To be competitive in multiplayer you have to micromanage and and flawlessly execute economic plans, tasking and re-tasking your settlers to hunt game, chop trees, and mine silver with maximum efficiency. Underneath that updated exterior, Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition remains as hardcore an economy-focused RTS as the others in the series. All due respect to the greatest of the Swedes, but he’s horrible.) (Everyone other than whoever did Gustavus Adolphus. There are two notable exceptions to that: A pre-Mass Effect fame Jennifer Hale as Lizzie in the campaign, and the redone or entirely new voice acting in campaign and historical scenarios. The other sound effects and voice acting are improved but not up to the level you’d expect from any given modern game. It's my new favorite from the series soundtracks. In fact, after a few hours I realized that the Age of Empires 3 take on the main theme absolutely slaps. A surprising bonus is how the remastered soundtrack vastly improves the music, with richer bass filling out the horns and strings. It ran pretty well on my AMD 8350 and GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, with occasional hitching on eight-player matches and a handful of isolated crashes. The remade Home City screens are characterful renditions of cities from Amsterdam to Tenochtitlan, with stops in Beijing and Berlin along the way. It also serves as a pretty sharp reminder that this is the most obtuse game in the series, because most of its clever tricks aren't half as good as it thinks they are.Īge of Empires 3: Definitive Edition edition upgrades graphics, colors, and textures across the board, all the way up to 4K resolutions. It gives AoE 3's unique twists on the RTS a new life. It's the Age of Empires update that will be least appreciated, but most needed, a remaster that adds new single-player missions and civilizations. Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition gives it new life, changing some things that begged to be changed and bringing the production values up to a much higher standard.

Age of Empires 3 is the weirdest of the old-school RTS series – a game that, back in 2005, radically departed from the others for a different feel.

Age of empires 3 maps