For me the Rise of The Rajas and the Last Khan Campaigns are the best. They are all very good. The worst are the African DLC Campaigns. Yodit 1, Sundjata 1, Francisco 1, Tariq ibn Ziyad 1 and 4 are terrible. The other Tariq and Yodit scenarios are average, Francisco is above average, but Sundjata is amazing.
For overall The Hautevilles is the best campaign. It has amazing and unique mechanics. The first scenario is average, but the other 4 are just so amazing. Sforza is my second favorite. Pritviraj is great, but it is too short and the 5th scenario is just a legend. Alaric is probably the worst campaign, it is a pain playing against Byzantines as Goths and it is nearly impossible to get the extra achievements.
About Bari being best and worst on the polls at the same time, I think that the people who vote for best are thinking about the new version in DE (excellent campaign rework) and the ones who vote for worst are thinking about the HD version (it was weird).
I also think that it’s because it’s really tough. I frankly had a love/hate relationship with it where I absolutely LOVED the scenarios, but would suffer trying to beat them and thus I would hate it. I still think Bari 4 is insanely tough but beating it on hard was my greatest AoE2 accomplishment.
Hey man, thanks for the kind words! I designed Hautevilles, Sforza, and Prithviraj (as well as Almeida and Ivaylo), so glad you enjoyed them! Be sure to check out my custom campaigns here on Mods All – Age of Empires or on the in-game mod manager by searching for “PhillySouljah” if you want more!
If you are talking about the original Forgotten campaigns, those are the worst by extremely wide margin.
Also, original Bari is the worst campaign of all imo. In contrast, the reworked Bari in DE becomes the best for me among the Forgotten ones you had. Good job to the devs, keeping the challenge but got rid of the irritation.
I think as an attempt to cover one part of the clusterfudge that were the Italian wars it does a fantastic job. The devs should really consider giving us an Cesare Borgia campaign.