Age of Empires III

"An engrossing experience, yet far from flawless."

For several years Blizzard and Command and Conquer were some of the only game makers to venture into the lands of creating war games. On several occasions they broke new grounds, such as Red Alert, Starcraft and Warcraft.

Red Alert offered players an experience, which was half realistic, to build a base, build unlimited units, each one with strengths and weaknesses, and in extremely short time periods destroy an opposing base, even several bases.

Warcraft, on the other hand, was a realistic yet other-worldly game which gave players an opportunity to test their realistic Commanding skills, making a single game longer.
Warcraft and Starcraft were similar in this attribute, and would sometimes borderline the time needed for a game.

Sum it all up and these three series' of gaming were amazingly fun and offered great single and multiplayer fun, along with several hours of gameplay.

Above this you could choose between teams/races. This ushered in whole new entertainment as campaign modes split in different directions. Gameplay time increased and a gaming experience was prolonged. PC game enjoyment was now available in all different sorts, and war gaming became extremely popular.

Age of Empires was around in these times, but never became much of a hit until AOE 3. The game featured great graphics, realistic work, realistic battle and AI. The physics was pretty good, especially for a radial view of several characters at a time.

But, once going into a game, be it a late mission in single-player or a game of multiplayer, be sure you have a good few hours to spend.

I will list out a situation which I encountered during a small LAN with 3 people. We all had AOE 3 on our pcs and we were ready to rock. 3 players vs. one hard opponent. Things started out good, and I was enjoying it. The difficulty in getting supplies was great, but it was also real. Slowly, bit by bit, our armies grew bigger.

At least one hour later we were ready to attack, and we found that the enemy had a gargantuan base. We proceeded with the attack, and managed to destroy about half their base. Yet the attacking took about half an hour. So we retreated to our bases, and rebuilt troops. Eventually we won, however...time elapsed: three hours.

The length was excruciating, and this made the experience boring towards the end. The missions are pretty fun, but while playing them you notice that for something which should be based on real life events, few of them really happened, as pointed out by Mykas0.

A nice point is the different races you can choose. Big advantages aren't made, but small ones are, plus different languages depending on who you choose.

It is very dependant upon strategy, mainly based on the beginning; for example, if you build up your defenses early on, you may have trouble with resources later, and vice versa.

To sum it all up:

Graphics: 7.5
Style:7
Story: 6
Game-play: 6.5
Sounds: 7.5
Fun: 6.5
Realisticness: 8.5

Overall: 6.5 to 7. I wouldn't say it is a must, but it is enjoyable for strategy die-hards.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/25/06