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Age of Empires Definitive Edition Easily-on: Back and Mostly Better

I don't desire to crush your inner 12-year-old's cornball memories, but the original Age of Empires had a lot of bug.

Credit: Microsoft — (Image credit: Microsoft)

I'g not proverb it wasn't good; information technology was. The franchise'southward legacy speaks for itself, and you couldn't have kicked off one of the most beloved RTS franchises of all time with a lackluster game. But having replayed the game just a few years agone, the controls were clunky, the unit of measurement remainder was off and the campaign was punishingly hard.

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (releasing Feb. 20) wants to change all that. This graphically revamped update will bring the game to a modern audience, complete with the smoothen gameplay, challenging scenarios and addicting multiplayer which have go hallmarks of the series. The game is currently in closed beta, and I had a chance to get hands-on with it to run into how it looks so far.

If Microsoft simply wants to give a new generation a expect at one of the bully-granddaddies of the genre, Definitive Edition gets the job washed. But there are even so a few more tweaks the developers could make in lodge to make information technology just a fleck easier to build a small civilisation into a lasting empire.

Multiplayer possibilities

Showtime of all — and this is extremely forgivable, but I take to bring it upward — the netcode in Age of Empires: Definitive Edition isn't perfect even so. The closed beta is a multiplayer-only affair, and I found myself matched upward with three other random players. Even with a relatively low ping, the game would just virtually grind to a halt every few minutes, and there was almost always a split second of lag between control and execution.

Interestingly, the activeness onscreen didn't seem to bear on the game'southward performance much. Some pitched battles felt silky smoothen, while ordering a handful of units to scout ahead was often a tedious matter.

It's about unfair to ding a airtight beta for online slowdown, since ironing out these problems is ane of the major points of having a closed beta in the first place. All the same, this is something that Microsoft will have to set sooner rather than afterwards, since the game debuts in less than 3 weeks.

The game would too benefit from a matchmaking service, to friction match you with people in your region and general skill set. Right at present, players take to advertise their own atmospheric condition in the match's name (beginner, intermediate, advanced, teams, United States, Europe, i-on-1, two-versus-two, so forth). This organization works as a stopgap, but information technology's vague, at all-time. I man's intermediate is another man's advanced.

Units and queues

The indicate I'grand most to bring up is contentious, but someone has to say it: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition should let players queue engineering upgrades. In fact, if it wanted to try something new and ambitious, it should even let players alternate applied science upgrades with new units.

For those who haven't dabbled much in Age of Empires before, researching new technologies is paramount. If your RTS indicate of reference is StarCraft or Warcraft, you lot're probably familiar with a few mid- or belatedly-game upgrades that tin can brand your units more durable when y'all've got nothing amend to spend resources on. Historic period of Empires, even so, offers a ton of upgrades right from the kickoff, and you lot're non going to be able to afford them all before the finish of an boilerplate match.

What's ever set Age of Empires apart from competing RTS series is that it strikes a relatively equal balance betwixt economics and warfare. Yous're not collecting resources and upgrading villagers merely to field a bigger army; you can win the game by exploring ruins, collecting artifacts or building a Wonder. You lot'll all the same need a powerful army to defend yourself, just military conquest has never been your only pick.

As such, you'll have access to lots of technology upgrades from the start, whether you want leather armor for your infantry, or more food from your farms or moving your civilization up to a whole new Age, consummate with new buildings and units. These upgrades are expensive and take time to research, making their value inherently uncertain, especially in the game'southward early stages. Every resource yous spend on an upgrade could also get you soldiers or villagers.

The bottom line is: There's a lot of stuff to research, peculiarly at buildings similar the Storage Pit and the Marketplace, which offer multiple upgrades from the go-go. But when the game gets into its chaotic center stages (yous'll exist scouting, and gathering resources, and researching technologies, and building an army, and starting to fend off enemy advances, and, and, and), micromanaging research on peak of everything else is but one extra, unnecessary step.

Age of Mythology and Age of Empires III let players queue technology upgrades, provided they had the resources. In other words: You lot could choose to research both gold-mining and rock-mining upgrades at your market, and the latter would begin as shortly equally the former was finished.

Top-tier players may argue that if you have that many resources simply lying effectually mid-game, you're not optimizing your gameplay anyway. But Historic period of Empires has always appealed to fans for its casual multiplayer matches and single-thespian scenarios as well. It's easy to see how this feature could be useful, especially for players who are taking it like shooting fish in a barrel in Random Map games, or trying to tackle the tougher campaign missions.

Letting players queue units in addition to technologies would be fifty-fifty more useful, since some of the well-nigh of import tech upgrades happen at the Barracks (military units) and Boondocks Center (villagers). This is something that most games don't let, but that'southward arguably all the more reason for Age of Empires to be a pioneer once again.

Fallow farms

One could argue (not without merit, in this writer'south opinion) that farms in Age of Empires III and Age of Mythology made things a fiddling too uncomplicated, with their relatively low costs and infinite food supplies. Farms in Age of Empires: Definitive Edition provide a limited amount of food, and demand to be rebuilt constantly. This is fine, but as with queuing technologies, there's a style to brand things simpler.

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors expansion introduced a unproblematic, just revolutionary concept for farms: the auto-queue. Past paying for farms up-front end, villagers would automatically reseed the land one time it went fallow. Like upgrade technologies, farms are a mid-game innovation, and by fourth dimension they start running out of food, you lot are going to have more of import things to worry about than right-clicking on farms a agglomeration of times. (Although kudos to the Definitive Edition for allowing farms to exist rebuilt, rather than having to build new ones from scratch, equally in the original game.)

Basically, my criticisms of the Definitive Edition eddy down to busywork. Yep, micromanaging your base is always going to be an important part of the RTS experience, but games like StarCraft Two and Age of Empires 3 have demonstrated how streamlining base of operations-building can help players focus on long-term strategies instead. Ideally, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition should bring players back to the spirit of the 1997 archetype, merely find a manner to leverage some of the innovations the genre has made since then.

Another of import thing to note is that, for the most part, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition looks actually solid so far. The intricate balance between the races is still there, the graphics await ameliorate than ever before and the orchestral soundtrack gives the game's memorable tunes the handling they always deserved. If you can observe players effectually your skill level, you'll enjoy tight, heated matches — and, best of all, the game's interface won't be fighting you every step of the style, as it did 20 years agone.

I don't know whether Age of Empires: Definitive Edition will exist a nail hit, only at the very to the lowest degree, I expect it will be a pleasant throwback while the world waits with bated breath for Age of Empires IV. A few small changes could help information technology become from a remastered curiosity to a mainstay of competitive play.

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Marshall Honorof is a senior editor for Tom's Guide, overseeing the site's coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a science writing background, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of science and technology. After hours, yous can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on archetype sci-fi.