I think the Norman campaign is good. The documentary tells me all the complicated relationships between William, Stephen, Henry well (if there is a battle for Richard the Lionheart and crusade it will be even better). I understand the birth of Norman England in the end.
However, French campaign is a bit boring. It begins with names not very well known (some sir). After four hard scenarios, Joan de Arc finally appears but only in two scenarios and she died. Not exciting at all. What’s the highlight and topic of this campaign? It is like a chronicle of the hundred years of war but without a focus.
If the first two scenarios are introduction, four scenarios for Joan and two scenarios for Charles VII, with a highlight on Joan and discussion on the relationship between she and Charles (like why Charles don’t pay for Joan when she is captured), I think this the campaign will be more intensive and interesting to people who don’t know Joan.
The campaign itself is also pressure but not interesting. Defending a large city without gold is hard but not exciting (especially doing it repeatedly). Basically you just throw trash units to fill the line. You don’t have resources to use the cool French knight. The players don’t know French feature in the end.
Finally, La Hire is angry because he only appears as a name on a bottom .
From what I’ve seen none of the campaigns are really exciting. They follow a certain path and do not leave enough freedom. It doesn’t feel epic as it did in AoE 2, because there you were surprised of things, had to explore interesting maps, could find hidden stuff, experienced twists and turns. All that is very reduced in AoE 4. The documentary style does not convince me. It makes the campaign and story telling feel cold and distant. There is no coherence as long time periods are adressed with the campaigns, so the missions rarely build up on each other (do they ever?). And there is zero emotion. AoE 2 had very emotional story telling and you felt like you were actually playing a coherent story that mattered.
But in AoE 4 you get straight to the facts: “This was like that and that is what happened then. There you go. And here, there is another battle”. For which you cannot really care for because every mission is actually a mission on its own and does not give you the feeling of progressing through a story. It also is supposed to be educational, but more so for children it seems to me, as the documentary comment rarely goes beyond one-liners (to not exhaust the attention span of today’s Tik Tok kids? Who knows…).
I was looking forward to the campaigns, but they actually bore me. They are not very much fun to play, but sometimes offer big battles that are somewhat nice to play. But it does not leave me satisfied. Not at all. After I finish a mission I rarely feel like doing another one just after that. I much rather wanna do something else. The AoE 2 campaigns, however, I could not get enough of. And they were also quite educational, because it felt like you knew what was fiction and what was fact.
Just finished the French campaign myself. I agree with your thoughts, it doesn’t seem to be focused on something specific, it’s a bit all over the place. I also found it a bit easier than the Norman campaign, which was already a bit too easy, probably because I had access to stronger units whenever I had the gold. I feel like more could have been done with the final mission as well, I just steamrolled my way through with the army they gave me and a little micro. I do play on hard, so there’s no way to make it more challenging. And I didnt have the feeling it was a final mission, even with that big battle at the end. It wasnt put into play really well in my opinion.
Well, unlocking and watching the documentaries for the Hundred Years War as well was still a pleasure. I really like those.
About to jump in the Mongol campaign after a short break. Hope they finally bring their A game here.
Oh, almost forgot, half the game finished and there was no water warfare at all. Missed opportunity I would say.
edit: I did spam trash units as well, a lot, through almost all the campaign missions so far, it just works so easily to do that, I think that’s what kills part of the charm. I shouldn’t get away so easily doing that. But there’s no more intensive and on point micro like in AoE2, sadly, with the way units behave and the hit boxes issue, so game pushes you to make big blob of cheap units anyway.
I also just completed the french campaign on hardest but I found the last mission rather hard? The last battle, where you get extra knights… I had to restart this part several times. I had more units than a guy in a youtube vid I saw, but still I kept losing. How did you micro the cav?Which upgrades did you get? I tried several times to form a long line to hit as many arches as possible with the charge at once, but the time I finally made it i pretty much just amoved. But I only had 18 units, of which 2 were cannons, one with 10hp, when I was to attack the city. So I was just barely able to make it
But I find their excessive emphasis on Chivary knights vs English Longbow, then end with giving you the big â– â– â– cannon bombing the English out of the European continent, being very fun.
The Mongols campaign is subpar as it is just spamming archers on horse and burning people house, rinse and repeat. The end with puipuibao is okay, but being Mongols means no defensive structure but the AI keep spawning waves of attack being silly. I ends up spamming 20 outpost with cannon per spawn point shutting them down to enjoy the puipuibao tearing down the magical Chinese towers. They should give us both Mongols and Chinese villagers and their tech to exploit.
I thought the French campaign was good. It was quite different from the Norman one, and I really enjoyed defending while under siege.
One difference is that the Norman campaign had twice as many kings during its time (compared to the French campaign), so there was more in-fighting, rebellion, and revolts over who should be on the English throne.
I didnt have problems at the last battle where you receive the extra knights (I did nothing special worth mentioning at that fight I think - I just attacked both sides with full forces and won having a big army remaining still), but the one before that at the bridge when you receive the cannons. That’s the only time I had to load a previous save myself because I was losing most of the units. So this time I cheesed them by shooting them with a cannon until they crossed the bridge, then I kept retreating again and cheesed them into following me by using a few knights or man at arms. They don’t follow you back up to a certain point, they always keep going back, so I did that again and again drawing them back into my cannons at the point where they are about to go back until they all died (or the script where they withdraw came into play). So I killed them only with cannons. I know this doesnt sound like a fair fight, but I cant help abuse hit and run if it’s needed. Other than that I dont think I had any problems and cant remember which upgrades I picked, I think armor vs range.
Oh, btw there are some monks in a village east of the map, did you find them? I was always healing my units.