Age of Empires 3 is a addictive, charming and fun game. But i was led to expect more.
Age of Empires 3 is based on countries colonizing the New World. You will be happy to see natives, mercenaries and yes, musketeers. Join the black family in the campaign and destroy each other for the right to own the New World.
The game claimed to have great 3d graphics and a great gameplay, and it has them! Except, theyre not as good as they claim to be. The graphics are revolutionary and the weather effects aren't really as good as I thought. Proportion is also annoying in this game as boats are incredibly small.
On the other hand, the graphics have been sacrificed for incredibly addictive gameplay. Building your own village is quick and easy and you will be into the action in no time. The hometown feature is also quite fun as you can request food or wood or even units to help on your expansion. There are nice reward items which can be recieved by killing a treasure "Guardian" The reward can be resources or they can be a native that will help you.
The Campaign is great fun but is quite repedditive. You have to create a new town center from scracth on most missions and they are mostly based around elimination and exploration.
Gameplay is fun and intresting, you can ally yourself with the natives and you can build trading posts allowing locomotives to bring you supplies. The unit movement is smooth and the civlian gathering etc. is good too.
The best bit of the game is the destruction and havoc. Yes, killing. Units die faster than before and the battles can be messy. No longer do longbow men have to shoot at enemies that are close fruitlessly... they take out short swords and start stabbing them, which is more effective than shooting at them at close range. When infantry are made to attack buildings, instead of the buildings magically getting destroyed by swords/lances/arrows they are burnt down by molotovs. It is very cool to see natives weild these as well. Cannons are also tactically useful and are a pleasure to see in battle. They can blast away one person, or they can destroy a group of infantry. They are very good against buildings and once in the forest, the cannon can shoot down trees, these are a pleasure to see as the forest protects infantry from cannon attacks.
The physics engine is great, cannons can shoot people off cliffs and little bits of building rebounds off other buildings due to the impact location of the cannon/ molotovs.
This game is great... there was obviously alot of effort put into this game, but the graphics and the sound aren't much to boast about. The gameplay on the other hand, is. Addictive and memorable. There are definetly lots of charming moments in the game and I hope to see the physics engine used in future games.
VERDICT: This game is worth a whirl if you are into this stuff.