Age of Empires Online Review

Age of Empires Online

Microsoft’s Age of Empires Online seems like a good game until you realize how hard Microsoft wants to gouge the players on the price. The play style is definitely different than previous versions (think a little bit of the old Warcraft games mixed with some world domination mode and top it off with a touch of RPG). The game places you in your own city/capital where you have the ability to build things as in the old but only through upgrades on a tech tree and unlocked items within stores. Your city/character levels up and each level yields additional points applicable to the tree. You go around and take on quests which put you into RTS mode upon tackling them (go to location, carry out fight or complete objective).

A small AoEO civilization

In the game’s RTS mode things are very similar to the old Age of Empire games with a few modifications. Instead of the static unit values, all units can be upgraded (which was something I had always wished for in the Warcraft games). Like the originals, you still get the feel of building your empire from the ground up, starting with as few as 5 villagers you get that same satisfaction as you did before when your empire reigns supreme. Or just when you have walled up enough to make an impenetrable fortress massing armies for the ensuing cluster$%#@ that is Age of Empires player versus player combat. PVP, yea, it needs to be brought up. For the life of me I can’t figure out how to free play with another person like in the olds games, this definitely should be part of the game but it’s nowhere to be found and something I dearly miss. Just as in the originals, the game permits stacking your villagers when building to make construction quicker but it also allows you to set a single villager to humorously work for what must be hundreds of years in their time to build you wonders and other time consuming buildings. The tech tree dictates what can be built when taking on quests (so upgrading carefully is a must lest you wish to lose). While it is important to pick your upgrades carefully, I am not entirely certain at this point as to whether or not the upgrades dictate what quests are presented to you. If Microsoft created a system for balance that would be great but I fear they didn’t so be careful with your upgrades. Some of the quests will give you items to use for your own city such as decorative structures, they serve no real purpose other than to play to the player who wants to create something aesthetically pleasing and unique to show off to friends.

A developed AoEO civilization

The graphics aren’t something that could be gone on for days but are a definite improvement over the originals. They are a tad cartoonish but definitely look good. For whatever reason there was a constant lag when scrolling around the screen, I don’t have an explanation for it yet and I can’t imagine it’s my PC’s inability to perform in the game because the graphics aren’t demanding at all. It may simply be because it runs through Games for Windows but it still started to give me a headache after a short period. Tool tips become a nuisance as they don’t disappear but rather hover over the left side of your screen whilst you attempt to play around them. There were a couple of glitches but nothing serious. One was where a boat ended up stuck in a move-loop (and thus started vibrating). The other actually became pretty annoying: when your spawning structure is next to trees you run the risk of your units becoming stuck until you cut down the trees (it may be possible that rocks and other environment items could duplicate the bug). Additionally, the “Age” progress bar could really stand to be bigger or at least more noticeable, the first time around it took a couple seconds just to find it. Age of Empires Online could use a bit more polish but the gameplay is fairly smooth other than the above issues and it gives you a newer looking Age of Empires you loved 10 years ago (you know you did, quit lying to yourself).

Now for the truly bad. Microsoft royally screwed up on pricing. A “Season 1 Pass” lasts 6 months and costs the player 8000 Microsoft points. You might be thinking that isn’t so bad until you realize how much 8000 Microsoft points cost: $100! If you compare that to the standard subscription based game that runs between 12-15 dollars per month depending on plan it ends up being more. I would have much preferred paying for the game upfront instead of only receiving the initially released content. It is a solid game but certainly not worth more money per month than the vast majority of other games considering it isn’t flawless. If Age of Empires Online were 5 dollars per month I might be like “Ok, it’s a free game, they want a return on it, and I can handle that” but costing more than WoW (and literally every other subscription based game I can think of) makes it not worth the cost. The incentive for going premium is to have more content, ability to use all items and the complete tech tree but there just isn’t enough content or value in the game to warrant the pricing.

Age of Empires Online Rating: 66/100

I hope Microsoft realizes its shortcomings quick because the game has potential, If it doesn’t it will end up just being another flop.

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