Age of Empires 4 review: a rebirth of RTS series brilliance

If it is possible to play it safe with a RTS game in 2021, then Age of Empires 4 is playing it safe. The new game from Relic Studios, which replaces the previous franchise developer Ensemble, is more like a modernized remake of Age of Empires 2 than a sequel to the third game in the series. But it turns out that updating a 20-year-old classic is actually a great idea.

On AdE 4, players select a civilization to play from among the eight in the game. Age of Empires 3 made the series transition to the colonial era, but AdE 4 goes back to medieval times, just like the second game. Each civilization comes with its own special bonuses and some unique buildings and units for players to build. They all start with a city center and six villagers (up from the three in Age of Empires 2), with the goal of building a prosperous city, complete with its own economy and, of course, its own army. The main attraction of the game is its competitive mode, which includes duels, team games or wars against everyone with other civilizations, all of which can be played offline against the AI ​​or online with other players.

To build their cities and armies, players must gather resources, construct buildings, and create each individual combat unit, all while trying to counter their enemies’ soldiers. Players can also advance the technology of their cities and armies by building special landmarks that transport them into a new historical era, with four in total to advance. Developing your cities and their technology is important, but the bread and butter of Age of Empires has always been armies and combat.

Each civilization has access to basic units that make up a beautiful trinity of counters: spearmen versus cavalry, versus cavalry archers, and archers versus spearmen. This basic premise stems directly from Age of Empires 2 (and real life, technically), but combat, like most things, is a bit simpler in AdE 4. For example, archers in Age of Empires 4 always hits the mark. While this was an improvement, archers could eventually enter AdE 2, most of the small skirmishes in the previous game involved moving units to dodge arrows, something that AdE 4 totally eliminates.

This simplification extends to more than just combat. Many of the small problems that used to be part of the chaotic management of the city of AdE 2 they have left the newer game. Players no longer have to re-seed their farms as the villagers care for them, and the villagers rarely get in each other’s way, often simply walking through each other, making them much less difficult to manage. . Weather Age of Empires 4 It is still a complicated game, its complications stem more from decision-making and strategy than from the minute details of mechanical plays.

Civilizations are more different from each other here than they were in Age of Empires 2 – although the last game doesn’t go as far as AdE 3, which gave each civilization radically different units and different economic playstyles, primarily through the choice of landmarks it builds in each age.

AdE 4 It also introduces some cool changes to the base building formula that allow for more creativity. AdE 2 implicitly encouraged players towards specific city layouts because the buildings could form makeshift walls around a base. On AdE 4, units can walk around buildings no matter how close they are, allowing for greater design freedom. The game also introduces production improvements for structures depending on what other buildings are nearby; These bonuses tend to vary from faction to faction, which helps make each city’s layouts feel unique. This allows players to hone their foundations and identify with the place they have built in a way that AdE 2 just scratched the surface of y Age of Empires 3 mostly abandoned.

Added to the permanence of your city in each game is the fact that the defenses in this game are much stronger than ever in the series. While walls have always existed in Age of Empires, AdE 4The stone walls are a cut above their predecessors. The new stone walls can only be destroyed by siege weapons, rather than by regular soldiers. Infantry units can craft rudimentary battering rams on their own, once you’ve researched the upgrade, but it still means that sieges require a lot more planning and resource investment than they used to. On top of that, archers can now stand on stone walls to gain a small buff.

Outside of the basic multiplayer mode of the game, Age of Empires 4 It also has a great single player mode that features four different historical campaigns. These put players in the shoes of historical generals and armies of four different civilizations in four specific periods of history: the English in the time of Anarchy, the Mongols when they invade Russia and China, the Russians with Moscow on the rise, and the French while facing the English in The Hundred Years War.

Each campaign has multiple missions, and each mission begins with a superbly filmed and occasionally recreated historical narrative that sets the political and tactical stage for the battle you are about to play. These scenes are a hack for history buffs, and while they won’t make you an expert on English civil wars, they will help make each new mission feel like an important part of a larger narrative.

The missions themselves are quite diverse, putting you in situations that standard Age of Empires matches against humans or the AI ​​would never. You will face specific challenges, such as the requirement to use a specific set of units to eliminate the enemy or to lead a small force in the defense of a huge castle from the advancing enemy army. Each scenario eventually ends with you killing all the remaining enemies, which can make some of the missions feel a bit the same by the end, but everything leading up to that is exciting and distinct from standard multiplayer matches.

In the 16 years since the last “new” Age of Empires game, video games have changed a lot, and in Age of Empires 4, Relic manages to cater to modern gamers without losing the soul of the series. The game revives and renews the fantastic multiplayer of Age of Empires not through fundamental changes, but through clever tweaks to old systems. These minor updates can bristle for a long time. Age of Empires 2 fans, but they are an important and welcome addition to the series, which makes AdE 4 feels like the first big budget modern RTS since Starcraft 2.

Age of Empires 4 It will be released on October 28 on Steam and Xbox Game Pass for PC. The game was reviewed using a pre-launch download code provided by Microsoft. Vox Media has affiliate associations. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.