Thoughts about the game

The game is fun. I’m an AoE3 player, but also played a bit of AoE2 and this game is pretty much what I would have liked to see.

Does this mean it’s a great game? Well I’m hesitant to say that. My main (and pretty much only) concern is the price. I’m sure it will be worth it eventually but with only 8 civs right now? Honestly, I’ll probably just wait until they add a few more and/or until there’s a sale.

With that said, I do think it’s a really enjoyable game with only a few setbacks.

I, for one, don’t dislike the graphics. The buildings look awesome and while the units tend to look a little cartoony, it’s not at all distracting.
Graphically my only problems are the huge shining yellow things that happen every time I set a gather point (that’s really overdoing it in my opinion) and the fact that the fog of war seems to be a layer above everything else, namely the little blue circles that you get when you send a unit somewhere. If you send it to undiscovered places you simply have no feedback. Also please add the little square we had in AoE3 when you used the map to move units.

I also played on the water maps and all I can say is that it was the most fun I had on water. AoE2 and AoE3 doesn’t even come close.

I love that we can zoom out. It’s not much, but it is enough for me to actually see where I am in my own base so I don’t get lost and waste time by trying to find certain buildings. That said I think the fog should be decreased a bit since if I zoom out it already appears pretty much everywhere.

Combat feels awesome and I have pretty much never seen counters work so well. I love the counter system, it’s way more intuative than in AoE3.

Advancing through the first age is really quick if you know what you’re doing and I love that however, I feel like as soon as you start upgrading things, everything grinds to a halt. Every. Single. Upgrade. Just. Takes. So. Long. In the first age it seems like you wanted to make the game snappy and it really works, but then I have to spend minutes on researching upgrades, most of which (economic) don’t seem to make a huge difference. In AoE3 there either weren’t so many upgrades or they just didn’t take this long, because it feels like I spent much less time upgrading.

That is all, if i didn’t mention something, you can assume I didn’t dislike it.
See you, sooner or later, because I will eventually be buying the game.

Edit:
I’d also like to add that the game didn’t lag at all, there wasn’t a single crash, and loading the game is pretty quick even with my slow HDD. Even if it’s not perfect yet, it’s miles ahead of AoE3 in terms of stability.

5 Likes

I really like the points you made here, I am also aoe3 player and I love this game.

Totally agree. Water games in aoe3 are one of the most frustrating things on that game sometimes depending on the civ you are playing

2 Likes

I am first and foremost and RTS Player actually …

SC2, COH 1 and 2, Supreme Commander 2 FA, DoW 1+2, AoE2, Iron Harvest,CC RA2, CCTW to just name a couple of the top of my head. Played thousands of hours of RTS during the last 10 Years, always somewhat competitive, ranked TGs to relax, ranked 1v1 to sweat.

And so far, i really like AoE4 and how it plays in its core gameplay. Its relatively fast paced, there is active abilities, its not 100% unforgiving, you dont need 300 APM, i like the current level of diversity between the civs, there is enough stuff to experiment and try “unusal” builds and experiments. The Micro/Macro aspect seems in a good balance also.

It definetly needs some love in terms of QoL, hotkey customisation, minimap overhaul, UI and Icons and stuff.

The Foundation of core mechanics though, convinces me. And for me, that is the most important. Cause all on top of that can still be screwed around with and adjusted post launch. Generally i trust Relic also as a long time CoH2 player. They know how good RTS goes, and me for once, i can feel Relics touch on AoE4, and i am not unhappy with it.

In the End though, one will have to decide for himself if he likes the game and wants to put endless hours in it.What will hep to achieve that? More customisability for custom lobbies. Hell, let people play as they want to play. People want 500 Pop Cap in custom? Sure. Give them Post Imp Start - They wanna fatslob? Sure let them, why not, first and foremost we play for fun. So why not give people the tools to have all the fun.

Edit: Shortover, i not necessarily need the next great AoE Game… i want the next great RTS Game in general. And for that, for me and my personal reasons to play RTS, AoE4 is on a good way.

5 Likes

best RTS game ever, Loved every aspect of it. UI is crap, can’t really image they hired a UI/UX designer for making this. Even devs could have done better job. The gameplay is top notch, lot of fun. Infact I am unable to go back to AOE 2 after playing this game. I will be playing AOE 3 and AOE 4, but will be moving away from AOE 2.

3 Likes

I feel like that’s going indeed to be one of the greatest benefits of AoEIV. AoEII players will finally realize that there can be a better world outside of AoEII’s world.

3 Likes

yea, I was already having a hard time coming back to AOE 2DE after playing 3D RTS games. The main problem for me with AOE 2 is the 2D grid based movement and how the units do pathfinding, it’s very irritating and non intuitive. You think a particular unit is gonna go in one way, but nope it will go other way.
like there is a literal gap for a human to go through, but nope it will go around, because according to the game it’s just a blocked path.

This is the reason, I mostly play AOE 3 and AOEO, both games play and control very well. Like there is a

1 Like