Age of Empires III (PC)

After having played this game for the past few days, I can tell you all that this game is simply a natural continuation of the legendary Age Of Empires series. I have played the previous two and their addons for years, and this game is an improvement in virtually every way.

Graphically this game is beautiful and some of the effects are just wonderful. The weapons feel powerful and the ship -v- ship battles are just stunning. My graphics card is a 256 MB Radeon X600 and on any setting this game works well.

Playing the game is very interesting. There are now limits on the number of some things you can build - such as ships. The villages are now much better, and they do a lot with out being told. if they are idle and there is something obvious to do nearby - they will do it.

Home cities are a wonderful advancement in the game giving it a much more satisfying feel. The more you play the game the better the things you can have sent to you after every few minutes in the game. You gain experience for gathering resources etc., and then this allows you to ship in some extra coin, or eventually a mini army!!!

The campaigns are easy to get into and follow a nice family tale where you can somewhat empathise with the leaders you control. The objectives for the missions are no longer - kill everyone - but there are more specific objectives - one mission is simply to gain experience!

Though most of this game is strong, the one futile thing is treasures. Dotted around the map there are small treaures guarded by, say, a pack of wild bears. After using your explorer to kill the guardian, you can take the bounty - this is often a very small amount of coin etc. However, sometimes you get rewarded with a special warrior or some settlers, so its not all bad!

Overall a very good game, bound to provide hours of fun. The effects when blowing stuff up are very satisfying, and the overall style of the game is extremely finished - a wonderful improvement on a wonderful series of games. I thoroughly recommend you purchase this game.

Age of Empires III, for me, personally is the best strategy game I have ever played. Ever since spending hours upon hours on it's predecessor, Age of Empires: The Age of Kings, I thought that it wouldn't be as enjoyable to play, but I was joyfully proven to be wrong. There has been some massive improvements in AOE3, the graphics being the major one, everything is beautifully finished to incredible detail, environments look realistic and like they are "lived" in by your town, soldiers, buildings, ships are all fantastically brilliant to look at. The game play is the next best thing, the research that has been put into each individual civilization is amazing, each one has its own perks, its own best units, its best buildings, you yourself are the main explorer in the New World when you start a new game, you are able to build Trading Posts in order to build alliances with the Natives, and then able to improve them to benefit each other, you are sent shipments from your home town when you reach a certain level of experience which can contain, units, food, equipment, upgrades and so much more, and you get to choose what you want before you start the game, it's incredible how much effort has been put into this game to make it seem like you really are explorers trying to make a new life in the New World!! The campaign missions are excellent, you won't want to stop playing, each mission you learn more ways of being able to survive, or conquer, it's your choice! The online multi-player is also a thing of brilliance, the amount of fun you can have with this game with other friends just makes it a 100 times better from when you play on your own! Another thing I found amusing, was: when your soldiers win battles they will stand around and cheer and then quickly get back into formation, I think the little things in this game make it so much better, and the new units and upgrades can end any battle in a matter of moments, so building up your economy to that point is so worth it! The one thing I take issue with is the amount of space and certain requirements the game needs to install, I can see why it needs so much stuff, because of how epic the game is, but it took me nearly 30 minutes to install the game, on a brand new laptop that is barely a month old, which had new processors etc in it, and sometimes in the game, it would lag in a middle of a battle, so the flow stopped so you just end up frustrated and waiting for it to sort itself out! But that only happened on the odd occasion, where most times I would play for hours with hardly any problems! You should most definitely check the requirements needed to install the game before you buy it, if your computer is older than 7-9 years old then you won't be able to enjoy it properly, or maybe not be able to install it properly!

Closing Comments:

Age Of Empires 3 has revolutionised the way I feel about PC gaming, and for the better, I look forward to the new game they bring out and hope they fix the bugs that make it lag when alot of things are happening and the time it takes to install, and try to fit it all on one disc! But, it's completely worth it, I would most definitely recommend it to anyone!

9/10.

Like many age of empires fans, i have waited a long time for the 3rd in the series. Was it worth the wait? YES!! Before buying it almost a week ago, i read almost every review on amazon. Most people said it was really dull or boring gameplay. Do not listen to them, i did at first and it almost put me off buying it. But then i started watching videos on google etc. looking at what the battles and that looks like. It looked ok. but then me and and a friend started looking further into it. We thought we would see if they had a downloadable demo. And after typing the obvious "download age of empires 3 demo" it came up with many websites. Looking more reliable, we tried the microsoft webiste. We downloaded it, and quite frankly couldn't stop playing it! We loved it! So the day after, i got the full version. Many reviews i have read say that single player is dull, i disagree, its only dull when you compare it to multiplayer. If you buy this game, i 100% advise you to try AOE online, providing you can of course. even though the game has been out almost a year now, there are always at least 1,700 other players online, and at night, it usually goes up to around 3,000, so there's plenty of people to play.

There are so many good things about this game. The gameplay has improved slightly, the graphics are just immense, even on a less powerful graphics card. I will not say much more, but what i will say is if you have played any age of empires, or other RTS games before, and you liked them, i suggest trying this beast! I cannot stop playing it. Yes multiplayer is very challenging, but what fun is a game you can just walk through with your eyes shut, it just makes you wanna get better, so you keep trying! So if you are looking for an enjoyable, addictive, highly fun game, then this is it!

I hope this review has helped you.