Game reviews on steam

everybody gangsta… till the modders start showing up

Not when they haven’t even played enough to know what is in were in which place? Lmao.

I never said anything against what you are writing, read carefully. I wrote, don’t base on those reviews that have less than 3 hrs in game play time.

So here’s my honest feedback on the game so far and why I think, on balance, you should probably get it. It’s a long one because I have nothing better to do so strap yourselves in. I was in the multiplayer stress-test and had ~30 hours there and have 6 on the full release so that’s what I’m basing my feedback on.
TL;DR: More flavour, better-looking game, better attention to historical detail, nifty additions like new civs and maps. Some kinks need ironing out with new voiceovers and the UI. Bugs on release as with literally every game made, ever, that will inevitably be ironed out. Some people complaining have valid points but plenty don’t make much sense.

The big caveat to note is that the original gameplay remains more or less the same with some tweaks. If you didn’t enjoy the original then you probably won’t enjoy this either, much as I think the original was absolutely brilliant.
That said, I think a lot of the criticism of AoE3 from within the fanbase doesn’t really make sense.
I’ve heard people say, courtesy of a Spirit of the Law video on Youtube, that the counters aren’t as intuitive as in AoE2 because everyone uses guns, but you tell me why a guy lobbing a spear is an intuitive counter to archers (especially when traditionally skirmishers were used against infantry, not archers), or how an onager which looks identical to an AoE catapult is suddenly anti-infantry. Like any game, you need to get to know the mechanics and understand them before you can exploit them.
There are other points making the rounds, like the Home City mechanic being bad or the gameplay being too simplistic (one time I had a guy try to explain to me why not re-seeding farms means AoE3 is dumb, and I don’t think I need to say more than that), but really, I’ve always got the impression that this is just people who don’t want changes from Age of Empires 2 and seem weirdly upset that a different game is, you know, different. This is a major issue with the Steam reviews I’ve seen and frankly, they’re negative without reason. There are people complaining you don’t need to unlock cards now, even though that’s better for multiplayer novices. There are people complaining that no-one asked for changes to Native American civs even though those changes are minimal at most. One guy just straight up says “Change all the gameplay mechanics back to the way they used to be”. To him I’d say, if you want to play a game that’s literally exactly like the original, go play the original.
The summary of that is, I’d really urge you to go into AoE3 DE with an open mind rather than assuming it’s going to be bad or good. I’ve got some points from my perspective and if any of them are important to you then I hope they’re useful, but really, watch some gameplay and maybe give it a go before you make a solid judgment positively or negatively for yourself.

Starting with the negatives:
-Some of the new voice work is dodgy-to-poor, especially around Native American/campaign changes. I totally get why they wanted to respect Lakota/Haudenosaunee people in a remaster and I respect them for it. My issue is the poor quality of that respect. Throughout the campaign there are numerous times they’ve changed the subtitles but haven’t changed the voiceover (e.g. a character will still say “Iroquois” when the subtitle says Haudenosaunee), or where a character’s name has been changed it’s painfully obvious they’ve just cut off the end of their name and the resulting sound is jilted (i.e. Kanyenke to Ka:nien). It’s a good idea in principle, they just haven’t put in the effort with the small details to prove they care as much as they could.
-The new UI is… interesting. You can chose a classic option which is more-or-less the same as the old version but I don’t understand the design choices they’ve made.
-As with all new releases there are some bugs - the worst one I’ve seen is your troops somehow teleporting into - houses, cliffs, etc. - and being unable to move. It’s annoying but you have to give some leeway with games just released because bugs will always exist and need time to be ironed out.

Now for the good stuff:
-The game’s never looked better. It’s genuinely gorgeous. The old AoE3 was really starting to look its age and this just brings it back to life - if you enjoyed the old one and just want it to look better, run with this one, and frankly I consider that to be reason enough alone to buy it.
-The soundtrack is still basically the same but crisper and clearer, and given how great the original was, this is a plus.
-Swedes and Inca are interesting civs to add (I’m personally holding out for Oman one day but that’s because I’m a Middle Eastern fanboy and want my Arabs back). The Inca have a pretty big focus on native troops and have some units who do novel things, like a ranged snare effect or damage over time, so they’re quite niche.
The Swedes are a bit more similar to the other European civs, they just feel “heavier” than the average thanks to expensive but tough troops.
I’d need more time to play with both of them but they’re both well-made and good fun. Criticism of the Inca as being identical to the Aztecs is baseless, their unit rosters perform entirely different functions and need to be played differently to be successful.
-Other small additions here and there, like new maps, are very welcome, and revolutions have changed too- you have a wider range of revolutionary civs (The Ottomans actually get relevant civs like Egypt or Hungary rather than random American civs) and you can send a card for at least some of them to enable citizens, who are basically normal settlers. The end result is that a revolution is a bit more like using Ragnarok in Mythology - you get a big military boost in the short term but you can still rebuild an economy afterwards if that fails, it’s just difficult to do so effectively, which I think remedies the former uselessness of revolutions and adds them as a potentially viable approach now.
-The historical battles are nifty - I’ve only done the first one (Algiers) but it was exciting, suitably challenging, a nice shift from regular gameplay (if only because you’re playing with niche civs like the Barbary Pirates), and on the whole a good experience.
-There are some gameplay changes which should have pretty big impacts for other civs. The Spanish now get a shipment which gives them 400 gold every time they get a future shipment, which means we might actually see them get used sometimes. Grenadiers now have access to a grenade launcher, which takes from a joke unit to being a musketeer on steroids. There are others besides, small changes, but ones that add new flavour to all civs which is great.
-Some people call it “pandering to sjws” but they never really explain why this is a bad thing or how it negatively impacts gameplay. That’s because it doesn’t. It’s really good they’ve tried to respect Native Americans in this release, especially the Haudenosaunee and Lakota through getting names right and tweaks to gameplay mechanics, like trading sites rather than mining. We’re borrowing their cultures and history to have fun and we aren’t paying them or even thanking them for the privilege. The least we can do is appreciate that those cultures don’t owe us simplicity and push for devs to make as accurate and sensitive portrayals as possible of those people, and it’s great the devs have taken that on board. I just wish they’d put in more effort with it. Again, the original is still there if you really miss Warchiefs being able to convert animals, game-changer as that so definitely obviously was (sarcasm, in case that wasn’t obvious).
-Finally, this game has generated huge interest in AoE3 and player numbers are through the roof. There’s likely never been a better time for multiplayer and you have the Art of War sessions to get you up to speed. That only applies if you like multiplayer or need a refresher but it’s definitely a positive for the game and the community in my book.

Hope that’s useful but if you’ve got any specific points you want to talk about, you’re very welcome to shoot me message/reply and I’ll go through them with you to make sure your decision is one that works for you, or at least get back some of the enthusiasm you might have lost.

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I’ve never played III until Definitive Edition. So far I like the game play differences between II and III enough, that if an update releases for adding numerous small things that are in II but absent in III, I would put III DE about equal to II DE in enjoyment. Things such as skipping cut scenes, shift-queue movement nodes appearing in unexplored map areas, shift-queueing Settlers working like it does in II, moving the smaller rectangular buttons at the very bottom of a building/unit’s UI to the upper square boxes like they are in II, a garrison UI like in II because III’s garrison UI is harder to read in comparison to II, an army selection UI showing individual unit health like in II for better managing low health units, and any other small thing people complain about I didn’t mention here.

Nevertheless I sympathize with the people who say all of these minor imperfections add up to give AoE III the perception of a sloppy rush job. And to the fence sitters I recommend waiting a patch or two to see what fixes come to mechanics, bugs, and quality of life features.

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I explain to you:

While they were using time and money to make changes no one asked to natives, the Campaign is totally broken to the point that Malta is using the British flag.

They tried to respect the natives so much that they not even tested the campaign.

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The game is not bad and to a certain degree enjoyable. Just give it a few months until they have fixed the bugs, then buy it. If they don’t fix anything, don’t buy it. The negative reviews are well deserved. Having played all the betas, I can tell you, a lot of the feedback got ignored which you can clearly see now. Just keep an eye on the Steam reviews until they change from “Mixed” to “Mostly positive”.

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Right! I was about to add similar comment well… Let’s hope the Devs listen to our feedback.

I hope they find a better solution for the Home Cities, like letting the player choose whether or not they want the original progression mode.

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Yea all the negative comments about pandering to SJWs and such is just stupid, mostly because things like changing the “colonial age” to “commerce age” and changing the name of the “plantation” to “estate” are just sanitising those aspects of the game. The so called “SJW” thing to do would be to bring even more attention to those aspects of history since most of the people associated with the SJW label are more likely to want to raise awareness about those aspects of history than to want to whitewash it…

As for the legitimate gameplay concerns, I confirm the game currently runs terribly on my system which has higher specs than the recommended so I would say negative reviews about performance are valid.

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Or have a separate system for multiplayer and single player. Multiplayer decks with all cards unlocked and single-player with the old progression put back in.

Bring the old UI design for the deck building back and just have two tabs, one “single player” and the other “multiplayer”.

I think that’s a realistic compromise.

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Agreed. We want the Asian Dynasties HUD UI back!

I amde a forum post about that topic, but it hasn’t gained much traction yet.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I accept your point that the campaign needs ironing out but this doesn’t come at the expense of respecting people and their history - surely we want both to happen? I’d say that if you’re going to use someone’s story for entertainment, the first thing you do is tell that story right or you have no right to do so. Everything else comes second.
Frankly, the Knights of St John (not, I need to point out, any faction called Malta) using the Union Flag is something that needs to be fixed, sure, but it’s an aesthetic mistake at best. It isn’t one that shows disrespect to a living people’s history like much of the issues around Native Americans in the game.

I played my first two games yesterday. First a Campaign episode that went smooth and there was no problem what so ever. Then I played a scirmish that crashed on me about 1 hour into the game. So one up and one down for me. In a whole I like the game a lot better than the earlier version. My favourite AOE is still AOE2 DE though :slight_smile:

The expansion home cities were left unfinished when those were released. They never received the upgrades or customization that were standard features of the original home cities. Not only did they leave every expansion home city incomplete, but they have yet to finish the new home cities in this regard.

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Though I don’t really care about the issue, this is kind of like you were making a game about World War 2, and changed the name of concentration camps to “Holiday Camp”.
I think AoE3 already was criticized in the past for passing the chance of dealing with slavery and genocide in a meaningful way in their campaigns, and to me this is just a step further away from that, denying it even ever happened.

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they used to advertise them as holiday camps tho

Usually slaves were occupied at plantations. In AoE3 they are European Settlers. Not very historically accurate for sure. Trivializing terrible things in games is not the right way to go, especially when the audience is younger. You will teach them the wrong history.

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yeah, I think AoE3 is just in a very difficult spot of history.
Since I already made the comparison with the Holocaust, lets continue from there and say, that one can easily invalidate my previous argument by saying
“yeah, but allowing the player to build a concentration camp to, for example, increase production is also a terrible idea”.
Addressing these things is difficult, ignoring them, however can deal easily as much harm as addressing them in the wrong way.

I have crashed 10 times since release date. No game this unstable warrants a positive review, despite all the good changes that have been made. It’s not worth it if every game I start has a 33% chance of fatally crashing.

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