Predating Total War and Crusader Kings, it was in many ways the first truly epic real-time strategy game. As such, you were forever locked in a race to collect the most resources, to manage your population and ambition, to stay ahead in the arms race, and to have an army of a suitable size and/or quality to be able to defend your territory and expand across the map. Rather than a single resource to collect (tiberium, say), you had four (food, wood, stone and gold), and when you had enough of each and the right collection of buildings, you could essentially level up your civ. The streets look and feel familiar, but the building materials are weirdly pristine, with a modern infrastructure beneath the furrows and faux-cobblestones to facilitate seamless multiplayer and persistent character progression.įor those that missed the golden era of Age of Empires (before the words ‘age’ and ‘empires’ became despairingly synonymous with ‘clash’ and ‘clans’), the games were celebrated for taking the then-ubiquitous real-time strategy formula popularised by the likes of Command & Conquer and Warcraft, and layering them with the ability to move through different historical eras in a manner reminiscent of Civilization.
Conversely, Age of Empires IV is a complete rebuild rather than a refit. While successive versions of Age of Empire II have prettied up the sprite-based graphics of the 1999 game, increased the resolution, and piled on more civilizations and campaigns, you don’t have to excavate too deeply to find evidence of the original game beneath. Advancing an AgeĪctually, that’s a little unfair. After 2013’s HD and 2019’s Definitive edition of AoE 2, Age of Empires VI could easily pass muster as Age of Empires II 4.0. In that sense, Age of Empires IV feels more like a remake than a sequel, which is precisely why it doesn’t seem like 16 years have been and gone. Instead, it returns to the battlefields of the most acclaimed and popular in the series, The Age of Kings. Then, after a detour into the Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III advanced the series through the Renaissance period and into the age of colonialism, leaving players at the dawn of the industrial revolution.Īs you’ve probably gathered, Age of Empires IV does not cross the rubicon into the era of guns, germs, and steel. Set during classical antiquity, it was soon followed-up in 1999 with a Medieval-themed sequel. The very first game, quietly launched in 1997 (when Microsoft was a far less assured publisher), was like a gale of fresh air in a genre that had become stale and bloated with copies and clones. It sure doesn’t feel like it, but 16 years have passed since the last in the Age of Empires series was released.
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