Age of Empires 4 – Review
It doesn’t seem like it, but the latest game in the Age of Empires series was launched 16 years ago. The first game, which was secretly released in 1997 (when Microsoft was still a shaky publisher), was a breath of fresh air in a genre that had gotten stale and bloated with clones and copies. It was quickly followed by a Medieval-themed sequel in 1999, which was set during classical antiquity. After a brief detour into the Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III took the series through the Renaissance and into the age of colonialism, leaving players at the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Pros:
Looks fantastic
Intuitive, yet robust gameplay
Tons of great content
Lots of depth, but not overwhelming
Cons:
Not all campaigns offer the same level of quality
Score – 9/10
Age of Empires IV does not cross the Rubicon into the era of weapons, germs, and steel, as you may have guessed. Instead, it returns to the battlefields of The Age of Kings, the most acclaimed and popular game in the franchise. Age of Empires IV feels more like a remake than a sequel in this regard, which is why it doesn’t feel like 16 years have passed. Age of Empires VI might easily pass muster as Age of Empires II 4.0 after the HD edition in 2013 and the Definitive edition in 2019.
That is, in fact, a little unjust. While subsequent versions of Age of Empire II have improved the 1999 game’s sprite-based graphics, boosted resolution, and added new civilizations and campaigns, you don’t have to dig too far to uncover remnants of the original game beneath. Age of Empires IV, on the other hand, is a total rebuild rather than a re-release. The streets appear and feel familiar, but the construction materials are strangely clean, with a modern infrastructure beneath the furrows and faux-cobblestones to allow for seamless multiplayer and character growth.
Age of Empires was praised for taking the then-ubiquitous real-time strategy formula popularised by the likes of Command & Conquer and Warcraft and layering it with the ability to move through different historical eras in a manner reminiscent of Civilization, for those who missed it (before the words ‘age’ and ’empires’ became despairingly synonymous with ‘clash’ and ‘clans’). Instead of just one resource (say, tiberium), you had four to harvest (food, wood, stone, and gold), and once you had enough of each plus the correct collection of structures, you could effectively level up your civ.
As a result, you were always in a race to gather the most resources, control your population and ambition, stay ahead in the arms race, and have a large and/or capable army to defend your area and advance across the map. It was, in many ways, the first genuinely epic real-time strategy game, predating Total War and Crusader Kings.
While Age of Empires IV is nearly identical to its predecessors in terms of gameplay, there are a few little differences that help it stand out. Of course, you begin by forming villages and dispatching them to secure food by herding sheep, harvesting berries, or hunting deer. More food equals more people to chop wood, quarry stone, farm, and mine gold, which means more people to chop wood, quarry stone, farm, and mine gold. Soon, you’ll have the beginnings of a thriving local economy, and it’ll be time to build a defence force to combat roving enemy scouts and warbands. You’ll have a network of watchtowers, a few stretches of palisade, and be considering which direction to direct research and/or advance to the next era to give your troops a much-needed edge by the time you’ve gathered a modest collection of spearmen, swordsmen, archers, and cavalry (if you’re like me, all bound to a single hotkey).
So far, Age of Empires has been a success. Where IV differs is in its allusions to the games that succeeded in improving on AoE’s flaws, particularly Cossacks, which featured far larger and more organised combat, and the early Stronghold games, which provided a far more pleasurable castle siege experience. Troops organise themselves into ranks in Age of Empires IV that are more convenient and effective than in previous games. You can go hog roast crazy if you’re an RTS veteran who likes to learn every keyboard shortcut and have units assigned to highly specific control-key combinations. Meanwhile, newcomers who may have grown accustomed to more automated fighting can choose and direct troops en masse with confidence that each unit type will prioritise targets competently.
While the odd villager assigned to construction detail may become entangled in the map’s furniture, erecting a stone fortification is as simple as dragging the cursor across the desired location. Repairing walls is similar, and adding turrets and gates is as simple as adding to rather than making room for them from the start.All of this makes siege battles – whether in defence or attack – one of the game’s triumphs. Troops ordered to take up a position on a battlement will do so directly and without the fuss and frustration of either walking to their doom on the way there or falling off the wall when they get into position. Furthermore, the landscapes are large enough to sustain not just massive stoneworlds, but also a soft civil infrastructure.
Sea units and engagements, like the foundations elsewhere, are strangely unaltered from previous games. I say interestingly because gathering resources from the sea and directing ships to attack other ships in Age of Empires never felt particularly unique from land combat, and it’s possible that this is one element of the game that could have benefited from additional development. Fishing boats, trade cogs, battle galleys, and caravels all spin and flip around like toys stuck in a draining bath, but at least they do it smoothly, which was never a feature you could attribute to an Age of Empires game in the past.
Age of Empires IV has been a long time coming, and while we would have like to see something other than an AoE II replica (either an evolution of the genre or a new scenario), what we have now is difficult not to appreciate. Relic has pared down the number of civilizations and tedious campaigns that weighted down the 2019 version, resulting in a more focused game that anyone interested in the genre’s history will enjoy. Relic has only taken a few timid steps forward in terms of genre advancement — strengthening and expanding the series’ siege warfare – but it’s enough to justify the voyage.
