The big difference is that Age of Empires III doesn’t just drop you into a map to fend for yourself. Though, the bare bones are the same: make peasants gather resources while upgrading buildings and raising an army to defeat the enemy – the enemy, of course, being everyone else on the map. At points it’s almost glacially slow to move units hither and thither, the interface is fairly stripped back compared to other 4X titles, and it’s more story-focused than games like Age of Wonders: Planetfall or Crusader Kings. And credit goes to Ensemble and new developer Tantalus Media, who have addressed these issues in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition when they could have simply opted to dress up the graphics and call it a day.īut the Definitive Edition has a lot more to it than just improved visuals, delivering the original game along with two new campaigns (the first being the Incas, and the second being the Swedes), re-recorded voice lines, re-structured stories, revamped multiplayer, extra modes, and a host of quality of life improvements to bring it somewhere more in-line with the genre as it exists today.įirst of all though: this is still very much a game of its time, mechanically.
Original developer Ensemble made some decisions then that simply can’t be made now, filling in factual gaps with liberties taken, occasionally stooping to using racial stereotypes that nowadays just aren’t to be tolerated.
When Age of Empires III was first released in 2005, it was a very different world.
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