Age of Empires III

Game Description
Age Of Empires 3 is the sequel to the critically-acclaimed strategy game. It introduces all-new gameplay elements, new civilizations to discover, random maps to conquer and a single-player campaign unlike any other. A.I. opponents are now well-developed characters with deep strategies, motivations, and personalities-and more than 4,000 audio taunts at their disposal. New lighting and shadow effects, in a game world designed to have real physics and depth — you’ll almost feel like you’re there. The first 3D iteration of the series uses bump- and tone-mapping to render realistic water and shadows. Havok engine’s cause-and-effect physics bring battles to lurid life.

Game Features
- Start out playing as the British and begin with a solid economy, or lead the French into an easy alliance with Native Americans – 8 total civilizations to choose from
- Work with Native Americans to your tactical advantage, for the first time ever
- Develop your own Home City, and customize it make it wealthier and more powerful as you take over Europe
- Explore the New World and create colonies while seeking out new resources and making alliances with the Native Americans
- Recover buried treasure from the Caribbean, hunt bison on the Great Plains, compete for trade routes and fortify the coast of New England

Game Review
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 a back 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.

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. –By JD (Provo, Utah USA)

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Tags: age of empires, downloads, free, games, strategy

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Game Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.