Worry not, that old addictive feeling is alive and well in Age of Empires III. The beautiful scenery will enchant you, the physics will delight you, and the challenge and gameplay possibilities will rope you in for good. We’ve spent the better part of a week playing around with the single-player portion of the game, and in our opinion it’s looking good enough to be worth the price of admission on its own, without even seeing the multiplayer side yet.
The fighting is much more dramatic in AOE III compared to other real-time strategy games. Because everything in AOE III appears to have a weight, explosions are just terrific. Parts of walls, roofs, shingles, trees, hats, guns, wheels, people, crowds of people … everything gets blasted into the air. And then, thanks to the Havok engine, which has been put to good use, it all tumbles back down to the ground realistically.
The tutorial is split into two parts, and it does a good job of giving players the basics. The first half shows you the interface in a step-by-step manner, while the latter lets you play a game with occasional popups that recommend things you might want to do. Although the displays and advice is enough to get almost anyone started on the game, having played previous AOE games will definitely be a plus.
Your explorer (hero) in AOE III is the only character who can collect the random treasures scattered around the map. The area is always guarded by animals or random non-playable characters, all of whom must be killed before the prize can be collected. A star shows up on the mini map in case other troops discover the area before your explorer can make his way there, but only the explorer can lay his hands on the loot.
The home city wasn’t used much in the campaign portion we’ve played, but it was very active in the sandbox mode. Like clockwork, you get notified when a shipment is ready to be sent from your home city, and by clicking on the big button at the bottom of the screen, you can zip right over and pick out your prize. And there are many prizes. Just take anything off the second shelf there; you’ll get the premium prizes if you keep playing.
Playing through the campaign is fun, and it certainly keeps moving. Quests take players to cool scenes of action, not to mention cool places like caves. The game-engine cinematics are done very well for a RTS game, and the voice work and music are already top-notch. The sound effects are also spot on, although many of them are start to sound a little familiar. It’s a good thing they’re really good.
Formations and path finding were great, as is to be expected from any AOE game, and although we didn’t notice any way to adjust the formation of our platoon, that’s certainly a feature that will make the final build, if it isn’t there already. There’s a LOT in this game, after all, and the default formations of different troops would usually suffice.
Age of Empires III is a game we like to describe as hard to stop playing. It’s one of those games that reviewers love to see on their desk. And it’s shaping up to be one of those games we might actually keep playing long after the story is done. In other words, Age of Empires III is looking like it might set a new bar in the RTS genre.
— Robert Dusseau
