Yes, they tricked us into buying AoE 1 DE…
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I really don’t know as I haven’t followed AoE1 much: what full product wasn’t delivered? I admit, it has been a few years since I played it and only played a few games. It worked for me at the time and seemed like a full product
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Yes, but I still had the same problems as the original AoE 1…
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That goes back even more years since I last played that version 
Oh well, I do think more could have and probably should have been done for AoE1 Definitive Edition, and personally hoped/expected more to be done post-launch, but I can’t remember what was promised. It’s all good, I can look through AoE1 bug threads and such if I’m more curious
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Yea its hard not to feel a little ripped off. At least I think Microsoft should refund us the money we paid for AOEDE in exchange for taking our license for that game back. I know for a fact after this DLC I will just outright delete AOEDE from my computer and never play it.
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If AoE1:DE is being abandoned in favor of moving players to AoE2:DE, then a steeper discount for AoE1:DE owners to buy the AoE2 necessities would be appreciated, for sure
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Don’t listen to the poster above you, they reply to everything, even when they don’t know what they are talking about.
I’m writing this post in a haste, so it’ll come out disorganized. “No time to write it shorter” and all that.
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AoE1DE does indeed have a problem of not bringing UI functionality up to the standard of even 1999’s original AoE2, like game setup screen not remembering your civ choices.
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However that’s not the main problem. The biggest one is the pathfinding was extremely broken at launch, and not “same as original AoE1” like some people assume - the dev team actually tried making significant changes to pathfinding, and in the process broken it. It sometimes doesn’t work at all.
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It also has other unfinished features at launch: incomplete campaign levels, one or two unfinished building models, and the entire “Classic mode” that uses old graphics and music. Also strangely, you can only hear classic music in the Classic mode, there’s no option to use them any other way.
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Some of the issues were only slowly fixed over 2 years, with months of intervals without communication between patches.
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The “unfinished” features were largely completed (if not bug-free), though Classic mode is left in the launch state.
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More pathfinding fixes were issued, though it is never completely fixed, and may break in new ways.
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Other than that, the product in general is rough and under-polished when compared to the original AoE1, or the DE of AoE2. It very much was a testing ground for dev processes that would be used for AoE2DE.
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For example: the oversized boxy UI buttons for everything, or the under-detailed unit animations. These points were significantly improved in AoE2DE.
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To save costs, no attempt was made to replicate the original’s atmosphere:
This is what every campaign level’s briefing screen looks like in original:
And this is DE:
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Another example of failing to recapture the attention to detail: Gazelles had the most unique movement mode in the whole Age series: they leap around instead of run. In AoE1DE, they now run.
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The original Help file, with pages of information on history behind the game, is also absent.
Meanwhile, there are a few things that Return of Rome may improve:
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The greatest victim of AoE1DE’s buggy launch state is the community: it drove away players, making the AoE1DE community smaller than it could be. Return will effectively “reboot” the community-building process, hopefully to a better result.
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DE was a severe color design downgrade that rides roughshod over the original game. The original game is bright and clear; DE is muted and muddy. Judging from screenshots, Return of Rome will address the color design problem by increasing the color contrast.
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Nailed it pretty much. Exactly how I feel.
Let Lions chase Gazelles.
Fix cheat unit models.
Bring back bitmaps in custom scenarios and campaigns.
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