Don’t get me wrong, I can see why people dislike this new DLC but i actually like it quite a bit.
5Civs for the same price as previous DLC. 3 campaigns
So mountain royals costs the same price as this dlc when this one has 250% the number of civs. Also the 3 standard campaigns. I know people wanted more campaigns for koreans, chinese, tanguts and jurchens, but campaigns are the most expensive and timely part of a DLC. A campaign dlc for those 4 in the future could be an interesting idea for the future.
Unique civs with lots of unique units.
This can also be a con bc of the balance but it shakes things up a lot. Even a calvary civ is missing things like bloodlines. Overall, there feel is very unconventional. Not sure how i feel about the hero units yet but am looking forward to sotl creating videos for another year.
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Overall, I dislike how negative the community is towards the devs about pandering towards china and being a money grab. These devs are some of the best devs for any game i play and are supporting a 26 year old game. Even if they are pandering towards the chinese market, who cares? If it supports the games longevity and financially then i support the decision. Its not like V&V where it was reused content and way overpriced.
To be fair, this DLC at least release Khitans and Jurchens. That’s why I think it is better than Victor and Vanquish overall. But there is no campaign for Khitans and Jurchens. I would expect the sale and review would be low average. Three kingdoms are not selling points.
yeah its a shame they dont have a campaign for them, but its also unrealistic to expect a dlc to have 5 campaigns. The cost of that would make it like 25-30cad which is too expensive for a dlc imo.
Move the 3 kingdom stuff into chronicle and this still would be an awesome dlc. Simple as that, I would pay double if they sell it as 2 products I don’t care. As it is right now, it’s ugly and its unfitting.
I think the 3 kingdoms could be an independent DLC, or simply join the Chronicle, but not come together with Khitans and Jurchens. There are so much diversity caused of age, cross nearly 900-1000 years.
I prefer to believe the production team have no enough time to digest the 2 different age of Chinese history. Dividing in to 2 DLCs could have more time, and make it better, e.g. give the Khitans and Jurchens their own campaign. They worth it, but not as “buy 3 get 2 free”.
At least, it could harvest twice. And furthermore, more Chinese history story could be put in the game.
They need to add campagins of Yelu Abaoji and Wanyan Aguda for khitans and Jurchens. The first two sneak peak images just hints that but then you have 3k campagins.
In addition to the Jurchen and Khitans, it would have been perfect if there were Uighurs, Turks, Xiongnu, Xianbei, Tanguts, etc. Just like how Indian civilization was divided into Bengalis, Gurjarans, Dravidians, and Hindustanis. This expansion pack seems half-baked.
This DLC is certainly not a money grep, else why would the make more new civs and more new mechanics as ever before?
I personally wanted the 3 Kingdoms civs in the game but not like this.
The European looking units are already out of place for the Medieval Asian civs but they ever even worse looking for the Ancient ones.
The Japanese style architecture is not much better either. Even AoE1 Asian Architecture would look better for those civs.
The Turks are already existing. I guess what you want to refer is Gokturks.
Xiongnu and Xianbei are too ancient. I think AoE2 should focus on the opponents of Tang and song dynasties.
This DLC should be Jurchens, Khitans, Tanguts, Tibetans, and Bai, as people had expected.
And then, a central Asian DLC in the future could bring Gokturks and Sogdians. Perfect.
If the dev so worry about the censorship, they can rename the Chinese to Han or Huaxia so that all those civs can be regarded as Chinese civs. And, they can name the Tibetan civ to Tufan for emphasizing the medieval time frame with an old name of Tibet in Chinese historical texts, or to Qiang for reducing the Tibetan focus with the name of a greater group. They could even put the Tanguts and Tibetans together under the Qiang umbrella civ, if they don’t want to have too many new civs. The Bai could also be named to the kingdoms’ names, Nanzhao or Dali, due to censorship if needed. Uyghurs would be very risky so better have them be covered by the Gokturks, Sogdians and Tatars.
But what the hack Three Kingdoms in the base game…
a massive FREE update. Can’t disassociate that from the DLC as DLCs pay for the support of the game. Including the Chinese and Koreans heavily reworked, and moving toward regional unit skins & more unique architectures (castles are done).
the 3K campaigns sound like they will be massive
5 civs indeed, even though 3 of them are questionable (they should be put in chronicles…), making it the biggest expansion since Conquerors
Jurchens and Khitans seem very well designed and fully have their place
Timeline-wise adding the 3K is a stretch but as it notably resulted in the Xiongnu/Huns being pushed west, which caused some minor disturbance in the Force (fall of Rome), and the fact that the antiquity/middle ages don’t exactly correlate outside of Europe, I’ll let that pass
Negative points :
it feels like Jurchens and Khitans are locked behind that DLC and without even a campaign of their own. It’s similar to the Romans added as a bonus for Return to Rome, feeling like forcing the full DLC only for the civ as a bonus, except the 2 “bonus” civs are much less controversial than the Romans were.
reusing chinese and mongol voice lines for them feel half-baked (btw about the Goths still not speaking gothic…)
trainable heroes. Replace them by a trainable commander unit (weaker and cheaper, no hard cap of 1) as the Romans already have, it can be a reskin of the heroes, just unnamed. The heroes gimmick would be fine in a chronicles in which you can do weird experimental things but not in regular AOE2.
on many points Khitans take some Tangut traits, which were expected as a civ
most expected the DLC to be about medieval China, not the 3K, and were already waiting for Tibetans Tanguts… so next time be less vague about what’s anounced.
The backlash about this DLC is mainly expecting something else from the teaser.
I think the issue with this dlc is the same with every dlc where they tried to “surprise” us.
People actually want a simple and conservative dlc with 5 civs, new skins and campaigns for oldies but they’re stubborn with this experimenting thing…
I think the initial shocked reaction is to be expected (I too was like nooo when I saw the 3k) but the content itself might not be so bad, it’s just the package.
So I repeat what I said for chronicles:
These Devs have a problem with having a coherent vision of where this game is going and what’s implementable and what’s too out there.
It’s a problem with the metagame, the marketing, communication and deliver rather than the game itself imo so I guess I’m not as negative as others overall.
They just need to stop being kinky and acting like Santa with a fake beard and just deliver in more honest and realistic terms. Because the path between a surprise and a lie has never felt so thin.
Just be yourself, for god’s sake, don’t over promise and focus more on what makes sense with the core game rather than surprising at all costs. Sometimes there’s something good in things that are to be expected, specially for people who have a mindset that is conservative enough to still play a 26 yo game.