The biggest addition to AoE III is the playing cards. Experts will want to focus their fire appropriately, but this is extremely difficult. Also, the move to primarily ranged units reduces the micromanagement fun of the game - strategy is primarily making sure you have the right ranged unit, but once they arrive at the battle, they start firing away. Expert players may be able to anticipate and counter them, but the average player will just lose, miserably. The overriding importance of the cannon is unfortunate because cannons are so hard to counter. An outnumbered army with several cannons will cut larger armies to pieces. Most of the units in the game are ranged (except for the important cavalry), and success can be neatly summed up as a race to the cannons (not available until the third age of the game).

As with most RTS games, the story is mildly interesting, but the real fun starts as soon as the cut-scenes end.Įarlier AoE games concentrated on melee fighting, however, this is the age of gunpowder, and player tactics must be adjusted. John (roughly equivalent to the Templars, for you history buffs and fans of The Da Vinci Code) (2) John, Morgan's son and a mercenary and (3) Amelia, John's granddaughter, and industrialist.

Gamers will play through three generations of the Black family: (1) Morgan, a Knight of St. Tri-cornered hats, muskets, cannons, frigates, colonial powers, pirates, Indians, and the lust for gold are all prominently featured. Unfortunately, only the graphics are spectacular.Įach game in the Age series focuses on a historical epoch - with the exception of Age of Mythology detour - and AoE III features the colonial era.

So, for anyone familiar with its lineage - the entire RTS community - AoE III was expected to be spectacular. In the last ten years, the Age series and the Warcraft series were by far the best RTS games available. It's a solid game, fun to play, no glaring problems, some minor innovations that add to the experience, but it's also the third incarnation in an incredible series of real-time strategy games. And that's precisely the problem with Age of Empires III. The weight of expectations handicaps some games, making it difficult to fully appreciate a good game when you expected a great game.

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