The latest Age of Empires game is by no means disappointing. Although similar to its predecessors, it has some significant differences. First, in AoE3 you have a home city that can send you supplies from overseas, you start out with a “deck” that has a fair number of “cards”. You can use these (usually only one time per card) to get supplies from your home city. Your home city can level up, and as it does so it allows you to get new and more powerful “cards”, which in turn, you use to gain resources, troops or upgrades from your home city. To start with, you can use all the cards you have in your “deck”, but once your home city reaches a higher
level you will run out of room to use all the cards and you will need to find what best fits your play style. This of course has the most effect in multiplayer, where your “deck” will likely mean the difference between a win and a loss. Also, buildings, ships, walls etc, are destructible and will crumble as they’re attacked, but not the way other RTS games have done it. When a cannon ball hits a wall, boat, or building, part of it will be blown off where it hits. This makes navel battles extremely enjoyable. Previously we just got to watch ships fire at each other until one of them burst into flames and sank, or suddenly exploded, now we see the cannonballs ripping through the ship, with shrapnel, bits of wood and chunks of railing, flying everywhere. Also, now some ships can use the broadside ability to cause some major fireworks and deal significant damage to other ships. The next thing on our list that’s new about the game, is resources. In AoE3 your villagers no longer have to walk back to your town center or resource drop off point. The resources are simply added to what you already have as you gather them. The other change in this area is that you can no longer harvest stone, now you can only harvest wood, gold and food. Despite possibly being easier than the other Age of Empires games the computer AI can still kick my ass when set to max difficulty.
The single player campaign is great, and the multiplayer is sure to keep you occupied for hours after you’ve mastered single player.
Over all I’d give this game a 4 out of 5. My favorite part of the game is the navel combat and the great effects for buildings/ships etc being damaged or destroyed.
