I am mainly a PC Player for AOE 4 and I personally love the game, Im not competitive and more of a casual player who play’s with family on the nights or weekends. Recently I’ve played AOE4 on the Xbox for a good solid 4-5 Hours and honestly, the CORE gameplay is great and smooth. There is even a tutorial based version for the Xbox which is different from the PC Version which I can give it points.
The one thing I did not expect was “WOW they can do CROSS PROGRESSION” they just REFUSE to with Steam x Windows, only thing that “cross progression” is achievements, like yay I have 60+ achievements on steam but the account level is 1. BUt Xbox Version… All my levels, mastery, achievements are synced correctly so if you been playing on Windows of AOE4 and play Xbox on the go like me, this is really great and very confusing on WHY STEAM can’t do the same.
However there is some CONS if you do play mainly on PC and are trying out the Xbox Version, there is some issues with it.
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The Graphics in-game are great mostly on par with the PC Version, but the actual graphical UI is TRASH. Example, the Victory Screen or Defeat Screen Logo’s show up, it’s LITERALLY A LOGO that maybe took 5 minutes to make and its not animated. Like it doesn’t FIT with this big logo on the screen, no fade in, no sword fade in, the sword doesn’t animate to break when you lose. its honestly not good, rather have the team just copy and paste the PC Win or Defeat Animation into the Xbox Version.
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The Main Menu is really simple. Its actually sad. When you LB or RB to another TAB, it doesn’t animate anything in the background, heck even no noise when entering multiplayer section or community tab, it’s very boring menu that doesn’t fit right. I might be very picky on porting games to be a almost the same but this one… Really? A main menu should be 99% the same on each version of the game like Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty heck even Fortnite. If I was really being picky; I can say that the only animation in the background is the fog… GOOD JOB on ANIMATING FOG… On the PC Version the water in the ocean of the background is a darker blue with ocean waves that’s animated to make it look like an ocean. Hell the globe is not the same… like why? You have PC Game Assets, USE THEM? Also the “animation” is very buggy and glitchy not even smooth, it even seems the animation is set to 5-10 fps which makes it a stuttering animation instead of a smooth one when entering multiplayer or singleplayer.
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The HUD in-game is very messy and really makes the game cluttered than just hiding the useless options. This is where I might prefer having PC HUD than the Xbox HUD, like WHY can i not have DISPLAY Players AND Display CHAT at the same time?! AOE2 Xbox did this very much fine but you just had to drop the ball on this one. Also don’t get me started on moving troops on top of another troop. I highlight all my troops and want them to reformation, you cannot just press A to move on an unit since it will just select that troop. PC You can just right click and be fine. Like why is this an issue in the first place?? Was this even tested? ALSO like who just gave up making the game summery? Where is the graphs? the numbers? like literally its just a banner on MVP… That really doesn’t explain because the scoring is terrible on both AOE4.
There is some pros like the gameplay is very similar to AOE4 on PC which is great but with the minor issues and very water washed graphical UI/Menu/Buttons and HUD, You should only play this IF you just carry around a Series S in your Backpack or Traveling with one, which I have not tried it on the Series S yet and even more disappointing when all these issues are on a Series X which is almost better then my Computer at times.
- Core 9/10 (Similar or on Par with PC Version)
- Gameplay 6/10 (HUD its very cluttered)
- Graphical/Art UI 3/10 (Poorly Done, PC Assets should of been used)
- Animations/Particle Usage 4/10 (Poorly Used/Animation does not match the framerate of 120 at times.)
Overall, Good release, ill play it when I’m traveling otherwise it’s the Windows Version for me.