Yeah, but you can't avoid Windows 10 if you really want to play this game.
Yes, absolutely. Nothing about the Windows 10 architecture is special or very different from Windows 7-8.
Review: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition
2018-02-19 02:01:00by Chris Carter
A beautiful RTS that still holds up
Age of Empires was a fundamental part of my RTS education. Two years before it I was enjoying the futurist spin of Command & Conquer and the fantasy vibes of Warcraft II, but Age of Empires offered up something else entirely -- a middle-ground.
It was a monumental moment in the history of the genre, as the awe-inspiring sprite-work and the sheer scope of the game really spoke to me and spurred my interest in ancient civilizations. Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is still very much a game from the '90s, lacking the panache of its sucessors, but those of you with an open mind and a strategic knack will enjoy it just as I did all those years ago.
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (PC)
Developer: Microsoft Studios
Publisher: Microsoft
Release Date: February 20, 2018
MSRP: $19.99
Even though I haven't played in ages, all of my prior knowledge came flowing back through me as soon as I moused my cursor over my first worker. The Definitive Edition has a way about it that just feels right, to the point where I had to do a double-take and watch a video of the original just to see if I was going crazy. No, the 1997 edition never looked this good, and the remaster doesn't douse its legacy in any way.
A tried and true skirmish-based RTS, the concept of a warring over a finite amount of resources that forces eventual confrontation isn't unique to Age of Empires, but it's handled a bit more organically in this series. With several forms of resource gathering (such as hunting and farming berries for food) you always feel like you have a strategic choice, rather than just setting and forgetting a bunch of drones to grab gold from a mine. Rising through the ages for upgrades at new tiers (an RTS staple) is gamey, sure, but it's engaging and framed as moving through major moments in history. Multiple win conditions like building and defending a Wonder to win are still magical and unique.
Subtle enhancements that bring the original iteration into the modern era are welcome. Attack move (where units quite literally can attack while navigating if you press a qualifying button) is a no-brainer. So are all the included staples of old school RTS that are still relevant today -- multiple building orders, control groups, viewing idle villagers at a glance. Pathfinding (the process in which units locate areas you command them to go) is the only "improved" mechanic that still needs work. It'll all come naturally to folks who have moved on from Age of Empires and into more uncharted territory. The population limit increase is really the big draw here. While a lot of remasters fundamentally don't touch the base, Microsoft took a chance here and shook up the game while keeping in some tongue in cheek references.
Ratcheting up a unit cap that served as a technical limitation doesn't sacrifice its strategic core, and it works particularly well with the expanded zoom feature -- whoever put in for that one deserves a raise. I was taking all this in with the tasteful animation alterations (mainly more stylish building destruction) and the orchestral soundtrack. The only aspect of the presentation that feels off is the UI -- which is so dated that it's like the team ran out of money to fix it up.
What's going to be the big holdup, not only for power users but for posterity, is online play. It's very finicky even after its beta state, to the point where you really need to sort of go into this remaster knowing it's a single-player game. Despite the boisterous claim of dedicated servers for all on Xbox One, some PC releases are left in the dust, this one included.
Remember all of those fun '90s ping issues you had? Well they're back, baby! Having tested out the multiplayer in the live version I ran into some of the same issues as the beta, where entire games would drop as a result of a connection error. Having to go through the Microsoft Store app, which significantly hinders my ability to play the game at times (I had to go through multiple processes to rid the app of boot errors), is also no fun. It's a good thing the campaign has basically been doubled in the Definitive Edition, and bots are still in.
The Windows 10 restrictions simply do the development team a disservice. A lot of work went into Age of Empires: Definitive Edition and just enough tweaks were made to ensure that it's still relevant in 2018. I have an incredible amount of respect for the folks who brought this classic back to life, and for their restraint to ensure that this remaster doesn't abandon its roots.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
;)
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition reviewed by Chris Carter
8
GREAT
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition review - RTS revival doesn't go quite far enough
Emperor's new clothes.
The 90s classic has never looked better, but beneath the makeover it can creak.
By Rick Lane Published 19/02/2018 Version tested PC
It may be over 20 years since Age of Empires first conquered our PC screens, but the Pelasgians are still monumental gits. After a relatively straightforward time guiding the Egyptians to supremacy, the campaign mode tasks you with building a Greek state, starting with a small agricultural hub. Yet you've barely erected your town centre when those red-skirted sods come to smash it with their clubs. Guys, I'm trying to build the foundation of western culture here. Take your caveman antics elsewhere. The stone age is so last week.
Naturally those gurning Neanderthals pay no heed, constantly harrying your perfectly innocuous attempt to dominate the entire Aegean peninsula. It's almost like they don't want to be homogenised into a civilisation built on slaves that will eventually be subjugated by another civilisation built on slaves. When did imperialism get so darned difficult?
Of course, Age of Empires has always been a challenging game. It's just that my fusty old brain has forgotten what playing it is like. In my mind it's a comfort-soup game, one of whiling away hours building pretty little cities on luscious isometric maps, rather than of bringing fire and sword to all four corners of its square, two-dimensional worlds. And that's not the only thing I had apparently forgotten, as when I launched this new Definitive Edition, my first thought was "huh, it looks like Age of Empires." Then I looked up what Age of Empires actually looked like back in 1997, and realised that I can never trust my eyes again.
Only neolithic kids will remember this!
I suppose this is a compliment to Forgotten Empires, the developer Microsoft has put at the helm of this remaster. If its delicate restorative work was enough to fool my weary critical eyes, then job done, right? We can slap a recommended badge at the top of the page and pop down to the circus maximus for the afternoon. But hold your horses, Ben Hur. This isn't Age of Empires: Remastered. This is Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, and it's worth exploring what that actually means, as well as delving into the slightly awkward subject of whether it's actually worth bothering with Age of Empires in 2018.
Despite the fancy name, this is for the most part an aesthetic overhaul, albeit one of substantial girth. The Definitive Edition comprises all the original Age of Empires content plus the Rise of Rome expansion, and also features the short Hittite campaign that served as part of the original game's demo. That means ten single player campaigns to play through, and 17 factions to dominate the ancient world as. The Definitive edition also includes support for local and online multiplayer, and comes with a new list of achievements for players to unlock.
Meanwhile, the graphical side of the update aims to bring the game up to a 4K standard while maintaining the timeless, picturesque style of the original Genie engine. All the models for buildings and units have been entirely redrawn, while the game takes advantage of modern effects for rendering water, reflections, and shadows.
Nonetheless, it remains a 2D, fixed perspective game, even though in some areas it looks more advanced. Units, for example, appear to be rendered in 3D, but in fact they're 2D objects rendered at 32 different angles (compared to the original game's 8). It's such extra detail that contributes to the Definitive Edition's substantial download size. According to the developers, a single trireme unit has a larger file size than the entirety of the original game.
Building models have been entirely redrawn, but are still recognisable from the originals.
For the most part, I think the remaster looks splendid. I especially like the new destruction animations for buildings, which now visibly collapse into a smoking heap of rubble, rather than simply replacing the building model with a brownfield sprite. I'm less convinced about the new zoom function. Although having more of the map onscreen and lets you better show off large armies, up close the new textures look smudgy and blurred.
The Definitive Edition isn't purely a visual makeover. New audio has been recorded for the game's music and sound effects. The former is superb, its rousing orchestral swells bringing a fitting depth and grandeur to the game, pairing up nicely with the bolder visuals. The latter I'm somewhat ambivalent about. The newly recorded mission briefings are great, but the unit calls just sound wrong in my ear. Perhaps they're simply so iconic that any changes are going to feel sacrilegious, but nonetheless it was the one aspect of the remaster that struck me as off-base.
Beyond the changes to visuals and audio, the game is pretty much identical to before. You collect your four resources, build your structures, train your units, erect your defences and finally venture forth to destroy the enemy. The one major alteration to play is that you can now create production queues, which helps eliminate some of the micromanagement.
Apart from that, though, it's business as usual, which also means that some of the first game's shortcomings, such as the rather shoddy AI pathfinding and the heavy focus on what today is extremely rudimentary combat, remain intact. I understand that Forgotten Empires wished to stay as true to the original game as possible, but that also means it remains a flawed game, and those flaws haven't improved over time.
You can now queue production. Party like it's 2000!
I'm also a little surprised that there's no new campaign or faction on offer. Certainly regarding the former, I think there's scope for a campaign that mediates the difficulty spike between the tutorial campaign and playing as the Greeks, one that lets newcomers to the series explore a few larger-scale missions without flattening them against their own city walls while doing so. The Definitive edition is priced to reflect that this is primarily a graphical remaster, but I do wonder whether Microsoft and forgotten Empires have missed a trick here.
Such pondering assumes there will be new players interested in visiting a 20-year-old, highly orthodox RTS, and this, really, is the sticking point. You see, I love Age of Empires. I probably love it more than Alexander the Great loved his actual Empire. And for a few hours, playing the definitive edition provided me with some lovely, soothing waves of nostalgia. Exploring those early maps, watching my settlements slowly spread and advance, imagining names for my villagers like "Rogan Josh", all of it amounted to a pretty good time. But after a while, hearing the combat horn sound as yet another cluster of enemy troops arrived to slaughter my workers began to grate. When it came to clearing maps of virtually every enemy unit, boredom set in like dry-rot.
That's the problem Age of Empires faces. It may be a classic, but it's a classic that has been improved and iterated on by other strategy games, that going back to it now is like playing with a hoop and a stick after experiencing VR for the first time. This isn't to say you won't get anything out of it at all, but there are countless better ways to spend 40 hours of your time than cooing at how shiny the new Hoplites look. Age of Empires may have sharpened its spears and polished its shields, but as experiences go it remains distinctly last millennium.
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition PC review
If Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is merely an exercise in nostalgia, then it is a cockle-warming, sepia-hued triumph. But from the quality of this remaster, talk of a reinvigorated multiplayer scene, and of their longer term plans for the Age of Empires franchise, it is clear that Microsoft are pitching this to all modern gamers as much as dewy-eyed ‘90s veterans.
So if you do not remember floppy disks, if you cannot recall a time before DLC, and if all RTS means to you is MOBA, then will Age of Empires still matter? With the Definitive Edition, you need not worry about being turned off by ancient audio or visuals. All-new assets have done a terrific job restoring the game’s classic aesthetic without spoiling it. It is stirring stuff for veterans - the sounds you remember are back, from the hssh-whoa of unit recruitment to the iconic wololo of priestly proselytisation - and ought to impress newcomers, too; I am reasonably confident it is not my bias talking when I say this soundtrack is exceptional.
And so handsome are the units that it was a little jarring to find that they still control like they used to. This is still a 2D engine with a 2D map, and though the new units were created as 3D models, they have been rendered back out as 2D images. They may be much better looking, and more facings have been added for smoother rotations (though some larger units still twitch comically when they change direction), but for the purposes of collision detection they are still defined as tiles on the map.
This means they get in one another’s way, and despite assurances from creative director Adam Isgreen that improving the 20 year-old pathfinding AI has been a particular focus, it still throws up regular frustrations. For example: a familiar Three Stooges scenario plays out when I order a fleet of trireme galleys through a narrow channel between two islands. I watch the large ship models overlap one another, twitching like confused flies, as they try to find a way through. Some abandon the channel for an alternate route around the northern island, where they are sitting ducks for enemy guard towers. Welcome to micromanagement, ‘90s style: not switching formations nor comboing special abilities - since there are neither - but manually ordering units through bottlenecks.
At a less granular, less technical level, though, it is heartening to see how well the gameplay holds up. At its core, Age of Empires remains a brilliantly designed game. There are 16 civilisations, and though they share a pool of common units rather than having bespoke rosters as in, say, StarCraft, they play very differently nonetheless. Each civ gets a few historically inspired bonuses to certain units or tactics, while others are entirely locked off.
These asymmetries are further complicated by the game’s economics and its age system, which remains a brilliant and under-imitated idea. The tech tree is divided into four ages, and while advancing to the next carries a hefty price in time and resources, it is necessary if you want to field the game’s strongest units. Of those resources, there are four - more than most RTS games. They can vary in abundance between campaign scenarios or game setups, but gold is generally the most scarce, which makes the units that depend upon it feel precious - in other RTS games, reliably producing high-end units is merely a matter of growing your economy.
Civilisations’ strengths and weaknesses are scattered across these systems and the unit tree to create a satisfyingly meaty ‘meta’. This was true in the original before that word ever entered the gaming lexicon, and all that has needed to change is a few minor balancing tweaks. For example, the Palmyrans can access many unit trees, but are denied the top tiers of most, which hurts their endgame. Their villagers work faster, but are more expensive, which makes it harder to get their economy off the ground. Thus they are best played as a mid-game booming civ, with an economy that is strong once it gets going and a broad choice of units for their armies.
By contrast, some civ bonuses are so narrow that you can guess at their army composition. Egypt have no Iron Age land combat units except the war elephant and elephant archer, and a +33% bonus to chariot hit points that it would be crazy not to exploit. This makes a Bronze Age chariot rush one of Egypt’s strongest plays, and challenges you to counter it. Do you turtle with walls and archers? Do you preemptively rush in the Tool Age? How will other players, and their positioning on the map, affect your approach?
Factor in technological asymmetries, and debates about which civ is best could rage for days. Even if two civs have access to the same unit - a Legion, say - one civ’s Legion may be stronger than another’s if their rival lacks access to certain endgame techs, such as Metallurgy, which buffs all infantry and cavalry yet is unavailable to six civs.
Another of Age’s big ideas is multiple victory conditions - common in 4X, but not in RTS. Standard random map games can be won by wiping out all rivals, sure, but also by building and defending a Wonder, holding all Ruins (special buildings), or holding all Artifacts (special units, albeit ones which move painfully slowly). This rewards playstyles based on exploration and turtling, rather than straight offence, and I cannot understand why more RTS games have not developed these ideas.
So if multiplayer RTS is your thing, there should be lots of interesting strategies for you to try across all these 16 civs. I say ‘should’ because, due to the non-existent population, I was unable to play any multiplayer during our review time (I substituted such activities with a few custom games versus the AI). It is worth discussing nonetheless, because if Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is to be more than a brief, bright flash of nostalgia, multiplayer will be key to that longevity, as will fresh content.
On that point, Microsoft aren’t talking DLC yet, but the scenario and campaign editors from the original are returning. Since the Microsoft Store cannot match the Steam Workshop for convenience when it comes to sharing and curating community content, there will be a new website dedicated to these functions. Some form of mod support is also promised.
Besides multiplayer and custom game modes, there are ten single-player campaigns that will take you through some of the ancient world’s most important conflicts. This is where my ten year-old self, and countless other gamers of my generation, learned to love history, and I think it is entirely right to commend Age of Empires: Definitive Edition for presenting the ascent of Caesar, or Alexander’s campaigns, in an engaging way. Though storytelling devices during each scenario are limited, voiced narration provides each with its historical context, which you can explore further via its history tab. I enjoy delving into the lore of a fantasy universe, but it really is much more interesting when it actually happened.
Among ‘90s RTS games, Age of Empires was one of the best at varying the rhythm of its campaign missions through intricate starting setups, scripted events, and varied victory conditions. While this helped to obviate the recurring problem of missions losing focus once their initial challenges were overcome, it was not - and still is not - wholly successful. More than once I had to endure the tedium of chasing down every last enemy unit to finally claim victory.
So Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is still lumbered with some of the quirks of its ‘90s origins. This is understandable - it is a remaster, not a remake - but those quirks do cause some friction. Beneath them, though, the underlying gameplay remains as solid as a fully upgraded phalanx. Indeed, some of its ideas are almost as fresh today as they were 20 years ago, which says something rather damning about the genre as a whole. The game also looks and sounds terrific, and fans of the original will be delighted. But the project isn’t merely an exercise in digital archaeology - there is plenty to engage younger strategy gamers, too.
Verdict: 8/10
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition review
By Fraser Brown an hour ago
Need to know
What is it? A remastered version of the classic RTS
Expect to pay: $20/£15
Developer: Forgotten Empires
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Reviewed on: Intel i5-3570K @ 3.40 GHz, 8GB of RAM, GeForce GTX 970, Windows 10
Multiplayer? Yes
Link: Official site
Clicking on a villager in Age of Empires: Definitive Edition conjures up a portal to 1997. The sound effects and brief voice lines are cleaner now, but still familiar even after all these years, attached to memories of civilisations duking it out over resources, charging into each other’s towns and setting fire to everything. What you might not remember is the awful AI and the units who struggle to even walk around things. Don’t worry, the Definitive Edition will remind you of that, and of why Age of Empires was overshadowed by its much-improved sequel.
We’ve had enough remasters now so that it’s pretty clear what people want from them: the game we remember, rose-tinted glasses included. We want our memories of the game, not the messy reality. When it comes to the sights and battlefields of the ancient world, at least, developer Forgotten Empires has given us exactly that.
The Definitive Edition’s visual upgrade is a significant one, though you might not notice how significant it is until you fire up the classic mode to see what it looked back in 1997. It’s an overhaul rather than just a bit of HD polish, full of new art and animation, but it’s all in keeping with the original style. And it goes beyond aesthetics; the game’s simply cleaner and easier to parse. The result is that it certainly doesn’t look 20 years old, but neither does it look completely new.
It’s not just the visual identity that’s been maintained despite the 2018 facelift; growing your towns and conquering other empires feels broadly the same as well. The rhythm of gathering, expanding and conquering is still hypnotic despite how familiar it is, but it runs out of steam quickly. The systems that set it apart, things inspired by Civilization, were a bit half-baked even in 1997, with trade, diplomacy and research existing in name only. The focus then and now is on micro-managing lots of fiddly units—up to 50 in the campaigns and over 200 in custom games—and constant expansion. Later additions to the series such as the idle worker button and the ability to queue up units have made their way into this version, however, so there are fewer headaches.
The 19 empires share the small roster of units and list of buildings, with their most notable differences being some unique tech upgrades. Age of Empires manages to do a lot with very little, however. The Definitive Edition contains the Rise of Rome expansion, so that’s 10 campaigns in total. Missions run the gamut from anything-goes sandboxes to asymmetrical challenges with limited resources and fortified enemies. In a nod to Warcraft, there are also hero unit stand-ins in the form of mythological and historical generals.
Objectives are simple but diverse, and maps are usually designed to force you into making concessions and choosing which of the tiny number of industries to focus on. An island or coastal map, for instance, makes wood the most prized resource. More wood means more ships; ships that can catch fish, hunt down enemies and transport armies. All that water means there are fewer trees, however, inspiring exploration and conflict as empires quarrel over tiny forests.
Familiar territory
I still predict you’ll tire out before you finish every campaign. A mountain of maps and objectives can’t disguise the fact that you’re playing with the same small deck, the same units and buildings, in every campaign. By the time you finish the Egyptian tutorial, you’ll have seen it all. If you jump into the Rise of Rome campaign or play as Yamato Japanese dynasty in a skirmish, you’ll still be going through the same motions and fielding identical armies.
The terrible pathfinding—units have a predilection for taking weird routes and getting stuck—and dull AI have made the jump to 2018 as well, and they still grate. They do seem a little less pronounced, but every unit is still completely useless without micromanagement. Since warfare doesn’t get much more complicated than growing a big horde and clicking on targets, fights are more like herding confused cats than commanding armies.
These aren’t problems that are only apparent now, 20 years later, but time has certainly made them stand out. And while this is undoubtedly, as promised, the definitive version of Age of Empires, it’s not really the Age of Empires that makes people swoon when they remember it. The series started here, but its successor is the one everybody remembers. That’s when it started to lean into the city-planning elements a little bit more, and when we were finally able to build gates and thus actual, practical fortifications. We could make fortresses! In Age of Empires, we can make bits of wall.
The promise of 8-player battles and a revived custom maps scene is a seductive one, however, and might add some longevity to this resurrection. When multiplayer works, it’s a fast-paced brawl that hides a lot of Age of Empires’ problems with AI, but getting into a game is a bit of a crapshoot, with players sometimes not even making it into the lobby before being disconnected. This was an issue during beta, and while it’s not as pronounced now, it’s certainly still getting in the way.
With 'Definitive Editions' of the later installments on the horizon, Age of Empires is once again poised to be overshadowed. If you have an overwhelming sense of nostalgia about the birth of the series, this does an excellent job of preserving it while making it considerably more palatable, but for a trip down memory lane, it sure is expensive.
The Verdict
60
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Age of Empires: Definitive Edition
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a solid remake of a game that’s past its time.
