To stay on topic – and I’ll make no attempts at humour this time round – I really would implore everyone to check out Age of Empires 2 DE. No, I’m not an AOE 2 shill – I just coded their website. Also, I don’t have much time for games anymore, and we’re really in some kind of game-drought at the moment, but this game is truly a masterpiece.
The balance of the various units is well-thought-out. Everything is so squeaky-clean in terms of design and whatnot.
The AI, likewise, gets an intelligence upgrade each time you crank it up from standard to moderate to hard. It doesn’t get the cheat-upgrade, basically, which is more HP, more resources or what-have-you. It’s also a nice system-shock every time you move up to the next ‘difficulty’ – you’ll be beaten and think it’s unfair, but then realise it’s really just a smarter opponent who’s more cunning. Ie – on standard it won’t try to rebuild anything you destroyed. On moderate, it harasses you and rebuilds anything you burnt down. On hard, it’s just more forward about knocking you out of the picture.
The campaigns are ludicrously well-done – every level is somehow new, as I mentioned before, even though the assets remain identical.
Plus, it’s not like I’m pitching some wildly new genre to the BG3-heads, because isn’t all the Larian stuff ‘strategy’ of a similar kind?
The artwork is exceptional. And the effort they put in to the crumbling buildings when they’re destroyed is, I think, the best I’ve ever seen, in a game or a movie. It’s so perfectly detailed and satisfying.
Native languages used for each faction. The Portuguese monk is a personal favourite, with his lowkey authoritarian righteousness (don't even know what the dude is saying).
