Age of Empires III | 
| From: Microsoft
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $14.97
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Rating:  203 reviews
Sales Rank: 992
Platform: Windows Xp
Genre: Strategy Games
ESRB: Teen
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.3
MPN: 100722
Model: G10-00025
UPC: 882224043281
EAN: 0882224043281
ASIN: B000AB603U
Release Date: October 18, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Comes with Original Case and All Discs.
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| Features:
| • | Start out playing as the British and begin with a solid economy, or lead the French into an easy alliance with Native Americans - 8 total civilizations to choose from | | • | Work with Native Americans to your tactical advantage, for the first time ever | | • | Develop your own Home City, and customize it make it wealthier and more powerful as you take over Europe | | • | Explore the New World and create colonies while seeking out new resources and making alliances with the Native Americans | | • | Recover buried treasure from the Caribbean, hunt bison on the Great Plains, compete for trade routes and fortify the coast of New England |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
It's the dawn of a new age in real-time strategy (RTS) games. A brave New World is rising--a hostile yet beautiful world, filled with innovative gameplay, new strategic scenarios, eye-searing graphics and much more. Welcome to a world called Age of Empires III. Campaign
In this action adventure tale of historical fiction, players take on the role of Morgan Black and his family, struggling against the hostile wilderness and a mysterious cult that's crept in from Europe. In a series of 24 scenarios divided into three acts, Morgan Black and his descendants help the Aztecs resist conquest by Spanish conquistadors, pit the French against the British in the French and Indian War and help Simon Bolivar lead revolutions in South America. Multiplayer
Whether you're searching for a quick game or hoping to talk strategy with friends online, Age of Empires III's Multiplayer site is your community destination. Here, you can play with persistent Home Cities that gain power and strategic options the more games you play, compete for a spot on dozens of ladders, help organize your clan or chat after a game -- all without leaving the multiplayer portal. Fans of Age of Mythology's Quick Search can still look for games swiftly, while players looking for something specific can browse game lists to find the set of options that matches their tastes. New Feature--Home Cities
 This revolutionary new feature to the RTS landscape is incorporated into all aspects of Age of Empires III -- from Campaign to Multiplayer -- and is unlike anything you've experienced before. Much like the persistent character from a role-playing game that encourages you to keep playing, your Home City is an important support system to your efforts in the New World. During a game, your Home City can regularly send you supplies or military reinforcements. You are the leader of your colony, but your success brings glory back to Mother Europe. The more games you play, and the better you do, the more powerful your Home City will become. Every few games, you gain the ability to both upgrade and customize your Home City: - Upgrade your city by unlocking new types of soldiers or buildings, or improving those you already have.
- Broaden your tech tree in whatever direction most fits your play style--invest in warships, native alliances, cavalry, artillery or economy.
- Customize your Home City by changing the appearance of buildings, the weather or even the types of people who walk, work and perform in its streets.
- Throughout a game, as well as in between games, you can visit your Home City to watch its citizens go about their lives, get an opinion on how you're doing, plot your next move or just marvel at the beautiful sunset.
Full 3-D Graphics, Destructible Environments and More
 We first set out to reproduce the rich detail of Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. As we strove to make the fascinating Age of Empires III time period come alive, that goal quickly evolved: We at Ensemble Studios wanted to create the best-looking game ever. From the stunning water effects to the hundreds of units battling on-screen, you'll feel like you're a part of the action in the New World. - Tone mapping--This photo imaging technique balances the colors in a scene on the fly. The end result is a rich, warm game where bright colors are vibrantly rendered alongside darker counterparts, such as shadows.
- Lighting and shadows--The sun is always shining in Age of Empires, so it's important that lighting and shadows be an awe-inspiring experience. Units and buildings cast shadows according to a real sun position, and even cast shadows on each other. High Dynamic Range rendering allows us to represent the shiny glints of sunlight that bounce off highly reflective surfaces.
- Bump and specular mapping--Water glistens like water. Metal shines like metal. These advanced techniques serve to provide an extra level of rendering detail heretofore unseen in real-time strategy (RTS) gaming.
- Water--We felt that portraying stunning, realistic water effects in the game was so important that we devoted a programmer to it full-time. You'll find the water rich with details like foam near the shore, accurately modeled water motion, flotsam in rivers and realistic water colors. Plus, reflections change with the viewing angle, the angle of sunlight and the motion of the water. The overall effect is breathtaking.
- Cliffs and Riverbeds--Instead of just stretching terrain, we built a system to attach geometry to the terrain map to allow for realistic overhangs and steep cliffs, from areas like the American Southwest. This effect is supported on random maps too.
Civilizations
British
Quick access to Settlers gives the British one of the strongest economies in the game. The ability to upgrade two key units -- the Musketeer and Hussar -- make the British military formidable in the late game. The British Home City emphasizes improvements to technology and naval warfare. | Dutch
Although Dutch Settlers are limited and costly, their civilization makes up for this economic disadvantage by building Banks and generating coin automatically. The Dutch Home City emphasizes upgrades to defense and economy. | French
Although the French economy starts slowly, the Coureur unit, a Villager with strong fighting skills, makes the French difficult to attack early. The French also have the strongest cavalry unit in the game -- the Cuirassier. Plus, the French are experts at allying with the Native Americans. | German
The Germans have fewer Settlers and therefore a slower economy. Fortunately, both the Settler Wagon and Uhlan cavalry spawn for free from the German Town Center. Plus, the Germans start with the ability to send Mercenaries from their Home City (long before other civilizations can). | Native American
European civilizations can learn new technologies and gain troops by forging alliances with the Native Americans. A British player who allies with the Iroquois is essentially playing as two civilizations: the British and the Iroquois. | Ottoman
For the Ottomans, Settlers spawn automatically from the Town Center. Building a Mosque and conducting research help keep that Settler production steady. Befitting their position straddling Europe and Asia, the Ottomans have more unique units than any other civilization. | Portuguese
Starting the game with two Town Centers, the Portuguese can quickly produce Settlers, control territory or support their allies. The Spyglass ability allows the Portuguese to easily spy on the enemy. The Portuguese also have a strong navy, strong light infantry and the best Dragoons in the game. | Russian
Starting the game with extra resources but fewer Settlers gives the Russians the flexibility of focusing on economy or an early raid. Russian infantry, individually weak, are trained in blocks at a faster rate, providing the Russians with the opportunity to overwhelm their enemy with greater numbers. | Spanish
The Spanish have a strong military, with both hand infantry and cavalry. Flexibility in early shipments from the Home City give the Spanish the option to attack early or set up for a strong, late economy. Spanish Home City improvements benefit soldiers, buildings and naval units. | | Combat
Age of Empires III gives players an amazing amount of control over their side of the battlefield.  - More to command -- Not only are you in command of large and diverse armies of infantry, cavalry and artillery, but also Native American warriors, mercenaries and tall ships.
- Multiple formations -- You can assign different formations to your army for different strengths and weaknesses, or have the game automatically choose the most appropriate formation. Examples include:
- Volley -- ranged infantry, like musketeers, take turns firing at enemies ahead of them.
- Charge -- your soldiers walk, then run into combat. Cavalry wield sabers, and musketeers fix bayonets. This formation does tremendous damage but makes your soldiers more prone to injury.
- Bombard -- your soldiers protect the cannons, while the cannons shell enemy ranks. Available only when you have artillery in your army.
- Battles are easier to follow -- You can still command individual units. But when the units fight in formation, you'll be able to tell exactly who is winning the fight.
- Real-time physics -- Infantry struck by cannon fire will be thrown like rag dolls, perhaps even over a cliff and into the water. Cannonballs bounce and ricochet.
- Detailed destructions -- Shingles, shutters and whole towers may fly off a building and interact with the terrain, such as crashing into nearby water. This next generation effect is done on the fly so that each building always has a unique destruction, no matter how many times you see it.
- Unique animations -- With hundreds of unique combat animations, you'll never see the same battle twice.
Product Description
Age Of Empires 3 is the sequel to the critically-acclaimed strategy game. It introduces all-new gameplay elements, new civilizations to discover, random maps to conquer and a single-player campaign unlike any other. A.I. opponents are now well-developed characters with deep strategies, motivations, and personalities-and more than 4,000 audio taunts at their disposal New lighting and shadow effects, in a game world designed to have real physics and depth -- you'll almost feel like you're there The first 3D iteration of the series uses bump- and tone-mapping to render realistic water and shadows Havok engine's cause-and-effect physics bring battles to lurid life
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| Customer Reviews: Read 198 more reviews...
 A successful installment in the Age of Empires Saga October 18, 2005
JD (Provo, Utah USA)
312 out of 335 found this review helpful
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.
Lackluster, but not without potential October 20, 2005
Pecos Bill (Gaithersburg, MD United States)
153 out of 175 found this review helpful
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.
 Age of Ennui? October 21, 2005
Matt Cameron (Malden, MA)
77 out of 89 found this review helpful
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.
 The last "Age" game I'll buy. October 20, 2005
Antony_INDY (NC, USA)
35 out of 41 found this review helpful
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...
What a Disappointment! November 5, 2005
Dal Birch
27 out of 30 found this review helpful
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...
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