In addition to your settlement you also have a home city. There is a lot to keep track of and it does get a bit messy the further into a game you go. You will have to defend yourself from enemy attacks and even go out yourself and try and setback your neighbours by destroying key buildings or attacking their settlers. On top of the economy and settlement management, you have the military side of things.

You will also need to use those resources to advance to a new age which gives you access to more advanced buildings, technologies and units. These resources are vital to your survival as they can be used for buildings which can gather more resources, house more of a population or build military units. You have a settlement which you need to look after as well as settlers who work as your resource gatherers. If you've played any RTS games the basic set up would be familiar to you. Tantalus Media / Forgotten Empires have done their best to cater for every possible type of player and it goes a long way with making the game accessible. I found the interface to be incredibly easy to use in game and it was never bulky or in the way. It is a little detail that gave me a sense of enjoyment that never faded.Īge of Empires also gives you a choice of UI to use with a classic version for returning players or a brand-new interface for the Definitive Edition which was the one I selected. I always got a little kick out of watching an enemy's flag fall off or seeing chunks of the building missing after being bombarded.

Watching a town centre or an outpost being blown to pieces by artillery is made just that bit more fun when it is unique every time. Special mention has to go to the physics-based destruction which was revolutionary back in 2005. The game isn't technically demanding and I was able to run the game on max settings with little to no frame rate issues or any other graphical glitches. Some of the unit models lack detail but they are a small part of the whole package and the world maps are varied and utilise a wide colour palette the primary colours of the factions do stand out against the terrain. It now supports 4K resolution and is by no means a bad looking game. As is expected in re-released games, this Definitive Edition comes with those expansions added as part of the core experience along with other brand-new additions and quality of life improvements.ĭue to the 15-year gap between the original release and the Definitive Edition, there is a lot of room for graphical improvement. Age of Empires III was a classic RTS released back in 2005 and had two expansions, with those being The War Chiefs and The Asian Dynasties.

Age of empires 3 review