After finishing all the new campaigns on both Hard and Legendary difficulty, I gathered some feedback and maybe people can contribute adding more points so the devs can improve their next DLC.
1 - Lautaro
What is wrong with the swords level…? Its not a new thing that the swords level does not correspond to the actual difficulty of the campaign, and its more a vague description of how complex the mechanics of the campaign is, but this one is ridiculous. The first level of this campaign is the hardest first level of the DLC and it should not have this amount of things going on in the map AND have an enemy snowball mechanic.
Worse yet: I found the third level to be the hardest of the DLC, not because of the difficulty, but because of how annoying it is designed. It have the ‘fixed number of villagers’ design that is usually annoying by itself but then there is a constant enemy unit spam for TWO factions that target your villagers AND they have only 10 HP AND you can’t replenish them.
I don’t know if anyone find this kind of design cool or fun, because every time you lose a villager, you start a reverse snowball where you start to lose harder, as its a permanent loss you cant recover. If you lose enough villagers, the player in fact already lost the mission but he does not know yet, because he can’t collect enough resources to train an army that can destroy the enemy, because every enemy attack wave reduce the enemy total military resources little by little until he actually lose. In Chronicles, the designers already learned this lesson, as every mission where you have limited villagers or builders doing something always have a mechanic to recover your loss after a cooldown, so the punishment to lose your limited villagers are always temporary, never permanent.
This mission should of course to the same, as every time you save villagers, the game saves how many villagers you should have and if you lose some, after a cooldown your ally in the map should give you villagers to replenish the lost numbers.
The final missions while not that hard, are incredible enemy spam based, but the problem usually is not the amount of enemies that attack you, usually the problem is how frequent they attack you, because you can’t leave your base because there is a constant wave after wave of enemies going after you. Usually, BIGGER and STRONGER attack waves that are not frequent are better than a medium sized attack wave and attack you over and over. Its better to give enemies a small frequent attack wave that don’t have siege so the player can defend with a garrison and an infrequent very big wave that they have to defend. (the Age of Mythology Reginleif Rally mythical battle does this well)
Also, something that plagues all campaigns of Age of Empires 2: enemy ranged unit micro. This is not something that increase the difficulty, it just make missions annoying and reduce a lot of options of units you can use. In campaigns usually you can’t use melee infantry, because the AI will scater all their ranged units and run all over the place microoing them while your melee infantry chase them all everywhere.
This campaign is no different, worse yet by how many different ranged units the enemy have. You need cavalry and ranged units to actually kill the enemy ranged soldiers otherwise they will retreat until your own units agro all the enemy base defenders.
Please, disable that just like in Age of Mythology. Its better to fight against 10 archers than 5 that micro and hit and run all over the place. This kind of behaviour should be exclusive for Elite Soldiers factions of very specific situations/levels, not the default for all AI.
The decisions I did not found a good addition. Do you want to start all the next missions with an extra hero that have an aura or not…? This is kind of a Hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby situation. The ‘choices’ between Farmer or Miners bonus are not that good either. Farming is something you build a lot and you build in all missions that have base building and you always have much more farmers than miners, so unless the mining bonus is overhelming better, this is really not a ‘choice’, as its like asking the player “do you want +2 damage or +1 damage?” The choice between Spear or Skirmisher however, is a good kind of decision, as its a more balanced choice and not something permanent. (like, if you choose spears you can’t train skirmishers anymore)
The story: I know age of empires 2 usually simple fabricate or change histories to some fiction for drama purposes, but why the campaigns in this DLC decided to go full fictional drama in all their stories…? The ending of Lautaro with him fighting one vs one with Valdivia and ending the fight like its some kind of superhero movie, is this really necessary? The real story of Lautaro and the others in these camapaigns are already interesting by itself if you tell them straight, so why this is necessary…? The native leader telling the lautaro tale is spreading fake news for no reason? Or the point is how history is biased by who is telling it?
The good: The designs of the maps, units and enemy bases are all top tier. Really, the current designers simple nail how cool they design the maps itself. Exclusive things like the War Dogs, Wooden Wall and Wooden Fortress are all very cool. Congrats to all of this, nothing to complain here. And thanks for making a lot fo build and destroy missions.
2 - Arariboia
Again the sword level don’t match the difficulty and for some reason this campaign loves to put all its difficulty on enemy rushes, where they attack you soon and hard and if you fail to proper defend that first two attack waves, you basically lose by cumulative disadvantage. If you survive the initial attacks, you basically win because nothing really changes in the enemy behaviour and attack waves.
Except on mission 4, holy shit what a grind. Its the grindiest and longest mission in the DLC. You are supposed to siege an enemy fortress, but its the contrary, two enemy factions constant send big waves in very frequent intervals and you need to destroy one faction slowy little by little and then the main fortress little by little. Not a siege mission really. Worse yet is the side quest of repairing your allied cannon galeons, that you can try to defend as hard as you can and they will only destroy 2 fortress max because they will suicide the ships one way or another and you, the player, don’t get anything else.
When making a siege mission, its better for the design to be shifted to the enemy building a Wonder or the enemy having a timer for a very large reinforcement that if you fail to defeat them in time, then the mission transform into a grind, punishing the player for failure.
I dunno about the decisions, as extra villagers are such a no brainer that I would like to hear from people that picked the military option to say if its worth it.
The story: the same thing, Arariboia and Mem de Sa history is already very cool and interesing by itself, so why there is a need for these fictional fabrications like the French somehow arriving in the exact same day the campaign story is happening and making it to look like the French came and gone in a month…? By the campaign, you think France Antarctique lasted a month and Fort Coligny was built in a blink of a eye, when in fact the French colony lasted for 12 years. Do people prefer this fictionalized and dramatized way they made the campaigns or prefer they focus on a more acurate history?
The good: the level designs are all very interesting and fun. Lots of build and destroy missions with water options. An ally that actually don’t betray you and help you in all missions! I really liked this campaign and how well crafted the maps are. I think its my prefered campaign if you forget about the grind 4th mission and the unbalanced rush based difficulty.
3 - El Dorado
Its really the campaign with the most ‘exotic’ mechanics, but lets attack the worst aspect: the decision mechanic in this campaign simple don’t work. Terrible decision. You choose between serving your ‘evil’ master or switch sides with the enemy. In pratice, the narrative become schizophrenic, always talking in vague terms like “my master is pleased” “I have to do this thing” “its dangerous to that” or straight nonsense situations like when you are serving your ‘evil’ master and your lover is gathering intel about the enemy and saying how dangerous this is. Why its dangerous…? You are helping your evil master win. Its only dangerous when you are playing the mission in the other side, where your lover is giving you intel about the evil master.
Then in the mission where the evil master lie to the spanish that el dorado is in the south lands, your lover tell how the evil master is lying and this is not going to end well for them. Why not…??? The spanish will destroy the evil master because of the lie, thats a good thing! We are in the entire campaign trying to do that! Of course this line only make sense when you are in the evil master side, because then the spanish will fight against you.
Do you want to play the alternate version of the missions…? Too bad, you need to replay the first mission and pick the other option to unlock the alternate versions and keep doing this if you want to switch.
Seriously, never do the execution like this again. The idea of you choosing one master or the other and following a different campaign is very cool, but please, create two sets of campaign missions for this, so you can actually do intros and cinematics with proper story that actually talks about what you are doing and tweak the map missions to actually make sense for the massive difference it is that you are in one side or the other.
Mission 2 is the hardest mission in this campaign but the rest are not that difficulty and is in fact, easier than the previous campaigns missions. The last mission in particular have a terrible design and it was a terrible last mission for the DLC. You basically just keep using gold to make the enemy waste time and kill each other and then in the last 15 minutes that they stop doing that, its too late for them to actually be a threat and you basically just wait doing nothing. When replaying in legendary I actually destroyed the enemies by attacking so I had any actual action to do. I commend the effort for the tons of script and work that I think this mission had, but it simple does not work and a regular ‘defend the wonder’ would be much cooler.
The story: this one did not even tried to follow any actual myth or history, it simple fiction from start to finish. And I don’t understand why. Pacanchique myth is actually a very tragic and cool story AND with the decision mechanic they could actually make the historical route, where pacanchique lover is kidnapped and killed and he use the spanish to destroy his evil master and then the fictional route where he manage to keep his lover alive and defend against the spanish. I don’t understand why they followed this path and I would like to know why they did.
The good: again, the map designs are always very beautifull and well made and the third mission is very cool. It have a lot of solid ideas but looks like an unpolished campaign that was rushed to be made in time. Its the one I desliked the most of the three.
Overall, while I pointed a lot of negative things about the campaigns, because the point is providing feedback, they are, in fact, a lot of fun to play with the classic gameplay we all like and love. While things can certainly be improved, like the terrible decision to change the map to the 3 kingdom style instead of the classic age 2 style, they really delivered a classic age 2 experience.
I hope they keep doing more campaigns because I will certainly keep buying all of them (and don’t dare doing a 3 kingdoms 2 eletric boogalo).
What about you? What are the problems of the new campaigns that people in the community think they can improve in future content?