Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition

[Delterius]

Great Steam review: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970088603/recommended/933110/

Home city progression has been almost completely removed. You can still level up your home city, however, it only unlocks the customization options for the visual appearance of your home city and no longer unlocks shipment cards, as you now start with all of them. While this works great for multiplayer as you no longer have to grind of out matches to get the cards you need to stay competitive, it is awful for singleplayer. There is no more sense of progress or goals to work towards and the main replayability of singleplayer is simply gone. This is the change that makes me just not want to play the game, I used to love unlocking and experimenting with different makeshift shipment decks as I worked my way up to the more powerful ones, but that is no more.

Opinion read and discarded lmfao.

Whitewashing is bad ngl but the optimization issues that every DE releases with are A WAY BIGGER ISSUE than 'i don't have to unlock my civ's basic shit' and 'my ui now lets me see more things'.

 

[Tigranes]

roflmao, I knew some people would have liked home cities because it gives them a Progress Quest, but jesus christ

 

[cvv]

Just like with the OG Command&Conquer then - fuck dusting off those ancient games. Is anyone seriously asking for this? Make a brand new CC or a brand new AoE.

Or better yet, seeing as we live in the modern age, don't do anything. It'd be for the best.

 

[Delterius]

Is anyone seriously asking for this

Actually yes. AoE2 DE was a massive success: critically, commercially and for the game's community in general.

AoE3 hasn't gotten the same level of treatment, but it advanced nonetheless.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Glad this SJW trash is getting review-bombed, even if it is courtesy of 'muh progreshun' brainlets.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Just like with the OG Command&Conquer then - fuck dusting off those ancient games. Is anyone seriously asking for this? Make a brand new CC or a brand new AoE.

Or better yet, seeing as we live in the modern age, don't do anything. It'd be for the best.

Make an entirely new C&C game that will be a guaranteed shit RTS and anger the veterans? Good way to hemorrhage money. Much easier to go with a minimalist remaster approach and sell a million copies over nostalgia.

Pretty ballsy from Microsoft though to fund Age 4.

 

[cvv]

Just like with the OG Command&Conquer then - fuck dusting off those ancient games. Is anyone seriously asking for this? Make a brand new CC or a brand new AoE.

Or better yet, seeing as we live in the modern age, don't do anything. It'd be for the best.

Make an entirely new C&C game that will be a guaranteed shit RTS and anger the veterans? Good way to hemorrhage money. Much easier to go with a minimalist remaster approach and sell a million copies over nostalgia.

On second thought this is actually correct.

 

[Narax]

Glad this SJW trash is getting review-bombed, even if it is courtesy of 'muh progreshun' brainlets.

And now they’ll blame the fanbase for being racist.

 

[thesheeep]

but the optimization issues that every DE releases with are A WAY BIGGER ISSUE than 'i don't have to unlock my civ's basic shit'

Don't know about that...
The optimization is bad (especially for what you see on the screen), but the civ progression was, for me, the primary reason I liked this game so much.
It gives you a goal beyond "win this match", an agenda to follow, a way to make your nation slowly stronger and see the progress along the way, a sense of discovery with new abilities - adds quite a bit of RPG to the mix, if you like. It's what kept me hooked.
What you have now is the equivalent of playing an RPG and everyone starts at max level - boring, will make me lose interest very quickly.
It also makes homecity-building a lot harder, as you are given a million options all at once - it's overwhelming for everyone except experts. Like making a lvl20 DnD character from scratch.

I get why some MP people would want everything unlocked from the get-go (and for competitive matchmaking, that even makes sense), but then why not make that an option and allow matchmaking to specify a range of city levels? It seems like a no-brainer, but the devs decided to not even give an option here :/
However, I thought I was in a tiny minority with that view - well, apparently I wasn't, given that this is the second most mentioned neglect in the reviews (even the positive ones).

In the end, this just proves what I always say - the SP and casual MP crowd for RTS games is way larger than the competitive MP crowd, even though the latter is admittedly who kept the games alive.

 

[Tacgnol]

Great Steam review: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970088603/recommended/933110/

Where to even begin...

The cons and some comparisons to the original:

They have sacrificed core mechanics of the game in favour of historical accuracy despite never being a historically accurate game in the first place. The native civs can no longer tame animals, which was one of their coolest features, and the North American natives can no longer mine and are required to construct an additional building to be able to acquire coin. Changing things in the game to be more accurate and considerate towards people who were presented in the game in a way that was ignorant or even disrespectful is fine, great even, such as changing the names of the civs to what they actually call themselves, but changing core mechanics and lazily introducing them is not. This is an absurd and unnecessary change that is an insult to veteran players.

A major pet peeve of mine is the change from colonial era to commerce era. Are you trying to tell me that a game, that is built around the theme of colonialism, around the era of colonialism and who's entire gameplay is based around building a colony can't have the colonial era in it because it is too offensive. Was colonisation an awful thing for many people, YES, absolutely, but it happened and its what the game is based around, the game isn't making it out to be some glorious thing. This change of course does nothing to the actual gameplay so I'm not going to give up on the game just because of that but it is extremely idiotic and useless.

Home city progression has been almost completely removed. You can still level up your home city, however, it only unlocks the customization options for the visual appearance of your home city and no longer unlocks shipment cards, as you now start with all of them. While this works great for multiplayer as you no longer have to grind of out matches to get the cards you need to stay competitive, it is awful for singleplayer. There is no more sense of progress or goals to work towards and the main replayability of singleplayer is simply gone. This is the change that makes me just not want to play the game, I used to love unlocking and experimenting with different makeshift shipment decks as I worked my way up to the more powerful ones, but that is no more.

The UI is a complete and utter joke. The visual design of it looks as though someone made a bunch of text boxes in Microsoft Word and copied and pasted them onto the edges of the screen. The original AoE 3 had a UI design that was full of character and had amazing satisfying sounds to match. The definitive edition UI is completely soulless and had ear-piercing horrendous sounds mixed in with some rehashed sounds from the original version that somehow sound worse. To add on to this, the deck editing menu is nigh unusable, its essentially just a massive blob of the possible shipments you can use with very little sorting options. The original deck editor showed you what building the card type, what era you could get the shipments in and the progression trees all at the same time, allowing for easy location and identification of each card. In the definitive deck editor you can sort by age or by card type thats it, enjoy, and the cards are in a seemingly random order with no visual separation making it a long unsorted messy list of shipments that fit said categories.

This only what I've discovered and thought worthy of mentioning in my mere 2 hours of playing the game. I've hear many other people mention how poorly optimized the game is but I have had no issues with performance as of yet, so be cautious in checking if your pc can actually run the game.


The pros:

The two new civs seem unique and interesting, haven't played with them enough to say for certain but I'm not really picky with how strong or standout they are, just happy to have new content.

The graphics are a decent upgrade, nothing ground breaking but they generally look nice.

Having achievements is nice, there aren't a lot of them but something is better than nothing at this point.

It's cheaper than the original AoE 3, which is nice.

yeah, that's about it, it's a ♥♥♥♥ show.


The Meh:

The sound revamps are overall higher quality and are likely more accurate but they take away a lot of the nostalgia of the original and are also a lot less satisfying (in my opinion).

The long list of changes to the native civs are great for recognising and respecting these cultures and for the most part don't really affect gameplay, however they ruin a lot of the games nostalgia (which is admittedly a sacrifice I think we can make) and a lot of it is lazily done, such the community plaza, where villages walk in circles for some reason and it looks ridiculous. The fur trading building used to get coin is gathered by villagers as if they were plucking berries... from the side of a building... built next to a coin mine... which they aren't allowed to gather from... but the fur trade drains coin from the mine? Very historically accurate, thanks devs. It's just looks stupid and is clearly not very thought out, but once again, doesn't affect gameplay so it's not that big of a deal.


Things they could change to make this better:

Major problems:

A big one would be to revert the any and all mechanic gameplay changes (not balance changes). I can understand if they don't want to do this because they have committed to it and don't want to insult the very people they changed it for.

Add the option to have level unlocked shipments and restore the progression mechanics in singleplayer

Make the deck builder the way it was in the original or add more features to make it less of a nightmare

Minor problems:

Add the option to use legacy sound effects

Allow for more in game UI customization

Make the main menu UI less of steaming pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥


Summary

I'm pissed off. I've played more hours of AoE 3 than can possibly be counted, accumulated over the span of over a decade and to see it's legacy end with this disappointing mess makes me extremely sad. I've been beyond hyped since the first Definitive Edition was announced as I was hoping that AoE 3 would get one, and I was even more hyped when AoE 3 was confirmed to get one. I am not hard to please when it comes to remakes, I would have been satisfied and given this game a positive review if it was simply a graphics upgrade with nothing else but they went ahead and made changes that no one wanted, removed content and sucked the soul, the character and the passion from the game, all in one fell swoop.


Some additions after seeing the comments:

People are thinking that I'm railing on the devs for giving in to offended people, I'm not, I'm fine that the changes to the names and appearances of the nations, buildings and other things make the game more inclusive. What I am not ok with is compromising the gameplay for the those reasons. It's likely my fault for giving off that impression as my paragraph on the whole colony renaming ordeal made it out to be a lot more serious than it really is.

I don't want to hate the game, I don't want to see it fail, I want to enjoy it. In it's current state, however, I don't see myself playing much of it and I would love to see that changed.

Anyone else catch the Irenaeus cameo in the comments?

 

[JarlFrank]

Great Steam review: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970088603/recommended/933110/

Home city progression has been almost completely removed. You can still level up your home city, however, it only unlocks the customization options for the visual appearance of your home city and no longer unlocks shipment cards, as you now start with all of them. While this works great for multiplayer as you no longer have to grind of out matches to get the cards you need to stay competitive, it is awful for singleplayer. There is no more sense of progress or goals to work towards and the main replayability of singleplayer is simply gone. This is the change that makes me just not want to play the game, I used to love unlocking and experimenting with different makeshift shipment decks as I worked my way up to the more powerful ones, but that is no more.

Opinion read and discarded lmfao.

Whitewashing is bad ngl but the optimization issues that every DE releases with are A WAY BIGGER ISSUE than 'i don't have to unlock my civ's basic shit' and 'my ui now lets me see more things'.

I don't get why anyone would like the grind. It was the worst part of original AoE3 and this is a great reason to buy the DE. No more shitty grind before you can play out the real strategies.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

You're talking about one of the minor points of the review...

 

[thesheeep]

I don't get why anyone would like the grind.

It gives you a goal beyond "win this match", an agenda to follow, a way to make your nation slowly stronger and see the progress along the way, a sense of discovery with new abilities - adds quite a bit of RPG to the mix, if you like. It's what kept me hooked.
What you have now is the equivalent of playing an RPG and everyone starts at max level - boring, will make me lose interest very quickly.
It also makes homecity-building a lot harder, as you are given a million options all at once - it's overwhelming for everyone except experts. Like making a lvl20 DnD character from scratch

Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

As I said, I do understand why someone would like to have all cards unlocked from the get-go, if their primary focus is competitive play.
But why make that the only possibility and not allow for both ways? Afaik, the original game allowed both. It seems like the removal of an option without any real reason.

 

[JarlFrank]

As I said, I do understand why someone would like to have all cards unlocked from the get-go, if their primary focus is competitive play.
But why make that the only possibility and not allow for both ways? Afaik, the original game allowed both. It seems like the removal of an option without any real reason.

It's not even just about the competitive play, I just don't like repetitive lengthy grinding in order to unlock the good stuff.
Also, I remember the original game requiring you to play many matches to unlock all the stuff, there was no insta-unlock option. And you had to do it for each nation individually!

 

[Multidirectional]

Also, I remember the original game requiring you to play many matches to unlock all the stuff, there was no insta-unlock option. And you had to do it for each nation individually!

Nope, if you reached level 20 with one nation then the rest of them got level 20 as well, if you started them fresh. Same for level 40, 60, etc. You did need to repeat same process for expansion nations, one of each again.

 

[Delterius]

TBH as a single player dumbo I consider that the AoE3DE AI not being as godly as the AoE2DE the greatest impediment to my shut-in no humans allowed play.

 

[Delterius]

I bit the bullet and bought the game.

I played the first historical battle, a Spanish siege of Algiers which served to showcase the two features that, by themselves, kickstart my appreciation for the Definitive Edition: the Revolutions flavor additions and the Historical Battles. European countries now have more options for Revolutions, each country is given a great deal more flavor and the option itself was made more viable economically. Case in point, you play as an Ottoman Revolutionary - Barbary Corsairs against the spaniards. These come with unique infantry and cavalry options and the ability to train Mamelukes and Barbary Corsairs directly from military buildings. I didn't play Algiers at the hardest difficulty yet but it sort of reminded me of the second Salahadin map from AoE2, except the AI does hit and run tactics. Overall, a fun map with objectives to fulfill. If the other Battles are as fun as this one, they'll shape up to be the semi-historical fun campaign I didn't get 15 years ago when a bunch of nerds at Ensemble decided to do their dumb ass Illuminati plot. I'm looking forward to playing as the Portuguese in Ethiopia tomorrow.

On the other hand, I was forced to disable shadows to get a smooth FPS so this game needs a lot of optimization. To say nothing of the bugs people are showing on Reddit et al. In the 2 games I played I couldn't get my settlers to harvest animals.

 

[jebsmoker]

one of my foremost concerns about AoE III: DE is that the unit combat and movement felt.. very weird and unnatural in the original version of the game. is it the same here?

 

[Delterius]

Having played Skirmish against the AI before and after the first patch I'm actually impressed. Their behavior is completely different. They counter your army compositions, know when to retreat and even do hit and run with ranged cavalry. Looking forward to the future.

 

[deama]

So the game any good? How's the campaign? I'm only going to play this single-player, so I don't really care about balance all too much.

 

[Delterius]

So the game any good? How's the campaign? I'm only going to play this single-player, so I don't really care about balance all too much.

There's no new campaign, only a series of 6 historical battles with cool objectives and voice acting.

Who knows, they might make more of them.

 

[Delterius]

Revolutions are cool now.

 

[Tacgnol]

one of my foremost concerns about AoE III: DE is that the unit combat and movement felt.. very weird and unnatural in the original version of the game. is it the same here?

Pretty much. They've not really changed any animations, units still fight in a very robotic/unnatural manner.

 

[Mastermind]

Great Steam review: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970088603/recommended/933110/

Changing things in the game to be more accurate and considerate towards people who were presented in the game in a way that was ignorant or even disrespectful is fine, great even, such as changing the names of the civs to what they actually call themselves

It really isn't great. It's an English game, their name was the English one. They don't call Germany "Deutschland". Instead of the recognizable iroquois we now play as the Hfwaipbhfwiupefhbipwe. I wonder how hard it would be to mod the old name back.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Great Steam review: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970088603/recommended/933110/

Changing things in the game to be more accurate and considerate towards people who were presented in the game in a way that was ignorant or even disrespectful is fine, great even, such as changing the names of the civs to what they actually call themselves

It really isn't great. It's an English game, their name was the English one. They don't call Germany "Deutschland". Instead of the recognizable iroquois we now play as the Hfwaipbhfwiupefhbipwe. I wonder how hard it would be to mod the old name back.

Absolutely agree! However he has some points that I think are fair:

They have sacrificed core mechanics of the game in favour of historical accuracy despite never being a historically accurate game in the first place. The native civs can no longer tame animals, which was one of their coolest features, and the North American natives can no longer mine and are required to construct an additional building to be able to acquire coin.

A major pet peeve of mine is the change from colonial era to commerce era. Are you trying to tell me that a game, that is built around the theme of colonialism, around the era of colonialism and who's entire gameplay is based around building a colony can't have the colonial era in it because it is too offensive. Was colonisation an awful thing for many people, YES, absolutely, but it happened and its what the game is based around, the game isn't making it out to be some glorious thing. This change of course does nothing to the actual gameplay so I'm not going to give up on the game just because of that but it is extremely idiotic and useless.