The reviews are beyond atrocious. Just read them:
Tencent’s soulless Age of Empires Mobile cash-grab is here to ruin your childhood (androidpolice.com)
Age of Empires Mobile now available : r/AndroidGaming (reddit.com)
I just tried Age of Empires Mobile and how to put it… Outrageous doesn’t begin to describe it. : r/ageofempires (reddit.com)
Everyone should avoid this thing like the plague. Do not reward World’s Edge for allowing this abomination to be produced.
Whoever at World’s Edge or Xbox that pushed to sell-off the rights to make a P2W knock-off by a known scummy Chinese developer should be ashamed.
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Haven’t played it but watched some content on it seemed like some overly complicated micro transactions hero RTS game they slapped the Age Of Empires tag on to help get people to play it.
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That’s exactly it. If you haven’t seen the (non-paid-schill) playthroughs, it’s really bad. The Viper has a good one.
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It puzzles me why it was greenlit, and what’s the benefit for the brand, as it has little to do with anything that is real Age of Empires.
It reminds me of two Torchlight games (‘3’ and Infinite) that came out after OG dev, Runic Games, was closed down. But even those are still in the vicinity of what Torchlight was gameplay-wise.
Just made a comment on YT about this:
As much as I’d like to enjoy it, besides some visuals it has nothing to do with the spirit, or gameplay, of Age of Empires. I really have no idea why it exists, as there are is historical value as a hook, that charmed people who played OG AoE 1/2, nor it does reflect the gameplay of AoE, so people that enjoy it might be satisfied when transitioning to a ‘big’ title.
Sorry, but Java Age of Empires II from 2005 is a better mobile AoE title.
And speaking of that title- if anyone feels like experimenting a bit/ is in the mood for a blast from the past, I’d recommend taking a look at these older entries. Back in the day it was a bit mindblowing, to have these tiny versions of AoE on basic-ass phone in your pocket. Interesting curiosities.
I swear I’d prefer a Match-3 AoE-themed game, with great music, references to all installments, and reflection of some of AoE mechanics, transformed to gameplay, like 4 collectible resources used to unlock stuff/customize visuals, or some of the countering of available units/player powers (click to use your ‘archers’ skill to counter [destroy] enemy infantry solid blocks)
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After how rudely Timi and Microsoft treated Age of Noob, and the very poor review that he had given the game, I was expecting bad. But I was not expecting it to be as bad as it is.
The campaign feels completely nonsensical. It throws a whole bunch of proper nouns at you that have no bearing in history, it basically tells you to care about them rather than using any writing skills to show why you should care. It throws a whole bunch of fantasy nonsense around, like a mystical sword and magic powers.
The scripted cut-scenes are buggy as hell. Voice lines don’t always match up with the text on screen, and the dialogue is pretty clearly not written by a native English speaker, misusing words and feeling stilted. At times voice lines just paused and the next line failed to trigger for many seconds, leaving an awkward pause.
But all that could be forgiven if it had engaging gameplay. Unfortunately, the worst problem is the gameplay. The campaign gameplay doesn’t really feel like an RTS so much as a point-and-click adventure. You don’t control villagers, you just click on a button to build buildings where the game’s script wants them. You don’t have any semblance of micro in combat, you seem to have different minigames for combat depending on where in the game you reach it; but none of the minigames feel like they give any meaningful control. I haven’t been able to figure out how to exit the campaign into any other form of gameplay, it’s like an unskippable tutorial, but since there’s no actual RTS gameplay in the tutorial I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be learning. I eventually unlocked something it calls “island tactics”, but this again doesn’t really feel like a game. I’m sure it gets more difficult and requires learning at some point, but right now I it’s just small featureless grid with a few bunches of units on it, then you press “battle”, then some animations play and you win.
In summary, this game really does not feel like an Age of Empires game. It doesn’t really even feel like a game. It is extremely disappointing that Microsoft has allowed their brand to be tarnished by association with this shovelware. World’s Edge and Microsoft should be ashamed to have sold out their brand for this. Forgotten Empires and Relic should be ashamed to be associated with a brand sold out like this, tarnishing their products in the process.
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Oh, and it’s pretty obvious that they’re buying reviews in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The written reviews compared to unwritten star-only reviews tell a very telling tale, and if you read the 5-star reviews many are obviously written by people who never played the game, and some even obviously written by AI.
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I remember watching that live and was pleasantly surprised by Viper’s ummmm disappointment with it as someone who isn’t very controversial.
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It is same format copied to every known IP, reminds time when aoe castle siege was made as Clash of clans clone (castle siege at least tried something new by allowing to control troops unlike in competitors). Currently There is LOTR game, Walking Dead game, Civilization one is coming this year too and today I found there is somehow even avatar last airbender game made into this format! Tencent is also developing along with this game command & conquer version to compete with themselves. Probably missed many other known IP clones…
I don’t think format itself isn’t bad (these games are really popular after all) it is just that companies behind popular clones are really greedy with P2W, and obviously that they try take advantage of popular IPs and therefore disappointing existing fans whom game was never made in first place. AoE:Mobile instead of making unique graphics like other AoEs have done tries copy itself as AoE2 in both game graphics and in ads for the game(they also used AoE4) similar to older chinese knock offs Microsoft has been warning about not being related to Aoe. AFAIK AoE:Mobile is even more P2W than market leader Rise of Kingdoms. I know person who spent $300 on AoE Mobile day 1 and quit same day because he realized game is worse than competitors both gameplay and monetization wise. UI is very cluttered and different system may be confusing. This is done on purpose because as said in popular(~1M views) 3 year old video about Lord of the rings version: “You are meant to be lost so they can sell you the method to become found.”. I recommend watching whole video to see why monetization design in these games is so frustrating. Also seem a big mistake by developers to not release PC version at same time as it normally done with these games. CN version of AoE:Mobile can be played on pc and on browser.
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