|
From:Microsoft
|
See Product Page
|
User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#832 |
| | Page: << 1 ... 36 37 38 39 40 41 >> |
35 of 41 customers found the following review helpful:
 The last "Age" game I'll buy., 2005-10-20
Age of Empires III is a game I had waited eagerly to play for several years. Now it's finally here... but not at all what I expected from a Real-Time Strategy in 2005. It is a solid RTS title... it is also about four years behind the learning curve.
The game is stable on my PC (no crashes or lock-ups). The graphics are quite impressive, granted you have the very best equipment on the market. But the gameplay is stale, and I can best describe the tactical combat portion of the game as like... "driving a Winnebago-Camper through twisting snowy mountain roads with a 30ft boat in tow".
SINGLE PLAYER/MULIPLAYER:
This game was meant to be a predominately multiplayer-online RTS, with very small scale military battles, and games lasting around 20-30 mins. Great for the gamers who run, moderate or frequent the games cloistered community fansites, and have honed their economic build sequence for online play... a.k.a. - "spread-sheet gamers" (see EDIT below) . But AOE3 offers much less, in terms of actual gameplay, for the slower paced, deeper-thinking strategy gamer, or more importantly, the average gamer in general. In comparison, the previous "Age" games (Age of Mythology included) satisfied all three types of gamer.
Additionally, the single player campaign is no longer based around great battles or campaigns from history. Instead, much like Age of Mythology, you are put in the shoes of an innocent (and politically correct) by-stander to the campaigns events, who is pulled along against his or her will, through a sting of fictitious events, which occasionally has the fictional main characters crossing paths, or rubbing up against actual history. But for a "Historically Themed" RTS... there really is very little historical relevance to the single-player campaign.
EDIT:
"Spread-sheet" gaming in RTS's is not about knowing, it's about predicting. It is simply a logical subtractive process, by which it is posible to predict your opponents strategic options, provided you have collected the basic conditional variables in the pregame setup. The conditional variables are: map type, civilization and in AOE3, Home City level. Everything else on the "spread-sheet" is hard data which can be included or dismissed from the prediction, based on the known variables.
AOE2 had MANY more civilizations(like twenty with the expansion). AOE3 has a grand-total of only eight civs... 8 ! So while the individual spread-sheet page which outlines each civilizations strategic options, is slightly larger to accomodate the Home-City cards, the number of civs - and thus the total number of spread-sheet pages needed to make predictions, are fewer... by more than HALF!!
Once you know the variables: map being played, and more importantly, your opponents civilization choice and Home-City level, it is possible to quickly dismiss large portions of that civilizations spread-sheet page as "unavailible" or "unviable" strategic options.
Only when facing an opponent with a very high level Home City, does the ability to make "spread-sheet" predictions become at all complicated. This favors the "hardcore" multiplayer gamers who "spread-sheet" the game now, advance quickly in Home City level (opening up more varied, and more powerful Home-City cards)... then, those players can dominate. The "hardcore" players who run/moderate the fansites, and received the game before general release, have already created their spreadsheets and will use them to immediately dominate the online scene, and increase their Home City levels quickly. It will work out somewhat like an online RPG... there will be a small "in" crowd which quickly dominates, then there will be the more casual gamers... pwned... repeatedly.
yipee...
Outside of the graphics(which are just window dressing), the single, major innovation to this game IS the Home-City. AOE3 really was designed for the "hardcore", online multi-player style of gaming. This package does not offer any new dynamic content for the casual gamer, or especially the single-player gamer to enjoy, than the previous "Age" games had already provided.
-END EDIT
ECONOMY vs. COMBAT:
Nothing has changed in the basic Age of Empires formula... make villagers, collect resources, boom your economy, buy upgrades and destroy your enemy with some military. Nothing has changed that is, except the increased focus on the economic aspect of the game. They have added the "Home City" aspect, which, frankly adds little to the games overall enjoyment besides pulling you away from the battle-map for 2-3 seconds, every 3-4 minutes, to pick which small bonus you would like sent from your chosen European power.
The RTS genre is becoming heavily tactics based, and for good reason; the combat action is what keeps the average gamer coming back again and again. AOE3 on the other hand, has gone in the opposite direction... economy... period. Even the Home-City shipments of military units, are essentially an economic/production based function of the gamplay. Memorize your unit and structure build sequences, then hope your opponent (human or AI) can't click the mouse as fast you. Mean-while, the tactical combat portion of this game is unresponsive, lacks truly effective combat controls and is downright frustrating... even with the pre-release patch installed. The previous "Age" games just seemed to deliver tactical combat with much more efficiency and control than AOE3 has... regardless of the rest of the RTS genre.
THE GRAPHICS:
With more than about two dozen military units engaged on-screen, the frame-rate bogs down considerably on my PC --- [ Pentium4 - 7800GTX - 2G RAM... *Doom3 and Far Cry run great at highest settings*... but not AOE3 ]. I can choose to drop the Anti-Aliasing, Vertical Synchronization, and several other in-game graphics options just to get the game to run more smoothly, but then the game really does NOT look good... even by Real-Time Strategy standards. What kind of PC did they have in mind when they designed this game? Alternately... did they optimize the code at all??
THE SAD TRUTH:
The "Home City"... and very good graphics... that's about it. I really expected more from a "Premier" game developer like Ensemble Studios... especially with their "Marquee" title. With the technical and financial resources at Ensembles disposal, and given the 6 year hiatus from the "Empires" series, AOE3 should have been an all-around much better game... and to a much wider range of gameplay styles.
I'm sure it will ring up big numbers in retail this holiday season... but without some significant patching, for optimization and content, in the next two months... my copy will be in the "used" bin by January.
Brutal??...Yes. But it's business, not personal. I spent $50 (plus tax). Just business...
5 of 28 customers found the following review helpful:
 Age of Fun, 2005-10-19
This game was fairly easy to play after a few levels I could hang 10 on it. It was nice gameplay set up and sweet graphics. The home city was a little confusing at first but I got over it. Definetely 4 stars !
312 of 335 customers found the following review helpful:
A successful installment in the Age of Empires Saga, 2005-10-18
When I sat down with Age of Empires 3 I was hoping for a little more - something new and refreshingly different (ala the Lord of the Rings RTS for example). There is a new feature, the Home City. The rest of Age of Empires 3 is the same as the previous games at heart, with some new makeup and some new units. Don't get me wrong, this new Age of Empires installment is fun and just as addictive as its predecessors, but also feels tired at the same time. If you still enjoy the previous Age of Empires games, you will likely enjoy this one equally.
It has been some time since I played the previous Age of Empires 2 but I remembered a simple, relatively clean interface. In Age of Empires 3 I was a little taken aback by the clutter of information, and juggling Home City shipments (and Deck Building) with what was happening on screen requires a lot of micro-management.
This new installment has some great civilizations and in this regard, the units are new and refreshing. In an Age of exploration and the shift from archeic weapons to gunpowder, you have a variety of new units, and a few units that are unique to each civilization to help set them apart. In addition each civilization has its own unique advantages (and disadvantages) that set it apart from the rest. This is primarily done via a new feature: the Home City and the shipments you are allowed to send from it. I liked the idea of the Home City, but wasn't overly impressed with some aspects of its implementation.
The new units are fun and consist of both modern (for the period) and archeic units giving you some flexibility in what you want to field - however don't expect their power to be equal. The cannon physics are really well done, you can track cannon balls throughout their flight and watch the havoc they bestow upon enemy buildings (which now fall apart in peices instead of as a whole) or the holes they punch in rows of infantry. The charachter animations on most units are really well done, and occasionally you will see them adjust their weapons for long range of short range combat (they throw burning items at enemy buildings instead of firing their highly ineffective muskets). I beleive that musketeers can also fix bayonets to make them more effective at close range, although I didn't notice a signifigant difference, mine continued to fire their muskets regardless of the range of the enemy.
There is another new feature in Age of Empires 3 in the form of an Explorer. He is a powerful unit you can use to explore the map (although any unit can still do his job). The Explorer can take damage, and fall in battle, but doesn't die. He can be rescued and revived. The Explorer has the special ability to deal with treasure guardians in one shot, but a hardy group of soldiers can also take down the treasure guardians without too much difficulty. The Explorer can retreive treasure found on the map and can also build Trading Posts (settlers can build them as well) - this is how you interact with the Native Americans. Building a Trading Post near a Native American outpost forges an alliance with them and you are then allowed to train Native American warriors which are useful because they don't count against your population limit - but they do have a population limit of their own (15 seems to be the norm). In a bizarre twist, the Native Americans are not hostile to these new invaders unless they are allied with one of your enemy players - intersting.
In summation, I did enjoy trying out Age of Empires 3. My initial impression was that the civilizations and corrosponding diversity in units and Home City shipments helped add some variety to the Age of Empires format, but also meant more added juggling. Even with the new ability to zoom in and out a little, I still found it difficult at times to juggle my units. In combat, my nicely organized ranks merged into one wave of units that were impossible to divide up and thus made tactics difficult. You can assign numbers (via Ctl+#) to a group of units to help this, but I didn't find anyway to assign formations to the units (you could do this in Age of Empires 2). When left idle long enough - seeemed to take a long time - my units did auto-arrange themselves into formation, but didn't maintain that formation during attacks. I wish they would have borrowed a little from another RTS game that allows you to train units in groups that are then treated as one unit. This would have made Cavalry and Infantry units that much easier to manage, especially in large numbers. In addition, in that same RTS game you can assign different unit types to merge together and form a new formation of units that is again treated as one unit. This greatly simplifies training units and then moving them about the map and maintaining formations for attacks.
I do look forward to spending a lot more time with Age of Empires 3 as I'm sure there is a lot that I haven't noted in my initial observations. I think the game is true to its heritage and I think that Age of Empires fans will flock to this new installment. However, I don't think that Age of Empires 3 delivers enough new variety in either design or implementation to steal away the fans of other RTS games that are working to reinvent and revitalize the genre.
|
| Page: << 1 ... 36 37 38 39 40 41 >> |
|