Now you can get the top stories from Kotaku delivered to your inbox. Enter your email below.
By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Everyone has their gaming blind spot and, without a doubt, real-time strategy is mine. The last RTS game I played was The Settlers 3. Good lord that was almost 13 years ago now! Anyway – last week Microsoft released Age of Empires Online as a Free-to-play title, and I was wondering what you guys thought so far?
I have very little thoughts, having not played it, but reviews appear to be mixed so far.
What do you guys think?
The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans
Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.
Its actually really good! For one thing, its got a client, you don’t play it in the browser like I thought was the case.
So you get real proper real-time strategy with little men running around the battlefield just like the older games. You also have a very MMO structure beneath it where you level up a city with loot etc, in a kinda-sorta Farmville like way. But the upgrades to your city create better units for your battle-map antics. I’m pretty pleased.
I just can’t bring myself to support F2P system, for me it’s like the reality TV of gaming. It has such potential to kill the industry in the same way.
If you love age of empires and really need to play it, i recommend the $99 6 month subscription, as i found it frustrating playing and having all the cool stuff locked out; but glaring in your face to the whole time playing.
Buying everything available now you are looking at $60, however i believe there is a fair amount of content to come over the next 6 months.
The game is quite fun to play, a little repeatative and I’m yet to see where the multiplayer aspect comes into it yet… admittedly however I stopped playing after a couple of hours due to the points mentioned above.
With the 6-month pass, evidently you’re paying 30% off what it would cost to buy the first six month’s of stuff separately.
What’s odd is the list of civs you’ll get, Premium Greek/Premium Egyptian/Premium Celt and Pro Persian. I wonder what makes the Persian civ Pro???
I played it for 4 hours.
I logged out, thought about it for a bit. And realised that I’d be better off playing AoE2.
That was the polite version.
The rude version is:
“What the hell is this? A bastard love child between The Sims and Empire Earth?”
I have been enjoying it quite a lot. It’s a full RTS which is great, and it adds basic RPG elements too, such as being able to give your units equipment that makes them move faster or deal more damage. I love the art style (though I don’t think everyone else will) and it hasn’t started screaming at me for my money yet.
I saw this in JB Hifi yesterday for $25… It didn’t come with a game disc and said it was digital download only… I was having some serious WTF thoughts as I wondered why JB Hifi is charging $25 for a free to play game with no actual content in the case.
I was initially very critical of it but its grown on me to the point where I’ve shelled out for one premium civ.
But I don’t think the game has a huge future simply because the pricetag on the premium stuff is typically $AU5-10 more than its reasonable to pay and all regions outside of america are being billed more than we should – which is turning a lot of people off.
As for gameplay aspects, its really good. Remarkably well designed in terms of being an MMORTS but you don’t understand the ingenious aspects of the game (and its customization) untill level 6-10. But there’s quite a few issues with the game such as technical problems (pathing is an issue you are guaranteed to notice every level) as well as balance. The lack of balance between free and paying customers probably means that the community won’t grow as if you’re not shelling out for premium content, you’re getting your face smacked and that’s just not fun.
Its a great idea and the design is mostly excellent but they need to make some significant changes to the business model and product pricing in the next month or they’ll lose the majority of the interested players they have at the moment.
In short: LOT of negativity in the community because of the business model. Doesn’t help build communities which is essential for new MMOs. They need to make changes or they’ll sink regardless of how interesting the game mechanics are.
Surprisingly good!
It has a lot of free content, the gameplay is very similar to the familiar pattern and the art is nicely stylised without becoming too cartoonish.
It definitely has room to improve (some of the missions are a bit gamey) but I’m enjoying it so far.
I found this game to be quite interesting.
It employs the elements of a rpg within an RTS game.
The melding of the two is quite good BUT tbh, the would probably irks anybody who wants to play this game for PVP, since you have to unlock new units/buildings by playing PVE, which also leads to the gear you need for your units to make them better.
The inherent problems about AoEO is the fact that the F2P model of the game gimps you by limiting the amount of things you can get in the game.
This includes: only being able to use uncommon gear (I heard that at lv40, the gear difference isn’t that big, but a difference is sitll a difference)
limited amount of storage since alot of the higher recipes for buildings are rare or epic quality
limited resource buildings
no advisors (which means you can’t visit friends because you don’t have any diplomats)
the final tier of the tech tree is locked for F2P users
I might of missed a few things but basically the game is based off a Pay to Win model which is horrifically overpriced for australians (unless it has changed in the last week that i played)
The 99$ USD package was 125AUD, and the 20$ premium civ packages were 25AUD each as opposed to 20$
Overall, The game is not worth paying for until they drop the price.
I’ve read the AoEO forums where they compare the 60$ you would spend for AoEO for 3 civs to Starcraft 2.
What a joke
The game’s pathfinding is a lot better than AoE2’s was, but there’s still some glaring issues with it. Units have this bad tendency to just stop halfway through carrying out an order, and when telling units to attack-move some units will attack an enemy they walk by while others just walk right past.
It’s odd because I don’t remember ever having these problems in the beta.
That aside, it’s good. It’s a simplified version of AoE2 where the races play differently in more ways than just units with different stats on them.
The “DLC” is far too expensive though, especially when Aussies get charged more for the same amounts of Microsoft Points to begin with.
if only ms didn’t make it a games for windows live game and maybe they would have 2x-10x more people playing. Age of Empires was my favourite pc game of all time, and it died along with ensemble studio.
this wont save it.
Love the Game , cant stop ..
we with this game i went all out and forked out $125, has its bugs and all , but im sure they will get sorted out …
I downloaded it on day one, played it up to level 15 and stopped playing.
It’s not a bad game, I just found a lot of the quests mind-numbingly repetative.
RTS isn’t really my genre. But it killed a few hours.
I found it was fun, but got really annoyed when the loot I obtained from one of the quests was locked out unless I paid $20 for the ‘Premium Civ’ pack. While $20 is a perfectly reasonable asking price for the “full game” so to speak, I felt it was a bit rough that I couldn’t use something that I’d earned through a quest..
its not f2p its a demo that prevents you from playing at the same level as the premium players. It is basically pay to win.
Loving it…..
Don’t like this freemium model though. PVP would be hell…
Wonderful gameplay, very similar to AoM… Don’t like the cartoony look, but its very nice regardess.
7/10, if i could pay $100 and have everything unlocked ever (not as a subscription) it would be 9/10
I’m kind of in love with this game. I got the Greek Civ pack first off, and have enjoyed every minute so far. True, having to go through Windows live is painful, but it’s better than the other game i’ve been playing, the PC version of From Dust.
It set of a Nostalgia bomb in my face long enough for me to get into the new stuff, and has kept me hooked! Word of advice, get some friends to play with so you can explore the multi!
Leave a Reply