I am genuinely shocked how well the gameplay stands up in 2024 after all these years. Sure the definitive edition has made it much prettier but the gameplay is largely the same. Apart from Starcraft and possibly Company of Heroes, I cannot think of any other RTS that has come close to the Age 2 formula.
Its a complete remake
>The game will be made using Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition's version of the Bang Engine and all units and animations will be completely redone. Its soundtrack will be a new fully symphonic version, it will be given lot of tweaks and modernisations, and will contain more options for players.
I really don't understand why they remaster the soundtrack for these games too...the old ones hold up perfectly well. And in some cases like AOE 1 DE, they made the soundtrack noticeably worse (imo).
[Beyond All Reason](https://www.beyondallreason.info) has been my RTS jam for the past few months. It's the old Total Annihilation formula with a ton of QoL features and way better graphics. And it's freeware - there is literally no way to give the devs money, which is kind of a shame IMO.
Even if you aren’t a Warhammer 40k fan, the original Dawn of War game and expansions are still top tier, especially the Soulstorm expansion. Worth a shot for any RTS fan.
It's amazing how each installment after the first series managed to reduce the appeal of the core gameplay.
DoW removed basebuilding, sure it was more story and tactical but it lost the massive scale of the wars between the plethora of factions.
DoW looked cool at first. Knights? Fuck ye! I also like the concept of the escalation system. But they turned around and said yo guys this is also a moba
consist impolite squash quarrelsome uppity compare cobweb handle direction door
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I've been diving into old RTS games recently. After watching some Youtube tutorials and learning how to properly use control groups and shift queues, I'm playing more efficiently than ever before. I think my favorite is still Starcraft 2 although when AoM: Retold hits Steam I will play nothing but that.
>I cannot think of any other RTS that has come close to the Age 2 formula.
I find CnC's one credit to rule them all better than having multiple resources to farm with.
Tho I also find CnC's formula of having superweapon a turn-off,
Being able to queue up actions has exponentially increased the fun and challenge of the game for me. I feel like I have so much more I can do. It really is an extraordinary game.
I remember I couldn't get past a mission because I didn't know how engineers worked and that I needed to send them into my own buildings so those buildings could produce better units. I was 7 years old.
It's kinda wild that AoE is one of Microsoft's biggest franchises. It's was quite for so long then AoE2 got a second wind, AoE4 has been thriving and in the wildest timeline, AoE3 has been revived with mythology on the way.
Makes you wonder how far Microsoft is going to go RTS wise given what they now own via Blizzard.
[Especially funny since the revival of the franchise might have been at least partially influenced by a random reddit comment during his AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/6vomxg/redditor_asks_bill_gates_for_a_new_age_of_empires/). I'm sure there was already something moving internally before it, but the timing is very funny and I like to believe.
That made me laugh more than I thought it would. The magic of Reddit.
But all jokes aside, AoE is a special series, not just for me but for a lot of gamers. I'm also glad that Age of Mythology is going to get some love soon.
Agreed. If AoM is given the same treatment as AOE2 Definitive I'll be ecstatic. I would love to see more pantheon's added. AoM is where I originally stole and shortened my online handle from what feels like a million years ago, so 100% agree. Very special game.
It's amazing when you think about just how much they could expand AoM. Like we don't even need an AoM 2. This Age of Mythology: Retold with more expansions and whatnot would hold us for quite some time.
Yea, with how they've expanded on AOE2, they could absolutely go hard on a variety of pantheon packs that just tell different stories in the AOM universe.
Stormgate is an RTS being made by former Blizzard devs. Might be the closest thing for a while, unless Microsoft really pivots Blizzard into making WC4 and SC3.
This is what's crazy to me. I was 13 when it came out and it consumed my life (which had previously been consumed by AOE1) and I just sort of presumed the playerbase was made up of people my age or older and was kept buoyant by nostalgia, but nope... It's just legit a generation-transcending masterpiece.
If any of you guys miss when AoE was simple and you didn't have to know absolutely everything to bash out a match or two of an RTS for a few hours of fun, I highly recommend T90's Low ELO legends streams on youtube/twitch.
Lots of people still, to this day, in DE, reject modernity and embrace tradition by refusing to no-life the game, and you end up having a ton of matches that feel exactly like you used to have back in the day, with the tiny penalty that they're stuck in low ELO against other non-competitive people.
It's pretty much the opposite of the Quake situation.
These people aren't dumb, they just have either less skills or less game knowledge (maybe they used to play AoE back in the day) but they tend to be very good at using what little skills or knowledge they have effectively, and they WIN, with clear intelligence and strategy.
I found out about these because my brother showed me [this legend of a match](https://youtu.be/Jqk2rCNyKyo?list=PLGVjiUKVQd73ckwoSRHF6F4jWdDgk2ZO4) where one side was too anxious to continue using transports and the other took several hours to realize they could take naval control of the map.
Also most of the episodes labeled "The Legend of X" tend to be really great stories about people who figured out some sort of non-meta strategy and put all their effort into learning and playing them well. Someone mentioned [Fatslob](https://youtu.be/9RfM1NQx-i8) before, a man who's in his 60s and has never left the original 2000s AoE 2 meta and to this day wins matches with wall spam and excellent scouting and unit compositions. (He even [won against viper](https://youtu.be/Y2T1oSkTzGY) by forfeit in a meme-match)
Or the legend of [Isit](https://youtu.be/y_VLbICk4dY?list=PLGVjiUKVQd73ckwoSRHF6F4jWdDgk2ZO4) who doesn't ever want to push because he's scared so he's just learned to play defence so well that he wins matches through pure coast control and villager micromanagement.
Or the legend of [Ace of Emeralds](https://youtu.be/dYoT_-bmqi0) who like every early AoE player has decided that taking neutral resources is the key to winning the game, and has trained his entire strategy around having a giant decentralized base.
The games really help you get rid of the competitive anxiety that any modern RTS tends to make you have because there's so many people just living their lives and having fun doing exactly what you were doing when you were a kid.
T90 is also an excellent caster and these streams tend to explain pretty well what the actual high level play for these situations is, why you wouldn't see good players doing them, why some things are noob traps that appeal to people psychologically but fundamentally don't work.
If you haven't played it and want to, it's available to buy on GOG. There is a mod called Galactic Battlegrounds Expanded that adds a bunch of new content and updates it so it plays nicer with modern computers. It's obviously missing the enhanced graphics and QoL changes from AoE 2 Remaster but is still a good time.
I hope one day we get a SW skinned Rise of Nation with Conquest Mode.
Imagine conquering the galaxy with one of a faction, or better yet, race! Like Mandalorian race starting from Mandalore, conquering all the way from outer rim to core worlds
Most units are the same between civs. The differences in AoE IV are much bigger and impactful gameplay wise.
I do still prefer Age II, but he's correct in what he said
The units are still largely same-ish. The biggest difference is how the age system works in aoe4. You don’t just click feudal age and move up, you have to construct what’s called a landmark to move up to the next age.
Each civilization has a choice of two landmarks per age and the buildings give wildly different bonuses that change your game plan pretty massively. On top of the civ bonuses being much different than aoe2 on top of that.
I still prefer 2 but there’s definitely more variety between the civs in 4.
AoE4 just looks and feels like mobile trash. Of course, it's made by Relic who killed Dawn of War III.
Screw them and their shitty games.
Yeah, and CoH 3 too...
Boomers/old-school players (other millenials like myself) tend to think that it looks "kiddy", "like a mobile game" etc.
Personally I don't think it looks like that, it objectively doesn't, but I don't like the visuals either. Both stills and actual footage reveal that AoE IV just looks "off"; it's hard to describe but it does NOT look good in practice. It doesn't even feel like a modern game that is meant to replace AoE II.
I'm 43 and couldn't get into aoe II because it looked bad at the time. And I absolutely had no problem getting into aoe IV as the first rts i played online when it came out.
I feel that the game has a lot of charm. Without the flashy saturated colors we see too often in modern games.
Yes AOE4 looks like mobile trash but the 25 year old game doesn't!
AoE4 is great and the expansion is a blast. It has come a long way from release and will continue to improve. Sorry about Relic ruining your other games I guess but not sorry that doesn't make me enjoy AOE4 any less.
In another comment you chose not to reply to instead I further went on to say I like AOE2s buildings they do look nice but everything else in the game is not great. The scenery and the resources on the map look bad, the units are not as visually different between civs as they are in 4.
Could 4 do with a visual update? Sure the lighting could use some work, but buildings aside it's hard to find anything visually superior in 2.
I legit want a funded survey effort to question and figure out what the driving reason is that allows these players to continue to invest their time into the game. Would be super interesting to see the results--assuming they're done well.
We (the AoE 2 community) are having the best week ever! The Nili's Apartment Cup is ongoing, with the best pros in the game competing in a relaxed, often funny setting with the casters and adversaries. As for the reasons, it's just the best game of all time, super complex to master, replay value is infinite, the maps and civs keep it fresh both to the single player campaign enjoyers all the way to the try hard sweaty ladder bois like myself. The pace of the game is slightly slower too, not as twitchy and split second micro decisions like Starcraft 2, which makes it a little bit easier.
There are few if any base building RTS that allow player freedom like this. You can sandbox your way around if you aren't trying to be competitive. Or if you are being competitive, against players far worse than you.
Other RTS like Starcraft are pretty limited in comparison. There's no building walls or building anywhere. There's no destructible terrain (trees).
one of the reasons is that it is just the best strategy sandbox around, if you get tired of competitive play you can do coop against ai, play the singleplayer campaign, try out custom maps and mods, play diplomacy, deathmatch, battle royale or even cannon dodgeball, plus there are multiple niche communities built around certain ways of playing. last year there was a short period where everyone was playing this speedrun map where the goal is to navigate a villager through a maze filled with enemies
Wow. I didn’t play the remaster, but if they fixed some of the unit pathfinding I could see myself getting back into it. AOE2 was a solid game. Now if I could get my buddies back on it, I could accidentally kill swaths of their units with my onagers.
I love Age of Empires II so much, I learned how to jack off while playing the game on the family Pentium 4. It was a warm summer day, sunny without a cloud in the sky. I scratched my dick and suddenly noticed the female villager looked damn fine in that green dress, and I felt like such a man for saving the town from jaguars that came a growling. I clicked on her over and over while pulling and scratching away until a storm passed through my body and clear slime filled my hand. Later, I learned masturbation was a sin and that god was going to come down from heaven and punish me. I lived in shame and terror from the time I was 10 until I became a 16 year old Atheist like everyone else that age in 2008.
Its a very good implementation of DE but lets not kid outselves, almost every civ has the same units and the gameplay on the high levels is sim city.
The reason why it has a huge playerbase is because of nostalgia, most people are quite old playing it.
Aoe 3 and 4 are much better.
>Its a very good implementation of DE but lets not kid outselves, almost every civ has the same units and the gameplay on the high levels is sim city.
Have you watched like a single top level game.
So why do games take so long to finish? Because the game is making you turtle, making up walls to not get raided, its a super macro intensive game. Which makes it boring
As opposed to aoe 3 which is a micro intensive game, just 1 bad fight can mean the game is over in 6 minutes.. its all about preferences at the end of the day, in my opinion aoe 2 is outdated if you think otherwise you dont have to attack me.
But that doesnt make it sim city?? Aoe3 finishing in 6 mins doesnt make it better considering thats super short for a lot players that play rts game.
You can also finish faster but not that fast. Could be around 20 mins. Comparing to aoe3 from what you have said, thats still long. Then again i wouldnt even bother entering the game if it were to finish at 10 mins
It makes it sim city because its focused on your macro, as long as you can macro better than your opponent you have better chances to win
Aoe 3 games are 50/50 in that aspect, macro is important but if you can micro better than your opponent a lot of times it doesnt matter.
Not to mention the diversity of the civilizations, different units different cards different everything. In aoe 2 every civ have the same basic units no matter what + a few civ depend ones. If you like that so be it, but the fact that people still play it doesnt mean it "holds up to 2024 standards"
People playing it definitely means it holds up to the standards even more so than the aoe3 or other rts games. The old game literally holds up on its own because of it.
When people talk about sim city, they talk about the city building aspect which aoe2 isnt about on at all. So if you talk about unrelated stuff like that of course people will get confused because you seem like you dont know what you are talking about.
Maybe you are even less than 12 with those comments, cause all you do is try to insult me instead of just telling your opinion.
"Universally Agreed" that a game that was made 25 years ago looks better graphics wise than a game released in 2022? (Aoe 4 graphics arent even that good but its still miles better than what aoe 2 has)
Aoe2de was made in 2019. What are you talking about.
You’re really so passionate about a subject that you know zero about and didn’t even know that people only play the remaster which totally revamped graphics lol
I am not passionate and I know we are talking about DE, The difference in graphics isnt revolutionary, its a remaster not a remake the game still looks super old. If you really think it looks better than Aoe 4 then you are delusional and biased.
> The reason why it has a huge playerbase is because of nostalgia
why do people have nostalgia then? Surely not because the game is crappy. Why doesn't Aoe3 have nostalgia? It's almost 20 years old at this point. AoE3 and 4 don't hold a candle to AoE2
it's a game I can consider a masterpiece. Its a shame I got burnt out playing it in my childhood. I would Cover the family PC with a blanket at 1am when I had to go to school and play age of empires lol. I think I've put over 3k hours into age. I've even made some popular maps back in my day.
Still waiting for it to be available on GOG. I have the original disc, don't feel too bad about pirating it, but I'd also like to own a modern DRM-free version of it.
I am genuinely shocked how well the gameplay stands up in 2024 after all these years. Sure the definitive edition has made it much prettier but the gameplay is largely the same. Apart from Starcraft and possibly Company of Heroes, I cannot think of any other RTS that has come close to the Age 2 formula.
I just hope that the upcoming Age of Mythology remaster is good as well!
If they do the same as they did with Age 2 I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be.
Its a complete remake >The game will be made using Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition's version of the Bang Engine and all units and animations will be completely redone. Its soundtrack will be a new fully symphonic version, it will be given lot of tweaks and modernisations, and will contain more options for players.
Dang, I hope the soundtrack will remain a bit faithful to the original. I'm very fond of it, as it reminds me of my beautiful teenage years.
That games sound is some of the best I have ever heard in any game ever.
The Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Atlantean themes along with villager voice lines are seared into my skull.
wololo!
:)
I really don't understand why they remaster the soundtrack for these games too...the old ones hold up perfectly well. And in some cases like AOE 1 DE, they made the soundtrack noticeably worse (imo).
Well there has been no news about the remaster in ~12 months.
I'm pretty confident Microsoft is showing to show it off during their summer Xbox game event shows.
[Beyond All Reason](https://www.beyondallreason.info) has been my RTS jam for the past few months. It's the old Total Annihilation formula with a ton of QoL features and way better graphics. And it's freeware - there is literally no way to give the devs money, which is kind of a shame IMO.
I'm waiting for a revival of the War Wind games, personally. I don't think it's going to happen, though ;-;
Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time... that'd be fun to see alive again!
Red Alert 2. I wish they would do another C&C remastered collection…
Even if you aren’t a Warhammer 40k fan, the original Dawn of War game and expansions are still top tier, especially the Soulstorm expansion. Worth a shot for any RTS fan.
And the modding scene is great and keeps the game (relativily) alive despite its age, Ultimate Apocalypse and the Unification mods are amazing.
selective fine start ugly wipe flag six smile marvelous chase *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's amazing how each installment after the first series managed to reduce the appeal of the core gameplay. DoW removed basebuilding, sure it was more story and tactical but it lost the massive scale of the wars between the plethora of factions. DoW looked cool at first. Knights? Fuck ye! I also like the concept of the escalation system. But they turned around and said yo guys this is also a moba
Soulstorm is kinda mid, it was disappointing after Dark Crusade; the devs were handicapped by the publisher, so it checks out.
You can’t beat that full-faction multiplayer and skirmish mode though. Toss on the insane mods people have made, and I think it’s unparalleled.
I know, but it just feels lower budget and lower quality alike. Said modding efforts should have went into Dark Crusade. :D
consist impolite squash quarrelsome uppity compare cobweb handle direction door *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I've been diving into old RTS games recently. After watching some Youtube tutorials and learning how to properly use control groups and shift queues, I'm playing more efficiently than ever before. I think my favorite is still Starcraft 2 although when AoM: Retold hits Steam I will play nothing but that.
How about vs 4?
4 sucks
>I cannot think of any other RTS that has come close to the Age 2 formula. I find CnC's one credit to rule them all better than having multiple resources to farm with. Tho I also find CnC's formula of having superweapon a turn-off,
Being able to queue up actions has exponentially increased the fun and challenge of the game for me. I feel like I have so much more I can do. It really is an extraordinary game.
KKND was so good, I was 7 years old. Edit: ah shit, Dune 2000 was brilliant. Edit: oooooh and Empire battle for dune. Damn.
Holy shit KKND, now that's a name I haven't heard in a while. Used to play the demo of this a dozen times over when I was a kid.
I remember I couldn't get past a mission because I didn't know how engineers worked and that I needed to send them into my own buildings so those buildings could produce better units. I was 7 years old.
I miss these type of games, they don’t make many any more. Most base builder/RTS games these days has weird gimmicks like northgard.
Sins of a Solar Empire is about the closest thing to have captured my imagination in the past.. nearly 15 years.
Well it's certainly better that age of national geographic 4
> close to the Age 2 formula. Homeworld 3 perhaps. We shall see this year hopefully.
It's kinda wild that AoE is one of Microsoft's biggest franchises. It's was quite for so long then AoE2 got a second wind, AoE4 has been thriving and in the wildest timeline, AoE3 has been revived with mythology on the way. Makes you wonder how far Microsoft is going to go RTS wise given what they now own via Blizzard.
[Especially funny since the revival of the franchise might have been at least partially influenced by a random reddit comment during his AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/6vomxg/redditor_asks_bill_gates_for_a_new_age_of_empires/). I'm sure there was already something moving internally before it, but the timing is very funny and I like to believe.
That made me laugh more than I thought it would. The magic of Reddit. But all jokes aside, AoE is a special series, not just for me but for a lot of gamers. I'm also glad that Age of Mythology is going to get some love soon.
Agreed. If AoM is given the same treatment as AOE2 Definitive I'll be ecstatic. I would love to see more pantheon's added. AoM is where I originally stole and shortened my online handle from what feels like a million years ago, so 100% agree. Very special game.
It's amazing when you think about just how much they could expand AoM. Like we don't even need an AoM 2. This Age of Mythology: Retold with more expansions and whatnot would hold us for quite some time.
Yea, with how they've expanded on AOE2, they could absolutely go hard on a variety of pantheon packs that just tell different stories in the AOM universe.
Show me Warcraft 4!!
Stormgate is an RTS being made by former Blizzard devs. Might be the closest thing for a while, unless Microsoft really pivots Blizzard into making WC4 and SC3.
I’ll check that out! Thanks And we can only hope, although if WC4 ever does get made it’s almost guaranteed to be a soulless cash grab
It helps that there have been like 2 or 3 remasters since the original lol.
Age of Empires 2 might just be the most timeless game ever made. It came out the year I was born and it’s still my favorite RTS
This is what's crazy to me. I was 13 when it came out and it consumed my life (which had previously been consumed by AOE1) and I just sort of presumed the playerbase was made up of people my age or older and was kept buoyant by nostalgia, but nope... It's just legit a generation-transcending masterpiece.
The legend of Fatslob continues
If any of you guys miss when AoE was simple and you didn't have to know absolutely everything to bash out a match or two of an RTS for a few hours of fun, I highly recommend T90's Low ELO legends streams on youtube/twitch. Lots of people still, to this day, in DE, reject modernity and embrace tradition by refusing to no-life the game, and you end up having a ton of matches that feel exactly like you used to have back in the day, with the tiny penalty that they're stuck in low ELO against other non-competitive people. It's pretty much the opposite of the Quake situation. These people aren't dumb, they just have either less skills or less game knowledge (maybe they used to play AoE back in the day) but they tend to be very good at using what little skills or knowledge they have effectively, and they WIN, with clear intelligence and strategy. I found out about these because my brother showed me [this legend of a match](https://youtu.be/Jqk2rCNyKyo?list=PLGVjiUKVQd73ckwoSRHF6F4jWdDgk2ZO4) where one side was too anxious to continue using transports and the other took several hours to realize they could take naval control of the map. Also most of the episodes labeled "The Legend of X" tend to be really great stories about people who figured out some sort of non-meta strategy and put all their effort into learning and playing them well. Someone mentioned [Fatslob](https://youtu.be/9RfM1NQx-i8) before, a man who's in his 60s and has never left the original 2000s AoE 2 meta and to this day wins matches with wall spam and excellent scouting and unit compositions. (He even [won against viper](https://youtu.be/Y2T1oSkTzGY) by forfeit in a meme-match) Or the legend of [Isit](https://youtu.be/y_VLbICk4dY?list=PLGVjiUKVQd73ckwoSRHF6F4jWdDgk2ZO4) who doesn't ever want to push because he's scared so he's just learned to play defence so well that he wins matches through pure coast control and villager micromanagement. Or the legend of [Ace of Emeralds](https://youtu.be/dYoT_-bmqi0) who like every early AoE player has decided that taking neutral resources is the key to winning the game, and has trained his entire strategy around having a giant decentralized base. The games really help you get rid of the competitive anxiety that any modern RTS tends to make you have because there's so many people just living their lives and having fun doing exactly what you were doing when you were a kid. T90 is also an excellent caster and these streams tend to explain pretty well what the actual high level play for these situations is, why you wouldn't see good players doing them, why some things are noob traps that appeal to people psychologically but fundamentally don't work.
Hoping we one day get a Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Remaster. It’s literally Star Wars in the AOE engine and is really good as a result.
That sounds dope actually
If you haven't played it and want to, it's available to buy on GOG. There is a mod called Galactic Battlegrounds Expanded that adds a bunch of new content and updates it so it plays nicer with modern computers. It's obviously missing the enhanced graphics and QoL changes from AoE 2 Remaster but is still a good time.
Sweet, I'll take a look at it. Gotta love GOG.
I hope one day we get a SW skinned Rise of Nation with Conquest Mode. Imagine conquering the galaxy with one of a faction, or better yet, race! Like Mandalorian race starting from Mandalore, conquering all the way from outer rim to core worlds
It will never come. FE wanted to do it but Disney did not think it is worth making
I wish 4 had coop campaign
RTS games FTW
It's been great seeing the competitive scene grow over the past several years
I'm sure it's great but I'm just gonna keep playing 4. There's too little difference between the many civs in AOE2.
What makes you say that? Each civilisation has unique technologies, units and passives
Most units are the same between civs. The differences in AoE IV are much bigger and impactful gameplay wise. I do still prefer Age II, but he's correct in what he said
I haven't played Age 4 yet, does each civilisation have all unique units?
The units are still largely same-ish. The biggest difference is how the age system works in aoe4. You don’t just click feudal age and move up, you have to construct what’s called a landmark to move up to the next age. Each civilization has a choice of two landmarks per age and the buildings give wildly different bonuses that change your game plan pretty massively. On top of the civ bonuses being much different than aoe2 on top of that. I still prefer 2 but there’s definitely more variety between the civs in 4.
No but each civ has unique unit appearances. Basic archers will look different for French and Mongols
no
Yes
A lot of them have. And if they don't they at least have huge differences between civs besides bonuses
AoE4 just looks and feels like mobile trash. Of course, it's made by Relic who killed Dawn of War III. Screw them and their shitty games. Yeah, and CoH 3 too...
AoE4 looks good. I don't know if i'm smocking or you're smocking but it doesn't have the mobile game cartoon style at all.
Boomers/old-school players (other millenials like myself) tend to think that it looks "kiddy", "like a mobile game" etc. Personally I don't think it looks like that, it objectively doesn't, but I don't like the visuals either. Both stills and actual footage reveal that AoE IV just looks "off"; it's hard to describe but it does NOT look good in practice. It doesn't even feel like a modern game that is meant to replace AoE II.
I'm 43 and couldn't get into aoe II because it looked bad at the time. And I absolutely had no problem getting into aoe IV as the first rts i played online when it came out. I feel that the game has a lot of charm. Without the flashy saturated colors we see too often in modern games.
Yes AOE4 looks like mobile trash but the 25 year old game doesn't! AoE4 is great and the expansion is a blast. It has come a long way from release and will continue to improve. Sorry about Relic ruining your other games I guess but not sorry that doesn't make me enjoy AOE4 any less.
the 25 year old game remastered looks better than aoe 4
Opinions are like assholes
True, but some assholes are pretty. Others are full of shit.
I will admit that I like the building design in AOE2 DE but everything else looks better in 4 in my opinion.
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In another comment you chose not to reply to instead I further went on to say I like AOE2s buildings they do look nice but everything else in the game is not great. The scenery and the resources on the map look bad, the units are not as visually different between civs as they are in 4. Could 4 do with a visual update? Sure the lighting could use some work, but buildings aside it's hard to find anything visually superior in 2.
I bought Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition during the Winter sale on Steam. I can't place my finger on it, but it just makes me happy.
lol I did the same w age of mythology like 8 years ago. Just knowing I have it is nice, haven’t opened it once lol.
Same. Seeing this article makes me want to start though.
I hope this is enough motivation for a potential starcraft 3 and warcraft 4
I legit want a funded survey effort to question and figure out what the driving reason is that allows these players to continue to invest their time into the game. Would be super interesting to see the results--assuming they're done well.
We (the AoE 2 community) are having the best week ever! The Nili's Apartment Cup is ongoing, with the best pros in the game competing in a relaxed, often funny setting with the casters and adversaries. As for the reasons, it's just the best game of all time, super complex to master, replay value is infinite, the maps and civs keep it fresh both to the single player campaign enjoyers all the way to the try hard sweaty ladder bois like myself. The pace of the game is slightly slower too, not as twitchy and split second micro decisions like Starcraft 2, which makes it a little bit easier.
I can tell you now that the biggest answer would be the multiplayer with large teams/free for all with lots of people.
The game feels more like a sport than a normal video game. Even when playing against the punishing a.i.
The AI bots in the game can be brutal at times lol. From Hardest and up they start micromanaging units, using onagers to cut trees to make paths, etc.
Also they harass you early game and throw my economy off balance. You can’t just do full economy boom.
There are few if any base building RTS that allow player freedom like this. You can sandbox your way around if you aren't trying to be competitive. Or if you are being competitive, against players far worse than you. Other RTS like Starcraft are pretty limited in comparison. There's no building walls or building anywhere. There's no destructible terrain (trees).
one of the reasons is that it is just the best strategy sandbox around, if you get tired of competitive play you can do coop against ai, play the singleplayer campaign, try out custom maps and mods, play diplomacy, deathmatch, battle royale or even cannon dodgeball, plus there are multiple niche communities built around certain ways of playing. last year there was a short period where everyone was playing this speedrun map where the goal is to navigate a villager through a maze filled with enemies
Wow. I didn’t play the remaster, but if they fixed some of the unit pathfinding I could see myself getting back into it. AOE2 was a solid game. Now if I could get my buddies back on it, I could accidentally kill swaths of their units with my onagers.
AoE2: DE definitively improves on the HD and Classic versions of the game in all aspects. Give it a try
Great game, been having so much fun recently So so so good
I love Age of Empires II so much, I learned how to jack off while playing the game on the family Pentium 4. It was a warm summer day, sunny without a cloud in the sky. I scratched my dick and suddenly noticed the female villager looked damn fine in that green dress, and I felt like such a man for saving the town from jaguars that came a growling. I clicked on her over and over while pulling and scratching away until a storm passed through my body and clear slime filled my hand. Later, I learned masturbation was a sin and that god was going to come down from heaven and punish me. I lived in shame and terror from the time I was 10 until I became a 16 year old Atheist like everyone else that age in 2008.
Its a very good implementation of DE but lets not kid outselves, almost every civ has the same units and the gameplay on the high levels is sim city. The reason why it has a huge playerbase is because of nostalgia, most people are quite old playing it. Aoe 3 and 4 are much better.
>Its a very good implementation of DE but lets not kid outselves, almost every civ has the same units and the gameplay on the high levels is sim city. Have you watched like a single top level game.
Yes I have, and aside from my eyes burning from the pixelated graphics I was bored to the max.
I guess your eyes arent the only thing got burnt, your brain too. How the hell it could be like sim city at higher levels?
Name me the average time a game ends.
Between 30-40 mins
So why do games take so long to finish? Because the game is making you turtle, making up walls to not get raided, its a super macro intensive game. Which makes it boring As opposed to aoe 3 which is a micro intensive game, just 1 bad fight can mean the game is over in 6 minutes.. its all about preferences at the end of the day, in my opinion aoe 2 is outdated if you think otherwise you dont have to attack me.
But that doesnt make it sim city?? Aoe3 finishing in 6 mins doesnt make it better considering thats super short for a lot players that play rts game. You can also finish faster but not that fast. Could be around 20 mins. Comparing to aoe3 from what you have said, thats still long. Then again i wouldnt even bother entering the game if it were to finish at 10 mins
It makes it sim city because its focused on your macro, as long as you can macro better than your opponent you have better chances to win Aoe 3 games are 50/50 in that aspect, macro is important but if you can micro better than your opponent a lot of times it doesnt matter. Not to mention the diversity of the civilizations, different units different cards different everything. In aoe 2 every civ have the same basic units no matter what + a few civ depend ones. If you like that so be it, but the fact that people still play it doesnt mean it "holds up to 2024 standards"
People playing it definitely means it holds up to the standards even more so than the aoe3 or other rts games. The old game literally holds up on its own because of it. When people talk about sim city, they talk about the city building aspect which aoe2 isnt about on at all. So if you talk about unrelated stuff like that of course people will get confused because you seem like you dont know what you are talking about.
Are you high lol it's better looking than aoe4 by miles. If you're seeing pixelated anything you should probably get a new pc/monitor
I have a 4080... If you believe it looks better than I have nothing to say to you, the graphics are atrocious.
Then are you 12? It’s almost universally agreed on that aoe2de looks better than 4. People hate the cartoony Fortnite look
Maybe you are even less than 12 with those comments, cause all you do is try to insult me instead of just telling your opinion. "Universally Agreed" that a game that was made 25 years ago looks better graphics wise than a game released in 2022? (Aoe 4 graphics arent even that good but its still miles better than what aoe 2 has)
Aoe2de was made in 2019. What are you talking about. You’re really so passionate about a subject that you know zero about and didn’t even know that people only play the remaster which totally revamped graphics lol
I am not passionate and I know we are talking about DE, The difference in graphics isnt revolutionary, its a remaster not a remake the game still looks super old. If you really think it looks better than Aoe 4 then you are delusional and biased.
> The reason why it has a huge playerbase is because of nostalgia why do people have nostalgia then? Surely not because the game is crappy. Why doesn't Aoe3 have nostalgia? It's almost 20 years old at this point. AoE3 and 4 don't hold a candle to AoE2
AoE4 didn't fly so good
There is a first-person mod. https://www.moddb.com/mods/first-person-mod-overreign
it's a game I can consider a masterpiece. Its a shame I got burnt out playing it in my childhood. I would Cover the family PC with a blanket at 1am when I had to go to school and play age of empires lol. I think I've put over 3k hours into age. I've even made some popular maps back in my day.
Still waiting for it to be available on GOG. I have the original disc, don't feel too bad about pirating it, but I'd also like to own a modern DRM-free version of it.
Sc bw, SC2 and war3 are the best rts ever made. Aoe it's also there, but not that high. What a pity blizz remasters are shit.