Age of Empires used to be one of the big names, but Age of Empires III, dating back to 2005, was a huge disappointment. Of Age of Empires IV they want to make a worthy sequel to the still popular second part.
A small disclaimer: in this review we are mainly going to talk about the single player experience for the average player. The game isn’t out yet and to get a good idea of the more serious multiplayer modes, it simply takes more time.
The single play experience is very special. In the campaign you follow a people for a certain period of time, such as the Normans or the Russians. Through BBC-style documentary films of about three minutes you learn about a piece of history and then you act it out. It’s really cool to learn about the Battle of Hastings and then experience it yourself. The mini-documentaries are beautifully designed: with real recorded images you get to see the locations, while a kind of drawing lines show how it should have looked in the past. It is very cool to get to you interesting pieces of history in such a playful way. When you complete a level, you unlock a mini-documentary of another three minutes about a topic that is relevant to the time in which you play. Why the trebuchet is so ingenious, how the crossbow works or what castles are made of are all topics that are covered here.
–
It may sound strange that we talk so much about documentary-style movies, while we are still discussing a game. It is kind of like that, but it adds a lot to the special experience that the campaign brings. It’s much more fun to defend or take a castle when you know what was at stake in history. The documentary-style storytelling also continues in the missions themselves, which is a nice touch.
The game itself is what you would expect from a modern RTS. The graphics aren’t too special, but it’s nice and colorful so it’s not distracting. The gameplay feels very natural and is therefore very nice. Units respond well to your commands, when it comes to Age of Empires II kinda felt like there was a lot of lag between a mouse click and response. In addition, keybindings now follow the Grid system, which is the standard for modern strategy games. With this, keybindings of buttons correspond to their position on the Grid plane, so the building at the top left is Q, the one next to it is W, and so on.
–
The single player is quite challenging, but of course that depends on the difficulty you choose. The balance here is sometimes wrong in strategy games, because studios on higher difficulties often compensate for a bad AI by giving them endless resources or having them make a much too large army, but Age of Empires IV does it well. The easier levels allow you to enjoy the stories at your leisure, while there are several more difficult levels if you want a little or a lot of challenge. They become strategic missions where you feel that every decision you make is crucial and maybe sometimes the solution is just to do it wrong, learn from your mistakes and start over.
We’ll be diving into the multiplayer in the coming days and weeks and would like to let you know what we think about it at a later time, but the single player is very worthwhile. It is so obviously made with a lot of love and if you are a fan of strategy games and history then it is a must try. We didn’t expect it, but the mini-documentaries are a hit. Completing a level on the more difficult levels can be a reward in itself, yet time and again we found that what we were most looking forward to was a new cutscene. You can play the game via Xbox Game Pass, so give it a try with a subscription!
Age of Empires IV will be available exclusively on PC starting October 28.
–
