3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(35)
1 star:		(36)

 

 

When I sat down with Age of Empires 3 I was hoping for a little more - something new and refreshingly different (ala the Lord of the Rings RTS for example). There is a new feature, the Home City. The rest of Age of Empires 3 is the same as the previous games at heart, with some new makeup and some new units. Don't get me wrong, this new Age of Empires installment is fun and just as addictive as its predecessors, but also feels tired at the same time. If you still enjoy the previous Age of Empires games, you will likely enjoy this one equally.

It has been some time since I played the previous Age of Empires 2 but I remembered a simple, relatively clean interface. In Age of Empires 3 I was a little taken aback by the clutter of information, and juggling Home City shipments (and Deck Building) with what was happening on screen requires a lot of micro-management.

This new installment has some great civilizations and in this regard, the units are new and refreshing. In an Age of exploration and the shift from archeic weapons to gunpowder, you have a variety of new units, and a few units that are unique to each civilization to help set them apart. In addition each civilization has its own unique advantages (and disadvantages) that set it apart from the rest. This is primarily done via a new feature: the Home City and the shipments you are allowed to send from it. I liked the idea of the Home City, but wasn't overly impressed with some aspects of its implementation.

The new units are fun and consist of both modern (for the period) and archeic units giving you some flexibility in what you want to field - however don't expect their power to be equal. The cannon physics are really well done, you can track cannon balls throughout their flight and watch the havoc they bestow upon enemy buildings (which now fall apart in peices instead of as a whole) or the holes they punch in rows of infantry. The charachter animations on most units are really well done, and occasionally you will see them adjust their weapons for long range of short range combat (they throw burning items at enemy buildings instead of firing their highly ineffective muskets). I beleive that musketeers can also fix bayonets to make them more effective at close range, although I didn't notice a signifigant difference, mine continued to fire their muskets regardless of the range of the enemy.

There is another new feature in Age of Empires 3 in the form of an Explorer. He is a powerful unit you can use to explore the map (although any unit can still do his job). The Explorer can take damage, and fall in battle, but doesn't die. He can be rescued and revived. The Explorer has the special ability to deal with treasure guardians in one shot, but a hardy group of soldiers can also take down the treasure guardians without too much difficulty. The Explorer can retreive treasure found on the map and can also build Trading Posts (settlers can build them as well) - this is how you interact with the Native Americans. Building a Trading Post near a Native American outpost forges an alliance with them and you are then allowed to train Native American warriors which are useful because they don't count against your population limit - but they do have a population limit of their own (15 seems to be the norm). In a bizarre twist, the Native Americans are not hostile to these new invaders unless they are allied with one of your enemy players - intersting.

In summation, I did enjoy trying out Age of Empires 3. My initial impression was that the civilizations and corrosponding diversity in units and Home City shipments helped add some variety to the Age of Empires format, but also meant more added juggling. Even with the new ability to zoom in and out a little, I still found it difficult at times to juggle my units. In combat, my nicely organized ranks merged into one wave of units that were impossible to divide up and thus made tactics difficult. You can assign numbers (via Ctl+#) to a group of units to help this, but I didn't find anyway to assign formations to the units (you could do this in Age of Empires 2). When left idle long enough - seeemed to take a long time - my units did auto-arrange themselves into formation, but didn't maintain that formation during attacks. I wish they would have borrowed a little from another RTS game that allows you to train units in groups that are then treated as one unit. This would have made Cavalry and Infantry units that much easier to manage, especially in large numbers. In addition, in that same RTS game you can assign different unit types to merge together and form a new formation of units that is again treated as one unit. This greatly simplifies training units and then moving them about the map and maintaining formations for attacks.

I do look forward to spending a lot more time with Age of Empires 3 as I'm sure there is a lot that I haven't noted in my initial observations. I think the game is true to its heritage and I think that Age of Empires fans will flock to this new installment. However, I don't think that Age of Empires 3 delivers enough new variety in either design or implementation to steal away the fans of other RTS games that are working to reinvent and revitalize the genre.

I agree with the other reviews citing this as being something of a letdown at first glance.

Edit for graphical update:
I originally found the graphics on this game to be lackluster. My system couldn't run it in remotely full detail and still be playable, so my game didn't look anything like the screenshots. So I did what any good gamer would do: bought a new system. Incredibly, even on a brand new fully speced out Alienware system with AMD 4000+ 64-bit processor, 2 gigs of RAM, and dual video cards (SLI, PCI Express) I *still* couldn't run the game in high resolution, high detail. It looks pretty but it chops when I try to scroll the screen. I think something is just plain broken with this game. Other games run awesome on the new system, but not this game.

Conclusion: you will never, ever play this game with it looking as good as it does on the screenshots. Yes, those are some mighty pretty trees but it's not going to be as pretty when you adjust down to Medium or Low quality textures because no reasonable computer system can have smooth gameplay with high resolution and high texture detail.

By comparison, LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth was quite attractive, even on my older computer. They aimed a bit lower but spent more time making lower settings look attractive and it paid off better in the end. I think the AOE3 team spent too much time perfecting high detail settings that most people can't use and not enough time on low/medium detail that most people will be forced to use.


Anyway, gameplay-wise, one bit of good news is the "home city" concept where you build your "decks". I'll disagree with another reviewer who suggested that AOE3 was designed for "spread sheet gamers" -- gamers who figure out how to win by calculating times and values on a spread sheet ahead of time rather than making tactical decisions on the fly.

Spread sheet gaming worked in AOE2 because you knew who and what you were facing. If you were the Spanish fighting the Goths, you knew exactly what you were up against. You knew every civilization advantage and weakness and could plan your strategy ahead of time accordingly.

In AOE3, this "deck building" concept amounts to a customization feature. When you see I'm the British, you still won't know exactly what to expect. Did I build my deck for lots of early, free troops? Did I build my deck for an early economy? How much effect did I add to my navy? You can't plan your spreadsheet if you don't have all the data, and you'll never know exactly what your enemy has in his deck.

I can also have multiple decks and I don't have to decide which I want to use until my first trip to the home city. Thus if I decide to wait, I can see your rush coming and pick my "counter rush" deck.


So in conclusion, while the gameplay itself is pretty much old-hat, very familiar from AOE2, I have hopes that this deck building system will give the game more longevity. The consistant winners won't be the spreadsheet readers, it will be the people who can quickly adjust their tactics on the fly based on what unpredictible thing the enemy is doing, as a result of this deck building system.

Hopefully, anyway. It's going to take a good bit of online gaming to find out how that really pans out.

Ensemble gave the venerable AOE series a makeover, a tummy tuck, and some clip-on nails. All of which makes it great for a one-nighter, but doesn't leave me wanting to take it home to meet the parents.

Here are some things that I like:

1) There's a catchy Howard Shore-y orchestral soundtrack with lotsa gypsy violin and choral drama.
2) There's some tasty eye candy--including llamas, coffins, fancy new buildings, and cannons that actually make people fall over--textured so ridiculously well that my computer couldn't handle it after I'd built things up a bit in the field and I had to take it down a notch. Best RTS graphics ever, though. That was obviously where most of the work in this project went, and it's undeniably gorgeous.
3) There's a passable (if totally, cartoonishly ridiculous) multi-generational campaign. This really goes more into the "what I didn't like" side of things, but I should mention that I kind of grudgingly enjoyed it at the time.
4) Even after all the hype, I like "Home Cities." They're good for continually helping to cheerfully remind you that you are merely a capitalist tool beholden to soulless imperialist overlords. You've gotta love the nerdly RPG-ness of it all (not that I'm complaining, but since when does an RTS award *experience points*, anyway?), as well as the fact that your hard work moving clumps of poorly-organized troops around in some of the lushest 3D RTS graphics to date is summarily dumped into an account that goes toward purchasing sweetly anachronistic "cards." Plus there's that wonderful experience of having the simultaneous feeling that you're getting something for nothing ("13 musketeers from London? Sure, I'll sign for that!") and that you've somehow "earned" your booty by... well, doing whatever it is you do in this game to earn XP. Kill and break stuff, I guess.
5) Small thing, but I LOVE that the resource gatherers work all day and all night without ever having to physically deliver their goods back to the town center! This moves things along quicker and makes them much easier to manage. So thanks for that.

Some things that I don't like:

1) The campaign. I really do appreciate the attempt to create an entirely new work of interactive "historical" (well, kinda) fiction, but it really didn't seem to have much to do with anything. You have to at least appreciate the attempt, but it was disappointing to have such an otherwise potentially great game marred by this overserious, all-too-easy series of quests. This 3-part story arc would have been fine as some kind of secondary isn't-this-fun campaign, but I was surprised and disappointed when I realized that I'd just finished the solo game over the course of a couple of evenings without doing anything even remotely historical. Sure, I met George Washington and Simon Bolivar and helped build some railroads, but the thrust of the story is mostly taken up with finding the Fountain of Youth and/or stopping various stock villains from doing same. (Yes, even up to the Jacksonian era.)

2) The familiarity. I immediately slipped into this game like a comfortable suit. A comfortable suit that I'd been wearing for 10 YEARS! Isn't there *anything* different we can do with this genre? Sure, the Home Cities are fun, the native alliances can mix things up a bit, and everything's generally more detailed. But nothing really feels much different. By the third title in a series like this, I would expect an experience as different from AOE as Civilization III was from its grandfather. But maybe that's just me.

3) The subject matter. OK, sure, it's impossible to do a historically accurate game set in the colonial era without offending somebody, either by sins of comission OR omission. To take only two examples: We all know that the plantations you have to build to provide a solid economic base for your battles would *never* have been staffed by happy white "settlers," just as we know that establishing "trading posts" with native tribes wasn't quite as easy as sending a single white man over to the nearest village to throw up a handy wooden shack. Of course I wouldn't *want* to play a completely historically accurate game in which "settlers" were cheap, black, and periodically arrived on very uncomfortable ships before being worked to death. (Some parts of our history--slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Starr Report--are best left un-re-enacted.) But... but. I don't know. I guess it's just that this game portrays a wildly different version of American history that I very much wish were closer to the truth. (The closest we get to anything like history in American-Indian relations is when our heroine's elderly native companian observes that he has "learned not to trust American promises," although this is thrown in so obtusely at such an unexpected time that you might miss it if you're not really paying attention.) It might be better to sell this as some kind of counterfactual "allohistory." Really, the most fun you could ever possibly have with this game would be watching Noam Chomsky play it. (Actually, that would probably also be about as much fun as anyone could ever have with Noam Chomsky, doing anything. So it works out.)

4) The interface. It's just not what it should be, which makes the kind of nerdly micromanagement of troops that RTS players live for nearly impossible. Instead of expertly managing formations and putting together killer unit combos the way you can in, say, "Rise of Nations," you pretty much have to form whatever CTRL groups you can and throw everything you've got at the enemy all at once to see what sticks.

What this genre needs is the be-all, end-all, nail-in-the-coffin masterpiece that will conclusively demonstrate the full potential of the "Dune II"/"Command + Conquer" style RTS in such a way that no one will ever want to make one again. (The so-called "Mozart effect" in opera, or the "Beethoven effect" in symphonies--no significant works in those genres were written for a very long time after each composer's death.) AOE3 is entertaining enough (and very nice to look at) but it isn't that game.

If you have never played any of the Age of Empires games before, then AOE 3 will probably seem pretty nifty. Judged strictly on its own merits, there isn't particularly anything wrong with the game in and of itself. However, there isn't much here that we haven't seen before. We waited six years, and this is the best they could do, apparently.

The graphics are very nice. However, is that enough to sustain one's interest. As other reviewers have noted, the combat quickly disintegrates into a disorganized slugfest, which really makes no sense to me. "Rise of Nations" certainly managed to provide combat sequences that were reasonably organized. It is frustrating to spend money on what are presumably well-trained troops, only to see them break ranks at the first hint of combat. The naval combat is a joke --- two ships firing broadsides at each other, with no attempts at maneuver. Anyone who has played "Port Royale" will know that one can expect better than this.

The focus on colonization, combined with conquest, reminds me of Sid Meier's old "Colonization" game, with a little "Europa Universalis" thrown in. The game handles it reasonably well, I suppose, although the "treasures" guarded by cougars, bears & desperados strikes me as a bit cartoonish. I can't say that I totally understand the purpose of the Victory Points that are awarded for successfully completing certain tasks, other than to open up new cards for your deck.

The deck at the Home City is an interesting new twist. As other reviewers have noted, this throws a monkey wrench into the "spread-sheet" approach to multi-player gaming. I mostly play solo, but I assume that the AI has similar access to decks, so that you cannot automatically assume that you know the true nature of your opponents.

I do miss the bigger maps, which allow for sprawling contests to unfold over several hours. The smaller map pretty much forces your hand --- you will be engaging your opponent sooner rather than later. This seems to be something borrowed from the condensed scenarios one sees in "Rise of Nations." It isn't necessarily a bad thing, but a gigantic map can be lots of fun to explore, if nothing else.

I don't have a brand new system, but the game loaded and runs more or less without problems. The system does freeze when certain naval combat scenes take place. Otherwise, there seem to be no issues.

Perhaps patches will improve the nature of the game. It is good enough, but I am just as likely to play AOK as this new version. It is essentially more of what was already a good game. Does this truly represent a real improvement in the franchise? That remains to be seen.

I've been waiting for Age of Empires 3 for several years. My wife and I are avid fans of AOE2 and we were really looking forward to Age of Empires 3 every since we heard about it a year ago. Unfortunately, Age of Empires 3 is half-baked and appears to have been rushed out the door for the Christmas shopping season. There are many flaws with this game and overal I give it a poor rating. It's unfortunate that Ensemble didn't listen to their customers or learn from their successess on earlier titles such as Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations and of course Age of Empires 2. It could have been great if they had spent the necessary time and effort working on it.

The major flaws include: The economy has been greatly simplified making the build-up simple and taking the fun out of trying to maximize resources. Combat is simplistic and boring. Formations are useless because the moment a battle starts the fighting units immediently abandon them like an untrained army. AOE2's combat was MUCH better. The panning and zooming need serious work. They make you dizzy and hinder game play. There are only three difficulty settings (Easy, Moderate and Hard). Almost 2/3rds of the screen is taken up with controls leaving a smaller area to view the action than similar games. Changing to a higher resolution improves the sharpness of the graphics, but doesn't change the amount of screen taken up by controls. It feels like peering through a small porthole to see the action. The game is jerky / buggy on my 3Ghz Pentium 4. The programmers appear to have only had time to take care of the serious errors, and left the minor ones in to annoy customers.

The ONLY good part of this game is the graphics. They have been updated to match similar games on the market today. I recommend you wait until this game falls below $20 before buying it. I wish I could get my money back...

Age of Empires III was largely slagged in the press for being "more of the same" and outclassed by the likes of such titles as Rise of Nations and Civ IV. Ironically enough, it also seems that some publications criticized Age of Empires III for straying too far from what Age II was. All that I can say is that they couldn't be further from the truth. Not only is Age III the best game -- console or PC -- that I played in the year 2005, it is one of the best games of all time, even surpassing its illustrious predecessors. It is fresh, it is polished, and it's one of the best damn games I've ever played (and believe me, I've played a lot of them).

I've been a fan of the RTS genre for awhile -- mainly the AoE series. From its inception to now, I've always purchased an Age of Empires game as soon as it's released. Ensemble Studios staffs some of the hardest working, brightest people in the industry, and it shows in their work. I've tried other RTS games, such as Starcraft, Civ II, and Rise of Nations, but none could hold my attention like the ESO team can.

The single player game in Age of Empires III will be familiar to anyone who played Age of Mythology (another classic, in its own right). You progress through a series of missions/civilizations, are told a fantastically unrealistic (and very entertaining) story, and learn about the game's nuances and intracies. Basically, the single player campaign serves one purpose: as a prep course for the real meat of the game, which is playing online. The single player is decent, but if that's all that you're going to play, then don't buy Age of Empires III.

Before I begin my pontifications about multiplayer, I'd like to address the technical side of the game. Ensemble is known for pushing the envelope in games -- look at the visual quality of the rest of the Age games as a reference -- and Age III is no exception. The graphics, even when turned down, are beautiful. The civilizations each have a unique architectural style, and the game is litterred with bloom lighting, brilliant shadows, amazing animation, and an absolutely unbelievable physics engine. Shoot a cannon into a group of soldiers, and watch as they scream out in pain and fly across the map. Attack a tower, and watch as the wood and thatch fly off the roof. It's a sight to behold, and really adds to the battles a lot. No skirmish -- or war -- will look exactly the same, and while it may sound like a small detail, it adds to the game's longevity. Oh, and did I mention the water? It is, quite simply, the best water ever witnessed in a video game. Sound wise, the cannons have nice, meaty explosions that accompany each of their blasts, the muskets sound like guns being fired, and the standard voice-overs for each civ (in their native language) is a nice touch as well. Nothing revolutionary, but all very solid. I turned the music down in favor of my own tunes, but by no means is it bad either; in fact, it's quite good.

Since performance seems to be one of the biggest problems for people, I'm dedicating an entire paragraph to it (along with my experiences). I've been running the game at 1280x1024, on a system with an AMD 64 3200+, nVidia 6800GT, and 2 GB Corsair XMS RAM. I built the system from scratch myself at the time of the game's release. Cost? Twelve hundred bucks. Anyone claiming that they can't get this game to run well is either incompetent or lying; I had everything but antialiasing turned up all the way, and I was hitting 30 FPS on the low end, and about 45 FPS average. When cranked down all the way, the game never dropped below 60 FPS (average: around 100 FPS), even with close to a hundred units on screen. There is no reason why any reasonably powerful computer built in the past two years can't run this game. If you drop a thousand bucks on a computer (which is on the low end) right now, it should be able to handle this game easily. Ensemble did a fantastic job optimizing the game, and it really shows. For those trying to play it on a 1.6 GHZ P4 with 256 MB RAM and GeForce 4 MX, please stop complaining and upgrade. Clearly those who can't get this to run efficiently know zip about computers, and are expecting way too much from their aging or budget rig.

The multiplayer...ah yes, the crown jewel, as they say. The multiplayer is absolutely brilliant, even trumping Age of Mythology's amazing online battles. The strategies, the intracies...all of it is enough to make the game playable for months on end. The game is extremely well balanced; no matter what people on various web forums may say, each civilization can effectively hold its own in any match, provided the player is up to the task. The introduction of the Home City and a deck of cards ensures that no two battles will be the same, and that players must adjust on the fly to the situation at hand. Getting rushed by a hoarde of Russian Strelets (light infantry)? Call out the free 3 Hussar (cavalry) card and mow 'em down. Desperately need villagers? Click on the 5 free villager card, and watch your economy soar. If your opponent's deck looks like a "boom" deck, then use your early cards to rush him and destroy him before he can advance through the ages. It's a thinking man's game, and you must be smart to win online in Age of Empires III. Employing one strategy will not be enough to get you by; only playing one civ will not cut it either. You must adjust constantly, and ESO is ever-tweaking the online experience with patches that affect various units, ensuring that no cheap players try to abuse certain advantages too much. And to all those saying that you cannot have formations, they are there. Simply turn them on in the options menu. These are essential for playing online, offerring your troops the ability to stagger their ranks (to avoid getting reamed by cannon fire), or to engage in melee mode (effective against fighting a cavalry onslaught).

Simply put, Age of Empires III has the most dynamic multiplayer I have ever seen in an online game. It requires you to think on the fly, to "run 'n gun" so to speak, and it all adds up to a frenetic and tense pace, even after you've played over 400 games. If you lose, you have no one to blame but yourself; your fate (to use a cliche) is entirely in your own hands. It's absolutely brilliant, and I am so enthralled and addicted to its multiplayer that I keep coming back for hours a day, more than 8 months after the game has been released.

You will not find a better strategy game than Age of Empires III, period. Those looking for a fast paced, tactical RTS should look no further. Those who enjoy a good chess match should stick to Civilization IV, and those who like a mixture of tactical and real time action should check out Rise of Nations. But for pure strategy, pacing, and production values, then look no further than Age of Empires III. It has refined the RTS genre to near-perfection, and I, for one, am left wondering but one thing -- how the hell can Ensemble ever top this? I've been left wondering that question before, and they've always delivered, so I suppose that, in the meantime, I will continue to indulge myself in one of the best games in recent memory.

Age of Empires III is a game I had waited eagerly to play for several years. Now it's finally here... but not at all what I expected from a Real-Time Strategy in 2005. It is a solid RTS title... it is also about four years behind the learning curve.

The game is stable on my PC (no crashes or lock-ups). The graphics are quite impressive, granted you have the very best equipment on the market. But the gameplay is stale, and I can best describe the tactical combat portion of the game as like... "driving a Winnebago-Camper through twisting snowy mountain roads with a 30ft boat in tow".


SINGLE PLAYER/MULIPLAYER:
This game was meant to be a predominately multiplayer-online RTS, with very small scale military battles, and games lasting around 20-30 mins. Great for the gamers who run, moderate or frequent the games cloistered community fansites, and have honed their economic build sequence for online play... a.k.a. - "spread-sheet gamers" (see EDIT below) . But AOE3 offers much less, in terms of actual gameplay, for the slower paced, deeper-thinking strategy gamer, or more importantly, the average gamer in general. In comparison, the previous "Age" games (Age of Mythology included) satisfied all three types of gamer.

Additionally, the single player campaign is no longer based around great battles or campaigns from history. Instead, much like Age of Mythology, you are put in the shoes of an innocent (and politically correct) by-stander to the campaigns events, who is pulled along against his or her will, through a sting of fictitious events, which occasionally has the fictional main characters crossing paths, or rubbing up against actual history. But for a "Historically Themed" RTS... there really is very little historical relevance to the single-player campaign.


EDIT:
"Spread-sheet" gaming in RTS's is not about knowing, it's about predicting. It is simply a logical subtractive process, by which it is posible to predict your opponents strategic options, provided you have collected the basic conditional variables in the pregame setup. The conditional variables are: map type, civilization and in AOE3, Home City level. Everything else on the "spread-sheet" is hard data which can be included or dismissed from the prediction, based on the known variables.

AOE2 had MANY more civilizations(like twenty with the expansion). AOE3 has a grand-total of only eight civs... 8 ! So while the individual spread-sheet page which outlines each civilizations strategic options, is slightly larger to accomodate the Home-City cards, the number of civs - and thus the total number of spread-sheet pages needed to make predictions, are fewer... by more than HALF!!

Once you know the variables: map being played, and more importantly, your opponents civilization choice and Home-City level, it is possible to quickly dismiss large portions of that civilizations spread-sheet page as "unavailible" or "unviable" strategic options.

Only when facing an opponent with a very high level Home City, does the ability to make "spread-sheet" predictions become at all complicated. This favors the "hardcore" multiplayer gamers who "spread-sheet" the game now, advance quickly in Home City level (opening up more varied, and more powerful Home-City cards)... then, those players can dominate. The "hardcore" players who run/moderate the fansites, and received the game before general release, have already created their spreadsheets and will use them to immediately dominate the online scene, and increase their Home City levels quickly. It will work out somewhat like an online RPG... there will be a small "in" crowd which quickly dominates, then there will be the more casual gamers... pwned... repeatedly.

yipee...

Outside of the graphics(which are just window dressing), the single, major innovation to this game IS the Home-City. AOE3 really was designed for the "hardcore", online multi-player style of gaming. This package does not offer any new dynamic content for the casual gamer, or especially the single-player gamer to enjoy, than the previous "Age" games had already provided.
-END EDIT



ECONOMY vs. COMBAT:
Nothing has changed in the basic Age of Empires formula... make villagers, collect resources, boom your economy, buy upgrades and destroy your enemy with some military. Nothing has changed that is, except the increased focus on the economic aspect of the game. They have added the "Home City" aspect, which, frankly adds little to the games overall enjoyment besides pulling you away from the battle-map for 2-3 seconds, every 3-4 minutes, to pick which small bonus you would like sent from your chosen European power.

The RTS genre is becoming heavily tactics based, and for good reason; the combat action is what keeps the average gamer coming back again and again. AOE3 on the other hand, has gone in the opposite direction... economy... period. Even the Home-City shipments of military units, are essentially an economic/production based function of the gamplay. Memorize your unit and structure build sequences, then hope your opponent (human or AI) can't click the mouse as fast you. Mean-while, the tactical combat portion of this game is unresponsive, lacks truly effective combat controls and is downright frustrating... even with the pre-release patch installed. The previous "Age" games just seemed to deliver tactical combat with much more efficiency and control than AOE3 has... regardless of the rest of the RTS genre.


THE GRAPHICS:
With more than about two dozen military units engaged on-screen, the frame-rate bogs down considerably on my PC --- [ Pentium4 - 7800GTX - 2G RAM... *Doom3 and Far Cry run great at highest settings*... but not AOE3 ]. I can choose to drop the Anti-Aliasing, Vertical Synchronization, and several other in-game graphics options just to get the game to run more smoothly, but then the game really does NOT look good... even by Real-Time Strategy standards. What kind of PC did they have in mind when they designed this game? Alternately... did they optimize the code at all??


THE SAD TRUTH:
The "Home City"... and very good graphics... that's about it. I really expected more from a "Premier" game developer like Ensemble Studios... especially with their "Marquee" title. With the technical and financial resources at Ensembles disposal, and given the 6 year hiatus from the "Empires" series, AOE3 should have been an all-around much better game... and to a much wider range of gameplay styles.

I'm sure it will ring up big numbers in retail this holiday season... but without some significant patching, for optimization and content, in the next two months... my copy will be in the "used" bin by January.

Brutal??...Yes. But it's business, not personal. I spent $50 (plus tax). Just business...

Age of Empires III builds upon the previous installments in the series with more civilizations and options, and the War Chiefs Expansion adds even more diversity to the game. I will not specifically describe the features of the game as these can easily be found elsewhere, but my satisfaction with this product was very high.

I live at college and several other people on my floor own this game. Since I purchased it, I have been able to participate in numerous "tournaments" via the online or LAN modes in the game. This is very enjoyable and takes things far beyond the single player experience.

I have not had any problems with this game, except that with the graphics turned up all the way, large battles can cause lag on standard computers. Computers with graphics accelerators and enhanced processors should not have any problem running this game. However, by turning the graphics down, I can still enjoy the detail of this game to some extent without facing massive lag.

I would recommend this game to any fan of the AoE series, anybody who likes colonial history/wars, and those fond of strategy games. The countless scenarios that this game provides, especially when playing against live opponents, makes the replay value extremely high.

This third installment into the Age of Empires series is still refined and solid. It has maintained many of the game's staple ideals but has managed to streamline it all into an easier to play ideal. The only weak point is in its obvious similarity to the past AOE games. Little fundamental material has been altered but the new campaigns and amazing graphics make it well worth buying.

The game play is the first thing to be altered. The basic use of the mouse and hotkeys to command men is sill in use. The buildings and such that can be created are also similar but now a plantation can be used to create gold and a factory can slowly bring in any resource. This makes the player less sufficient on natural resources. When resources or items are running low there is a new alternative. Each player has a Home City that can ship the player items that they might need. As the player progresses his Home City becomes able to send more and more items. This progression helps make the random games seem more significant. Other minor differences include using villagers to collect wood and gold without mines or camps. These annoying structures have been eliminated from the game. Stone is also no longer in use.

The graphics are absolutely amazing and redone with astoundingly smooth textures. The scenery appears to be painted in with vivid hues. It is awe inspiring. The second advantage to the new graphics system involves physics. The physics are real time and actually cause men and objects to fall and roll when acted upon. It's totally awesome to shoot a cannon at a building, miss and take out a nearby tree. The naval elements of the game have also been smoothed over. Ships are highly detailed and battles appear more fluent. The visuals are perhaps the games strongest point.

The only true complaint I have about the new edition is simple. It feels a lot like the old version. Some wonderful elements have been added but the basic idea is still the same. The lack of variation was a little disappointing to me.

Some extras are also included in the game. There is a new map editor which allows a person to construct a map and enemy to their wishes. The online play is outstanding and never seems to get old.

This balance of strategy and action never seem to get old. If you're a hardened fan I doubt you'll be able to resist and if you're a newcomer to the series this is a great place to start.

The only other RTS games I have played are Age of Mythology and the Titans expansion. I loved them both. The graphics in AOE3 aren't much better. Maybe I don't have them turned on to the best level yet though. I had the best graphics level turned on for AOM + T and had no performance problems.

I really like how you can handicap yourself or your computer opponent. In AOM I could always beat Medium, but I couldn't beat Hard half the time. In this one I can fix things through the handicapping so that I face a computer opponent between the Medium and Hard levels.

The biggest problem with this game is that even though two patches have come out as of 12/5/05 there are still major problems. I'm using version 1.02 of AOE3 at this point and can only play land only maps due to the bugs in the program.

I have three computers that meet the minimum requirements, but the game won't work on two of them. On the third, things freeze if I build a battleship of any type. I have the default graphics set (which don't look as good as those in the ads). I'm worried that if I go to better resolution things will get even worse.

I haven't played online but I have heard nightmares about how messed up the online play is.

This game will probably be very cheap after xmas when many who get it as a gift find out that it won't work on their system.

My recommendation is to buy it from somewhere where you can take it back if it doesn't work. Having the minimum system requirements won't guarantee you anything. People with really nice computers--far in excess of the minimum--are having problems as well.

They should have tested and fixed this thing for six months or more longer than they did. Version 1.02 is still in beta mode.