Anyone else feels like the new castles look strange and out of place?
They feel likely cheaply made fan assets.
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Depends which one we are talking about.
I really like most of them
Some like the Malay and Berber one look really weird tho, yeah
And most of them are just too big
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They do look a little out of place. I played the Chinese last night, and between the new Castles and new units, I was like, “This is a different game.” My brain didn’t even want to register it as AoE2. I had the same thought while playing an additional game as the Berbers, but not so much with the Bulgarians. Perhaps campaigns will restore the classic feeling.
Personally I like the Berber castle. For Malay as another guy in forum has pointed out the wall should be more terracotta looking consistent to their wonder or feudal age SEA architecture.
I think these two dont look structurally sound
You can totally tell they hired a new guy to do the artwork, instead of that original artist/team. That’s fine, but I’m not sure the new guy know the AoE2 art style well, and I don’t know why there aren’t any senior artists/ art director/ someone like that to help them.
The most critical problem now right, I think is the proportion, look at the comparison between old and new castle, and I think you can immediately tell the problem:
The original castle is consistent with the AoE2 scaling, notably the gates & windows fit a person, still, too small, but believable, and fits in a 4x4 grid
The new castles … I don’t they were even designed for 4x4 initially. I can easily imagine a story like the new artist didn’t really know about AoE2, but finished the model anyway, then they just scale down the model and squeeze it into the 4x4 grid and call it a day. Could because of the deadline pressure?
This is … AoE4’s small building problem again. It happened before and surprised how they learned nothing about it.
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I don’t have an issue with any of the new castles, I have an issue with many of the architecture sets.
The castles aren’t out of place, all the other buildings are.
The Persians should have Central Asian Architecture.
The Huns, Cumans, Mongols and Khitans should have a new nomadic set.
The 3 Kingdoms, Jurchens, China, Korea and Vietnam also look way to Japanese.
Goths, Byzantines, Bulgarians and Romans should have a different architecture set that looks more Early Medieval instead of Renaissance.
Malay also kinda feel like they got the wrong architecture.
Maybe one day they will make a new architecture set for AoE2. There has been no new one added since the Definitive Edition (if we don’t count Chronicles).
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Can you provide detail on that feeling ?
Do you feel them “not detailed enought”, or “too fanservice” or “not realistic enought” ?
Yeah, having played a few other Civs.
Portuguese looks good, but Vietnamese looked weird.