DO NOT BUY Age of Empires 4 - Very Disappointing Game

Hello, welcome back to a new video game

review. So today I've been playing the new

Age of Empires 4, and as an avid fan of

the original series of Age of Empires, I

have to say this new iteration of the game

is a little bit disappointing and

lackluster. I remember Age of Empires,

the original game, was one of the very

first PC games I ever owned and ever

played. It was around 1999. We had one of

those really old-fashioned computers, you

know, where the monitors used to be like

these massive And I have very fond and

vivid memories of playing Age of Empires 1

and Age of Empires 2. And you could even

say that Age of Empires is the granddaddy

of strategy games and army building, base

building games. So, so you'd think the 4th

iteration in the game from the masters of

real-time strategy and base building games

would be able to come out with something

that's amazing. Unfortunately, they've

kind of lost all of the charm and

uniqueness of the original Age of Empires

games. I remember when I was a kid playing

Age of Empires, it had such a gritty and

dark kind of scary and brooding

atmosphere. The art style was really cool

and it had its own very unique and

distinctive style. Unfortunately, I cannot

say the same about the latest version of

Age of Empires. I really do not like the

aesthetics. I don't know what they've

done, but somehow they've managed to lose

all of the charm and the grittiness of the

original games. And now the graphics have

this weird kind of— well, it's very vivid,

very oversaturated, very generic looking,

and kind of bland. It has like this 3D

look. And it just looks like one of those

free-to-play mobile games you'll find on

the App Store. In some ways, it kind of

felt like I was playing a warfare version

of The Sims. The character models kind of

look very simmy, and when you click on

each character or villager or soldier,

they say something in some kind of foreign

language. And I don't know if it's a real

foreign language or if it's a made-up

language, but it sounds like The Sims and

it just sounds kind of silly. The whole

game just feels kind of childish and not

not dark and grim and gritty and like a

brutal warfare kind of game that it used

to be and used to be known for that as

well. Now it just feels like a children's

game. And as an adult, I didn't really

appreciate the art style at all. So the

gameplay of the game, which is supposed to

be the most important part of the game,

hasn't really changed at all. Even 2

decades later, the gameplay is almost

exactly identical to the first and the

second. Age of Empires games. So in Age of

Empires, you start off with a town hall,

a village center, and you get a few

villagers and then you got to gather food

and wood and resources and then build

houses to increase population, build

lumber mills and mines, and then

eventually start building out your

military. You build a barracks, you build

out soldiers and stables, and you also

advance in the engineering and

technological tree lines. And maybe back

in 1999 when I was only 10 years old,

this would have been very intriguing and

interesting gameplay. But as an adult who

has spent over 2,000 playtime hours on

Total War, this kind of ultra-simplified

strategy gameplay that Age of Empires has

to offer is just not very impressive

compared to games such as Total War,

Warhammer 2, or even the Civilization

series. The whole time I was playing Age

of Empires 4, I just felt like I was

playing a really dumbed-down version of

Total War or Civilization. It really felt

like a mobile game. I didn't feel like

there was much depth to it. Even the

combat mechanics were kind of lame and

there weren't really much tactics

required. So for fighting and combat, you

basically just group up a bunch of your

soldiers and then right-click on the

enemy, and then they will kind of swarm

onto the enemy and attack it like a big

giant mob. There's barely any tactics

involved. I never felt like there was any

strategic placement of troops. I didn't

really feel like the kind of troops I had

were were important. I didn't really feel

like there was anything to plan. I just

created as many soldiers as I could and

just bum-rushed the enemy. And the

animations and the character models just

look kind of comedic. If you have

spearmen, they have these massive spears

that just look like they're toys. They

don't actually look like weapons. They

look like massive foam pretend toy spears.

And archers, they shoot out these arrows.

The projectiles look really stupid as

well. It just had zero sense of a

realistic brutal battle happening. It just

seemed really silly, like, yeah, it just

seemed really silly, like watching a load

of Sims having a fight. There was no

feeling of like a gruesome, horrific

battle going on. Like in Total War, you

zoom in, you can zoom in really close on

Total War: Warhammer 2, and they've got

really cool fighting animations and

there's blood and stuff and action

happening and they all crowd around each

other and the number of units on screen

of— on Total War is just a huge amount of

units compared to Age of Empires. If

you're used to playing Total War like I

am, then you're used to commanding massive

armies that have possibly even thousands

of troops, and you can see thousands of

troops on screen, and you can choose where

they go and place the formation and set

them up so that they are the most

effective fighting force. Compared to

that, in Age of Empires, you probably have

like a maximum of 20 or 30 troops that you

build, or maybe even 50, and you just

select them all and then get them to

attack the enemy base. And compared to

Total War, it's just kind of lame. Also,

I wasn't really impressed with the sound

design. When you click on your troops,

they'll say something and it kind of

sounds like there's an echo, like they

recorded the voice acting, the voice lines

in a big empty room. And there's like this

echo reverberation going on, bouncing off

the walls. It doesn't sound very good.

And the control system was really

frustrating as well. So I'm used to

spanning and scrolling around the screen

using the camera by using the WASD buttons

to pan the camera around the battlefield.

But in Age of Empires 4, the WASD buttons

don't do anything, and I tried to keybind

remap the buttons, but I couldn't find an

option to do so. So I don't know if it's

even possible. So the way you pan the

camera around the screen is you either

hold down the middle wheel mouse button,

which feels really uncomfortable, or you

use the arrow keys. And I'm playing on a

Razer Blade Pro 17-inch RTX 3060

gaming laptop, and the arrow keys are very

small and slim because no one uses the

arrow keys ever when you play games. And

to have to use that to pan the camera

around the battlefield is really annoying.

So it's either use the tiny, tiny arrow

keys or use the fiddly middle scroll—

scrolling wheel button on your mouse. Why

couldn't they just do it with the WASD

buttons would have made a lot more sense.

So control mechanisms didn't really feel

very satisfying. So who is this game for?

I think it's for the very casual strategy

player, maybe someone who's into base

building and army management and fighting,

but they don't want to get into a big

complicated game like Civilization or

Total War. And that's fine and everything

if you're a casual gamer. But for someone

like me who expects a little bit more

depth and immersion from his video games,

Age of Empires 4 just wasn't really quite

up to my standards. And if I wanted to

play a warfare game where you had to

manage resources and armies and attack

enemies, I would much, much rather play

Total War: Warhammer 2. So in conclusion,

I don't really feel like I could recommend

this game, and I would have to give it a

2.9 out of 10. I would actually rather

play the original games because even

though they are over 20 years old, They

had a very unique sound system and look

and feel that this new Age of Empires just

really lacks, and there's just not really

much about it that stands out and makes it

stand above the rest of the strategy game

selection that's on offer right now.