Age of Empires? or Age of Easy?
Age of Empires 3....... where to begin........
Well to begin with, I didnt actually play this game until a year or two after it came out, and needless to say, I was QUITE surprised at what I found.
Age of Empires 3 offers 8 playable factions for skirmish and multiplayer as well as a lengthly multi-Act campaign mode. In the campaign mode, the first act has you playing almost exclusively at low tech levels, with each act following it allowing you to go higher in the tech tree's, thus opening up more units and structures. The campaign itself features the usual good guy finds out about villians plot to take over the world/ do something horribly evil, and vows to stop them at all cost etc. What's also interesting is that each Act follows up the action with the decendants of characters you just finished playing in the earlier acts......
Gameplay consists of your cookie cutter RTS elements, recruit worker units, have said worker units gather various resources, build up armies and blow the crap out of the enemy forces. While it is fun to control armies of musketeers and cannons, the action itself gets old fairly quickly, and the hero units arent able to help enough to keep it interesting.
The Graphics of Age of Empires 3 are decent, but i get this feeling of cartoony-ness every time i see a unit do anything or destroy anything, it somehow reminds me a bit of Warcraft 3.
The Music in the game is Good when it's noticeable, which helps keep you excited for the next skirmish with enemy troops.
My biggest gripe about the game, isnt the graphics or the lack of unit variety (oh did i forget to mention that?) it's the fact that the campaign is too easy, even on harder difficulty modes, you can usually do this and win. In Campaign mode since the enemy is almost always set up before you are, turtle until you get enough resources to build a bigger army than his, because the AI wont ever send his entire army at you at one time, instead trickling them to you so you can tear them to shreds. And in skirmish's, rush the computer with everything you have early on and you can usually destroy a crucial structure or cripple them permanantly and you win. AKA this game is too easy for anyone who has played more unforgiving RTS games.
Overall though, this game is good for some fun and a interesting storyline.
