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> Results: Age of Empires III
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The first Age of Empires was a game that met with some initial resistance from fans of real-time strategy. The game was heavy with micromanagement of economics and AI units could barely carry out your orders, let alone think for themselves what to do next. It demanded precision control of every facet of the fast-paced historical gameplay while setting a high standard of graphical excellence that was still able to run on just about any PC of the time. After taking a break from the main series with the offshoot Age of Mythology, Ensemble Studios are back on the path of history. Age of Empires III is a game of exploration in the New World with some help from the Old and that farily sums up where this game fits in the history of this series as well.
Taking control of Russians, English, French, Ottoman, Dutch, Portuguese, Germans or Spanish, you play the game in single-player skirmish and campaign modes or hop onilne for head to head and team competition. Each side has their own strengths and weaknesses as well as a diverse range of game changing features that make it entertaining to jump around between them. The English and Spanish are about as conventional as you can get while the French feature more expensive but hardier villagers. It's too early to tell if the balance is "just right" between all the sides, however there is no one favored group just yet. These differences make the game all about leveraging your advantages while minimizing your disadvantages. Like all the great real-time strategy games, this one provides an enormous canvas of unit, building and strategy options for you to explore. At the core is the guns or butter dilemma that has plagued man during wartime since he could stand on two feet. The interface for the game simply needs to be better. Some functions you use regularly have hotkeys and some don't. Some text on the various screens, both in game and out, looks clickable but isn't while other text is clickable but you'd never think to try it. There are also areas where you can right-click to get menus of information that you'd just never expect to find. The interface is largely inconsistent in the way it presents information to you and in the way you interact with it. After a few hours of play, you become acquainted with its quirks, but it could be much better. The default in-game interface is also way too large, a problem that was notable in the game's demo, too. Thankfully, a more streamlined version is available. The buttons are smaller, but it's definitely the way to go. This can be turned on in the options. Be sure to do that right away.  Online play through Ensemble Studios Online has the same interface problems as the main game. Unlike Age of Mythology, which seemed built for multiplayer, Age of Empires III obscures a lot of important information from you right from the moment you log in. Your old ESO ID won't work and once you create a new one, you arrive at a screen loaded with text that's a nice help the first time but a drag every time after that. Where Age of Mythology let you log in and match up with a random Joe in about three clicks, Age of Empires III requires at least double that and it's not nearly as responsive or as reliable to boot. Once you get a game going though, the online play is smooth and exciting. It's really how these games were meant to be played. Make sure to record your games (it's optional now) so you can see how your opponents are walking all over you. The most fundamental change to the gameplay is the Home City. Home City turns this into a little bit of a role-playing game instead of simple commanding and conquering. With your Home City, you can build decks of "cards" that can be played at semi-regular intervals throughout a typical online or skirmish game. These cards can give you free units, resources or even buildings. Some of them give bonuses to various functions of your society like mining or herding. It's sort of a smaller scale version of the god powers in Age of Mythology and it's a great addition to this genre. Unlike Warlords Battlecry's persistent heroes, these Home Cities don't seem to become as powerful as quickly. That means even a player with a city five levels from another can probably hold their own and even win. You certainly can gain advantage with a higher level city (and a good deck of cards) but it's not a slam dunk win automatically. This exciting change is persistent and you receive experience points for various reasons throughout every online game that help you improve the city. That means even in a loss you're working toward your next level and your next card to add to your deck. It's a great carrot to dangle in front of players to keep them playing each other online. In addition to the Home City, you can recruit what amount to mercenary units in the form of Native Americans. Indians of various tribes can provide you with economic and military bonuses as well as more fodder for your opponent's guns. These tribes are neutral spots on the map until you build a trading post near them to gain their trust and their help. They're also a key part of strategy on any map. A few other additions that work well and affect play are the treasures found around the map and usually guarded by bears, wolves and the like as well as the era the game takes place in. This is essentially the Age of Rifles so while you still find some folks with bows and pikes, the cannon and rifle eventually rule the battlefield. That makes for some exciting battles and a lot more BOOM than previous Age games.  There is a lot of stuff to learn when you hop into Age of Empires III. There's also a lot that is familiar and maybe even a little unwelcome. The unit AI still acts funny sometimes, the micromanagement is at least as plentiful as it's always been and economics are a huge part of the game. These are things that also help differentiate the Ensemble real-time strategy game from all the rest, so if you don't dig the micromanagement, you need not even try this one. Even though the game has some problems with interface and AI, it still has a fundamental appeal of history and incredible competition that compels you to continue playing it. It's a great game that simply could have used another six months of polish to get it to the level we've come to expect from an Ensemble game. It's rooted in its past while mining its future. 
The Age games are very good for learning about history. Age of Empires III probably abstracts history the most of any game in the series, though. The campaign is good as a tool for some learning and entertainment, but the fundamental game featuring various Old World countries fighting it out in the New World is sometimes a little bit over the top compared to reality. That's ok for kids though because they're going to love the competitive and visual aspects of the game. This is a beautiful looking game and it helps make the history compelling. The Home City is a neat way to show the influence of the European nations on this new North American land that was discovered.
The fighting is visceral but not bloody. Bodies are left strewn across the land and there are unnerving shrieks from the women villagers when they get cut down by muskets, but the portrayal of all this is rather classy. Kids that are learning about this era in school will already know a lot of the brutality of the period and might even wonder why the Native Americans aren't taking scalps and the like. The game never crosses any of those unmarked lines that often separate a high teen game from a low one. Age of Empires III can easily be enjoyed by kids ten and up. Just expect things to get a little rougher if you let them play online. What's found in the game is nowhere near as bad as the anonymous jerk three states over in his mom's basement shouting obscenities and verbalizing them through onscreen text at your kid during play. Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "Age Of Empires" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Age of Empires III |
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