Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Been there, done that"

Age of Empires 3 for me was a bit of a letdown. After playing AOE2 I didn't quite expect that this game would be so uninteresting in the gameplay.

When AOE2 came it brought with it a new gameplay, new features and new styles and techniques that were advancements over the previous game AOE. But AOE3 doesn't even try to bring in a new touch to anything.

One significant problem was that while the previous AOE game didn't require too much graphics, yet it provided one of the vest RTS environments. AOE3 however increases the graphics requirement thus making the game slow on a low end PC. It however improves the graphics quality to only a slight effect, but disturbing the effect. Like in the previous game (AOE2) an attacked building always used to catch fire, but here the building actually responds differently to different attacks. It may be flamed down by infantry or may be blown of by a cannon. However they removed various effects like that of the tiles in the barracks and others. As a result the graphics as such improved but the effect and impact of the graphics was not up to the mark.

Also, the Campaigns of AOE3 are good, but the random gameplay fell abysmally flat when compared to AOE2.

In spite of this AOE3 is recommended as a good RTS game but definitely not the best.