Age of Empires III Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

It's episode three in this short history of the world

Age of Empires III is set in Malta and follows the successful defence of the island by the knights against the invading Ottomans. That's enough of the history lesson, how much blood and guts is there?

Age of Empires III carries on the tradition of an army sim game. The levels require standard aspects found in Command in Conquer, etc. You can expect to build your camp, gather food, wood and gold resources and gradually build your base and army and finally wipe out the enemy.

There is not much of a tutorial so you will have to pick things up as you go along. The in-game help is great and the basics are easy enough to learn. Setting up camp is straight forward, you will need settlers to explore and collect the resources to allow you to build more buildings and pay/feed the troops. The game is set in the 16th Century so weaponry is limited. No nuclear attacks in this game just infantry, cavalry and the occasional cannon. Even with this restricted army, barracks & stables can be upgraded and tougher, stronger troops can be trained.

The controls are one of the simplest we have seen and greatly enhance the fluidity of the gameplay. Move the on-screen cursor over a character, press 5 once to select him or double press 5 for the game to intuitively select all similar units in the vicinity. This makes it very easy to create an instant group and move them around. You can select rally points for your troops once they have been trained but with such an easy control system, it's not really needed. The intuitive AI does have it's faults. Some of the troops can be a little gung ho and be drawn into battles. Unfortunately there is no hold fast option or reconnaissance option for individual soldiers. That is the only option missing in what is otherwise a very good port from the PC games.

Graphically, the game is quite impressive. The animation of the horsemen is excellent and the detail of the buildings is of a similar standard. The terrain is a little unadventurous and the map size is not huge (although it appears larger than Townsmen).

There is a main story mode which follows Maltese attempts at halting the Ottoman invasion and is spread over at least 8 levels. There is also a separate skirmish mode which has very detailed options. Here you can choose up to three computer controlled combatants which can be either your allies or enemies.

Tactically, the game can be a little naive. There is usually only one main tactic or offensive strategy to successfully completing a given level. Your leader will never die, so you always have the chance to rebuild your forces and camp should you get it all wrong. Seeing as the game has a save option, you might as well just reload or restart. This is not a game where you can build an army of 100 soldiers and steam roll the enemy camp. In a clever twist, the number of troops you can have at any one time is dependent on the number of houses you have built. Having too many settlers will impact on the number of troops so a little bit of people management is required.

Overall a very impressive real time strategy game that takes the genre to a new heights on the mobile.