Age of Empires III (PC)

Graphically this game is beautiful and some of the effects are just wonderful. The weapons feel powerful and the ship -v- ship battles are just stunning. My graphics card is a 256 MB Radeon X600 and on any setting this game works well.

Playing the game is very interesting. There are now limits on the number of some things you can build - such as ships. The villages are now much better, and they do a lot with out being told. if they are idle and there is something obvious to do nearby - they will do it.

Home cities are a wonderful advancement in the game giving it a much more satisfying feel. The more you play the game the better the things you can have sent to you after every few minutes in the game. You gain experience for gathering resources etc., and then this allows you to ship in some extra coin, or eventually a mini army!!!

The campaigns are easy to get into and follow a nice family tale where you can somewhat empathise with the leaders you control. The objectives for the missions are no longer - kill everyone - but there are more specific objectives - one mission is simply to gain experience!

Though most of this game is strong, the one futile thing is treasures. Dotted around the map there are small treaures guarded by, say, a pack of wild bears. After using your explorer to kill the guardian, you can take the bounty - this is often a very small amount of coin etc. However, sometimes you get rewarded with a special warrior or some settlers, so its not all bad!

Overall a very good game, bound to provide hours of fun. The effects when blowing stuff up are very satisfying, and the overall style of the game is extremely finished - a wonderful improvement on a wonderful series of games. I thoroughly recommend you purchase this game.

Sytems requirments are a bit of a hog but it can still run on lower end systems.

I recommend you buy this game and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have. If you liked the previous games buy it! If you're new to this genre of games then this is an excellent game to get started on.

The game play is much the same though there are some interesting additions of 'Explorer', Native trading posts, experience points and Home city.

The latter uses the concept of cards which are used to ship over improvements, militia or resources during the game. Initially you start off with a deck of 15 cards and you can earn extra cards from gaining the requisite experience points. The 'card deck' (max 20) can then be customised by choosing the cards you wish to use before the start of the game. This does add an extra dimension to the game but it can be quite tedious playing the game for the sake of earning experience simply to get extra cards (there are loads of them!).

Interface is less intuiative than previous AOEs.

Sound OK.

Graphics were a bit disapointing on the setting I had to enable the game to run. I have NVidia GeForce 64MB card. The zoom facility is a bit gimmicky as you don't really need to use it.

Overall, this is more of a AOE2a rather than 3 in my opinion. Although the game provides more scope for varied play, hard core RTS gamers will find the detail and range of units lacking.

I guess we will have to wait for AOE4 to see whether the franchise is really dead. Come on Ensemble you can do better.

I really don't mind about the game graphics, although I must say that these have been upgraded. I care more about the gameplay and ease of use than about what you see if you just stare at the screen.

For those who don't know, AOE kind of carved out the C&C genre of games all by itself, joined by the Total War series later. This is the latest of the AOEs, chronologically. A far cry from AOE2, where there is a hint of guns in the hands of the bombards and the hand cannoneers, now you have armies made up of musketeers and field guns.

It is very different from the hack-and-slash of the other ones (although these have not been totally abandoned - guns don't work close up and those bayonets look so cool) because you will now, instead of rushing in with swords faling, withstand an enemy charge with a sneer and a bullet. Your armies, while not being stationary, will find they have to move less to engage an enemy.

One of my favourite things in this game is the concept of a home city which aids you in battle and can be improved to enable it to help more. This, aside from being a great idea, ties together your random battles so that you can progress to harder and harder ones, giving the sense of working with just one thing. It forms a connection with your army that you just don't get in other games.

This is, I think, the best Age of Empires so far, and a contender for the best C&C game as well.