Age of Empires Online

2011-08-17

It totally passes by me that Microsoft had developed a new Age of Empires title, but a colleague of mine told me. I kind of though that the Age of Empires franchise kind of died with Ensemble Studios closing doors. Being an avid Age of Empires fan, I decided to give the free to play variation a spin. Yesterday the game went public and I quickly installed to game.

The installation procedure was kind of awkward, since you only install the launcher and any missing frameworks. The actual game is downloaded and installed though the launcher, so it lets you wait a good while. The full installation procedure took around half an hour, though it might be that lots of people downloaded the game at the same time.

The first impression I got from the trailer and art was that the art direction of the game wanted to make the entire thing more friendly. Although quite funny, the trailer has difficulty of selling the game to me. But you should not judge the game by its first impression; I liked and played lots of Plant vs Zombies and that is cartoony and cute.

The first thing you need to do is choose your culture you want to cultivate. At the current time you can chose from the Greek or Egyptian cultures, but the official website hints at integrating the Celts and Persians later. This choice is quite critical, since you will probably invest much time if you want to play Age of Empires Online seriously.

The game is built around the "Home Town" concept that was introduced in Age of Empires 3. In your home town you can customize bunch of stuff and it is clear that they are aiming at a certain Farm Ville style interaction with your fiends. "Oh! Oh! Look at my capital city!".

In the home town are a few special buildings that let you chose and customize your tech and perks. Similar to Age of Empires 3, you gain points during missions (called quests here) that can be used for perks. This creates a whole meta game that I never liked with Age of Empires 3, because it creates an imbalance between casual and hardcore player. Not only does the experienced player understand the mechanics better, he also has nifty perks you don't.

In your home town (and other towns) you have few special characters that give you quests and you have the option to accept them. In theory that gives you a number of options to chose from. But you need to go through all tutorial style first and the learning curve is REALLY SHALLOW. I played about three hours and am still taught how to fish and have only one offensive unit, a spearman.

The gameplay is quite standard real time strategy. With the twist that they removed all expert commands. The height of the interface are multiple way points and groups. No command chaining or a difference between attack and move. I must admit that these commands seldom are used by casual players, but they do not harm and it feels awkward if you play without them.

What really kicks me off is the art style. Not really that it's cartoony, but because it add really stupid "cute" things. For example the spearmen are those bulky men. They act and look like cave men. One thing that is really useless, each time someone dies they get a sassy grave. Just fading the fallen body away was not appropriate?!

I already touched on the shallow learning curve, but that is really what killed the game for me. I player solid three hours and I just escaped to the bronze age, have only one offensive unit and am still getting stupid tutorial quests. The last quest I did was go fish. Not only that, I was kind of "bullied" by the harbor master to help him out, since he did not get the work done. Seriously?! I am a warlord, for science sake! If you don't get your fish on time I will have you beheaded!

It appears that the game is designed to bind you for many hours, like so many "casual" games. Sure the tutorial levels might be of interest, if you want to get non hard core player to play the game, but that is done on the expense of the more experienced players. I do not really mind the intended monetization strategy, where you upgrade your civilization and can buy content packs, since I see it as a cleverly build demo version. But please let me "waste time" in the medium to advanced levels, instead of the beginner levels.

As basically all real time strategy games, it is ultimately geared to be played against friends. But at the current state I am in, I have no inclination to play mass spear men against a friend. (I do not even know how that works, since I did not see an option for that.) Also at the current rate of progression, I an bored to death and will certainly not continue the "campaign". The result is that I will certainly never reach a level where I even makes sense to play with friends or even buy an upgrade pack.

The game is definitely nothing for hard core real time strategy players and I am not sure that the casual crowd will be taken by storm. Especially, since the average casual player has no brand awareness for Age of Empires. Great way to kill a franchise, Microsoft.