Summary: The real-time strategy series returns to glory with Age of Empires IV, putting you at the center of epic historical battles that shaped the world.The world doesn’t need two Age Of Empires 2 games and this feels like a missed opportunity to create a new beginning for the franchise. Given Age Of Empires 2 still has the more robust multiplayer mode (and more options in general at the moment) it’s arguable whether this is even the best game in the series.
Everything is clearly supposed to be like this, and there’s no denying the game is entertaining, but nostalgia is ultimately a hollow pleasure and, like indulging in too much cake, you only end up feeling guilty and slightly bilious by the end of it.Īge Of Empires 4 is a fine real-time strategy but it’s nowhere near ambitious or different enough to revive the genre’s fortunes. We don’t know whether that’s the same excuse for why the pathfinding is so bad, but it also seems like it’s stuck in 1999.
The physics of battle are very weak and yet this seems to be a purposeful attempt to retain the look and feel of the originals, which seems especially unnecessary given the remasters.
#Game age of empires iv Pc
You can certainly understand why Microsoft would mandate this approach but after the initial excitement of seeing the old school gameplay with modern visuals, it does become somewhat deflating to realise that not surprising you is an intrinsic part of the game’s design.īattlefield 2042 gets free weekend and sale but only on PC That makes sense from a marketing point of view, but it does mean that the game is fundamentally ill-equipped to revive the real-time strategy genre, or even just Age Of Empires itself, as it’s still, very purposefully, the same game as always.Īlthough Age Of Empires always took things more seriously than the sci-fi schlock of Command & Conquer, or the fantasy melodrama of Warcraft, if you’ve played any real-time strategy before you’ve already played Age Of Empires 4. As you might expect, Age Of Empires 4 reverses historical direction, and you’ll be just as unsurprised to learn that this is a remake of Age Of Empires 2 in all but name. Years before Xbox existed, it was also a rare example of Microsoft publishing a traditional video game, with them even going so far as to buy original developer Ensemble Studios a few years later.Įach of the original Age Of Empires games saw a linear progression through history, with the first game going from stone to iron age, the first sequel covering the Middle Ages, and the third going all the way up to the late 19th century. The original Age Of Empires was released in 1997, right in the middle of the genre’s golden age – although it was its sequel that was the franchise’s real gem and is still remembered today as one of the best examples of its type. The reason? As good as they were almost every game played exactly the same, whether it was set in deep space or the ancient world. And yet within little more than five years the genre was essentially dead. Age Of Empires 4 – it feels old-fashioned in more ways than one (pic: Microsoft)Īfter 16 years the Age Of Empires franchise finally gets a new sequel but is the latest entry too similar to the old ones – or not enough?įollowing the release of Command & Conquer in 1995 real-time strategy games became the most popular game type on the PC, with every Western publisher in the world rushing to make one.