➤ Age of Empires 4, the review of the strategy of the year! 🎮

La Age of Empires 4 review comes at a time when the strategic genre is certainly not on the crest of the wave. In the 1997s, however, real-time strategy was a damn serious thing ... From Dune II to Command & Conquer onwards, RTS exploded and matured within a few years, reaching the pinnacle of popularity thanks to Blizzard - with Warcraft first and Starcraft later - but also thanks to the beautiful and revolutionary XNUMX Age of Empires and even more its immortal sequel.

The Age of Empires introduced several interesting dynamics to RTS and a historical context that attracted both young and more mature strategy enthusiasts, even many who had never before made it past the massive shifts of Civilization and didn't even intend to. to do it. Age of Empires II is a game that very quickly reached the status of a timeless classic and, as soon as the developers tried to change its formula, the public turned its back on it: Age of Empires III was a spectacular flop that dragged itself to the grave all plans for a fourth and final game in the series, already planned for some time.

To resurrect the franchise, Microsoft turned to veterans of Relic Entertainment. With masterpieces such as Homeworld, Company of Heroes and Dawn of War to her credit, Canadian Relic is undoubtedly a top notch choice, if not the best possible choice, even if you get to work on such a prestigious name and after that. a long time, it wouldn't be easy for anyone.

After devouring Age of Empires 4 we can say that Relic has succeeded. Hell if she succeeded!

A race against time

Age of Empires 4, the review of the strategy of the year! — The beauty of Age of Empires is also its speed: you have to explore, collect, organize, build, defend and attack all at the same time. Also for this reason, sometimes matches are competitions of nerves rather than strategy

Age of Empires IV immediately turned out to be an extraordinary product made with a lot of heart and intelligence. It does not reinvent the wheel, on the contrary by pretending that Age of Empires III never existed, the new game returns to the rhythms and ideas of the second chapter, the most loved and successful one. The game system, net of some differences and novelties, is therefore always the same: a settlement is set up and the surrounding resources are exploited to create, build, arm and technologically advance one's faction, up to overcoming the opponent. or opponents present.

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No surprises among the resources: wood, food, stone and gold. Forests and mines run out over time, like many of the food sources, but not the agricultural plots which, after being built, need only one inhabitant and no further worries. During the game, when we have accumulated sufficient resources, we will be able and will have to advance in the four technological ages (early Middle Ages, feudal age, age of castles and imperial age): this is because at each passage we will not only have access to new units, buildings and improvements, but for the first time in the series we will also have to decide which of the two proposed special buildings to build, each with its own unique characteristics.

Special buildings

There are seven special buildings for each civilization: they will be offered to us in pairs of two in conjunction with each of the three possible technological jumps, the last jump is the one that will allow us to build the only wonder available for each faction. There wonder it does not give bonuses, it has no special functions, but once built it allows access to one of the possible victory conditions of the game. This is a novelty that we immediately appreciated a lot because it allows you to significantly change what we could define the "build" of our civilization.

Choosing whether to build a special building capable of maximizing trade revenues rather than one that accelerates the recruitment of archers can have great repercussions in both the short and long term, you can prefer one to the other also based on the map that we will find ourselves in front, in order to better adapt to any shortcomings and abundances, as well as to the tactics of the opponent. Not all these special buildings, however, have a net utility, or at least at first sight interesting; here a little imagination is lacking, but it is not excluded that in the future things will not change or even the choices will multiply.

I challenge you!

Of course it is too early to understand how the meta-game will behave in multiplayer matches, how everything will be balanced along the way, what extreme tactics the most skilled players will invent. In short, it is difficult to understand how Age of Empires IV will really behave in a competitive environment, where it must necessarily shine if it really wants to stand up to its illustrious predecessor. The affinities with Age of Empires II once again reassure, as are the double dozen matches we have managed to fight online.

We tried all civilizations, really deepening only the English and the Russians, diversified tactics as much as possible and so did our opponents who, however, like us were still in the exploratory phase, stunned by the news and without the wickedness that will then pour out when they are classified matches finally available (we will have to wait for the first update).

How do you win?

Each match presented its peculiar challenges, we survived sudden invasions and managed to break through the enemy walls in a very long battle where we both had practically run out of resources, we hid our archers in the forest for exciting and decisive ambushes, we were massacred in ten minutes of the clock and won and lost by the broken headphone several times. Here we are have a good time, and a lot, finally putting aside the most modern "moba" to return to a more personal and perhaps even more honorable challenge. The only thing that has annoyed us a bit is the specularity of the troops of the eight civilizations present, where we would have liked a greater visual and strategic asymmetry.

In Age of Empires IV you can win in four different ways: tearing apart every opponent's unit and building, destroying enemy-controlled historic sites, conquering all the sacred places on the map and building your own wonder and then destroying that of others. Of course, during the creation of the game it is possible to choose which ones victory conditions activate and on which type of map to play, such as its size, number of players, composition of teams and so on.

British, French, Mongolians and Russians

There are also those who Age of Empires love it for its unforgettable memories campaigns. From this point of view, no doubt: with Age of Empires IV, Relic has done a crazy job, building exceptional epics with an innovative structure, and able to offer many variations on the theme. Veterans know that usually the series offers many different campaigns, one for each civilization included, but this time very different choices have been made and despite the eight civilizations present, the campaigns are only four, but much longer and more surprising than they will be able to never be those of past games. Take for example the first campaign with the English, this begins in 1066 in Hasting and ends a century and a half later, in 1217 in Lincoln. The campaigns dedicated to the French, the Mongols and the Russian one called The Rise of Moscow have the same breath, which presents at least a couple of missions destined to remain impressed for days.

I divulge hard

This structure goes hand in hand with a whole series of documentaries of excellent quality that will introduce each mission with interesting historical notes and real and high definition shots of the places on which we will go to battle, on which the medieval troops in action will be superimposed with an explicit and suggestive result. The missions of Age of Empires IV are key moments in a wide-ranging historical and geographical cycle, some are consecutive, others make more important time jumps. All or almost all offer unique elements that keep the attention and the desire to see what the game will invent next.

In the Norman countryside we start with a handful of heroes and break through the first palisades, then a castle at first sight impenetrable is besieged, two missions later we are called to guerrilla in the woods, to steal gold from enemy villages to convince the other nobles to provide us with troops for the final assault, which will be better if in the meantime we weaken the reinforcements that will arrive from the south.

Battles short range and exciting pitched clashes, grueling feudal resistances and counterloads of cavalry and arrows, strategic choices and tactical compromises between the screams of the captains and the trumpets of the non-commissioned officers, between the waves of the sea, over the mountains to spy on the wars of others waiting for the opportune moment to assert the sword, ours this time. All beautiful, never really easy or predictable, with some missions that will require several attempts to be dominated as required, as is necessary to wrest victory from the opponent once again.

Build, attack, fold

Each mission a different situation, if not reversed compared to the previous one. And as in past games, different ones will appear here too historical characters, some with special abilities. Their presence, however, remains relegated to one or two missions, unlike Age of Empires II where many of them were absolute protagonists of certain stories. We do not tell you the exact figure because not everyone wants to know the numbers, but the missions present in Age of Empires IV at launch are numerically identical to those offered by Age of Empires II at the debut. Between the tutorials and the missions of the campaign, so without counting all the games you play against the AI and any human challengers, you will easily have over fifty hours of gameplay, even more if you raise the difficulty. The campaign can be tackled at easy, intermediate and difficult difficulty, then there is the story difficulty that allows you to enjoy the game and documentaries without suffering the bitterness of defeat.

Historical sobs

First of all, we regret that there are no classifieds at launch but in the end it is not even so bad to get carried away a little, before starting to think about pure competition. Missing at the launch will be the seasonal ranked, but the normal ones will normally be present. While one thing that has half satisfied us is there characterization of the units which are not always easy to distinguish from each other on the battlefield, due to often laughable graphic differences that become practically non-existent with the zoom to the minimum. There are others readability problems to work on, for example, it is never really clear whether a troop is hidden by vegetation or not, and other inelegant visual solutions. To review the ballistics of archers and siege machinery which does not provide a percentage of unsuccessful hits that could make certain clashes less predictable. Finally, civilizations have different characteristics, they are designed to be played with different approaches, but the troops at their disposal do not present unique variants, except in some specific cases, and this leads to a too conservative symmetry and that not all, rightly so. , they will appreciate.

Special events

What we liked about Age of Empires IV is so much more than what it didn't convince us. The campaigns are powerful and we have already told you about it; the new maps full of ups and downs, valleys, woods, crevasses, bottlenecks, rivers, fords, hills and mountains then guarantee a continuous, procedurally infinite graphic and strategic show Even the new naval battles, slower and more reasoned than in the past, have unexpectedly convinced us .

In war, then, we found this extremely satisfying mix between macro and micro management of the units, where every little nuance in the positioning of the individual soldier can have extreme consequences, if you naturally have enough guts and cold blood to waste time while the generals shout orders, the cannonballs whistle in the air and a hundred fully armed knights menacingly knock on the your door.

Peculiar, possibly decisive, but not easy to use religious units, with their ability to exploit any relics with which sooner or later we will come across, the importance and limits of the healing abilities of some of them that we still have to fully understand. In general, all new is good news in Age of Empires IV. We were also satisfied with the graphics on which we had several doubts: it is designed to be flashy, but not so heavy, thus avoiding cutting out the less performing computers. The sound sector is definitely up to par, especially in battle.

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Tested version PC Windows Resources4Gaming.com

9.0

Readers (49)

8.5

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Age of Empires IV is everything a fan of the series could wish for: it renews the formula without overdoing it and respecting the past, offers four unforgettable campaigns and online is destined to conquer millions of players. In addition, it is full of documentaries made unexpectedly well and which make the most of the historical reconstruction. The extremely scalable difficulty then allows anyone to appreciate the gameplay, but the experts are still careful: they too will find bread for their teeth.