After more than a decade of being all but forgotten, the Age of Empires franchise has had an incredible renaissance in the last few years. At first I was overjoyed by this, and I’m still glad it happened, but I do find I am now reaching the end of my honeymoon phase with this new incarnation of the franchise. Some of that is due to burnout from over-exposure, but I do think some genuine missteps have been made in the games’ management, as well.
I’ve already talked at length about my frustrations with the bizarre, unfocused direction Age of Empires IV has taken since launch, but other AoE games are starting to stumble, as well. This was best embodied by the recent “New Year, New Age” stream. It featured announcements for multiple games in the franchise, all of which managed to disappoint me on some level.
Definitely my greatest dismay came in regards to the unveiling of Age of Mythology: Retold. Age of Mythology was one of the most beloved games of my childhood, and I’d been very hyped about its upcoming remaster, but it already it seems to be making some major mistakes.
Some of it sounds good, to be sure. The new graphics look decent, and shifting god powers to a cooldown-based system will definitely make the game play a lot better, though I don’t envy the devs who have to figure out how to keep the game balanced after such a massive change.
But I had assumed it would be getting the treatment given to other Age of Empires definitive editions: All previous content, plus new stuff. That is not the case.
Firstly, we don’t seem to be getting any significant new content. I’d dearly hoped for a new civilization with an accompanying campaign (though I grant that is an ambitious ask), or failing that maybe some new gods and/or campaign content for existing civs. Neither came to pass.
The only new content we’re getting is a solo/co-op “arena of the gods” feature about which few details are available. This could be really good. If it’s something with the replayability of StarCraft II co-op missions, that would be amazing. But it could also be (and realistically is much more likely to be) a single scenario with minimal replay value.
Worse still, we’re not even getting all the previous content. The entire Tale of the Dragon expansion from the Enhanced Edition has been cut out.
I knew Tale of the Dragon didn’t receive the warmest of receptions, but I was shocked to see just how much people despised it and its Chinese civilization. The more moderate China haters “only” think it needs completely rebuilt from the ground up, but many others are deliriously gleeful that it’s been removed and/or ardent that no Chinese civilization should ever be added to the game at any point in the future.
The whole thing smacks of xenophobia, and the fact the developers appear to have bowed to such attitudes has left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.
I agree that Tale of the Dragon had some polish issues, especially in the campaign, which would probably need a major overhaul. But that’s exactly why I was excited to see it in Retold. As horrible as their current government may be, China is a culture with a rich and beautiful history and mythology that deserves proper representation in this game.
A lot of people are speculating an updated Chinese civilization may be a free DLC post-launch, and if that’s the case, I’ll be mollified, but it is just speculation. If Tale of the Dragon never arrives or is something we need to buy again on top of the purchase price of Retold, I’m less likely to be forgiving.
AoM: Retold has now gone from one of my most anticipated upcoming games to something I’m on the fence about purchasing at all.
Age of Empires III, meanwhile, got an “announcement” for a new DLC that consisted of nothing but two flags being thrown up on-screen, which is a contender for the most half-assed announcement in gaming history.
Fans identified the flags as belonging to Denmark and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a vacuum, I’d say those are decent choices for new civilizations, but… this was already by far the most Euro-centric AoE game, and the last several DLCs have also been focused on European civs (or culturally European civs, like the United States). If past history is any guide, this DLC will also feature no campaigns or much of anything else for single-player fans, so it’s likely to be a hard pass from me.
On the bright(?) side, AoE3 was always my least favourite installment of the franchise. My expectations for it are never terribly high, so it can never disappointment me too much.
That brings us to Age of Empires II, historically the best game in the franchise and to this day the most well-supported, but even there my enthusiasm is starting to dip.
For one thing, the sheer amount of content and DLCs is starting to feel overwhelming, and I’m not thrilled with the direction of a lot of them. Again, they have focused far too much on Europe, and to a lesser extent Asia, while leaving more under-represented regions neglected. Did we really need an entire Burgundian civilization while Africa and the Americans still have only three civilizations each?
I haven’t bought the new Mountain Royals expansion, I may not in future, and I am beginning to really regret having wasted money on the in-hindsight deeply unnecessary Lords of the West expansion. I was just so happy that AoE2 was getting new content at all that I was happy to throw money at anything they offered.
I’m also finding it increasingly hard to go back to AoE2 when AoE4 improved on its gameplay so well. This is probably the biggest source of my newfound ennui with the franchise: AoE4 has the mechanics I want, but it does little to support my playstyle, whereas AoE2 treats single-player fans very well but has dated gameplay. There’s no “goldilocks game” that does everything I want.
AoE2’s announcement at the New Year, New Age stream didn’t help matters. Going in, we were told to expect a “campaign-focused” expansion. Pretty much everyone took this to mean we’d get a DLC adding campaigns for older civilizations that still don’t have them, something I would have been happy to see.
Instead, the upcoming Victors and Vanquished contains exactly zero campaigns. It’s a collection of standalone single-player scenarios, most of which are more polished versions of already existing community-made scenarios. That’s similar to campaign content, but it’s definitely not the same thing.
A lot of people are grumpy about being asked to pay for stuff that was already available for free, even if it’s been given a spitshine. I’m turned off because apparently most of these scenarios get very experimental with the game’s mechanics, especially eschewing traditional base-building and economy. I never liked those kind of missions in the campaigns, and I don’t think I want to pay for more of their ilk.
I wouldn’t really mind so much if they hadn’t managed expectations so poorly. It’s not the end of the world if they do an experimental DLC that doesn’t appeal to me personally, but the “campaign-focused” comment really had us expecting something completely different.
So yes, there’s been a lot of disappointments. By no means am I ready to throw in the towel on Age of Empires, but I think I am past the point of uncritically gobbling up anything they offer. The novelty of games that were so important to my childhood getting new content once again is no longer enough on its own; new content must prove itself on its own merits.
