What I bring to the table is fresh eyes, a love of history and a couple thousand hours devoted to the Total War series and its real time historic military battles without the burden of also building peons, or villagers, or SCVs.Īge of Empires 4 doesn’t work quite to that Total War scale, but it does a marvellous job at recreating the tactics and trade-offs of historic military conflict under the restrictions (and balance) of a tight population cap. My experience with the Age of Empires series begins and ends with the faint scent of Nutra-Grain on a promotional disc and wasting at least 40 cents in local calls for modem play with a friend who decided humiliating me was more fun that teaching me how to play the game, and the last RTS I played competitively had a – craft suffix with no number following. If you are looking for a deep analysis of Age of Empires 4’s chops as a competitive real time strategy (RTS) game or a comparison to its impressive lineage, you are in the wrong place my friend. You don’t want to spend years of your life praising Genghis Khan without the context of, you know, all the genocide, and you should know where I’m coming from before taking my opinion here as if it were preached from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey. Much like when analysing the great battles of history, context is important when devoting ten minutes of the precious little time you will spend on this mortal coil to reading a video game review. Sticks and stones may break my bones but a horse can do it faster.

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