Best Age of Empires Yet
The graphics are a little lacking, even with everything set as high as it goes with Full Anti-Aliasing, but it's a real time strategy game and graphics don't matter too much. The terrain is beautiful however and certainly adds to the experience. The sounds are terrific, all the weapons have their own unique sound and the ambient noise is incredible. The voice acting for the campaign is really good, as well as for all the characters when playing a skirmish.
The gameplay is of course, the best part of the game. I find however that it's a little too macro, but that's just my taste, that doesn't make it more or less of a good game. There's no real strategy involved for military, you just build as many different kinds of units you can afford to counter what you think the enemy will have and basically just hope you have more. The resource gathering isn't a huge part of the game, for the most part you can just leave some villagers on a mine or forest and not worry about them for a while until it runs out.
All and all a great game, certainly worth an strategy or PC gamer's attention.
Review Lowdown:
Teh Good:
Terrain
Ambient Noises
Teh Bad:
No real military strategy involved
Teh Ugly:
Too macro