Pros
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The classic series updated, but not diminished
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Satisfying campaigns with fascinating cultures
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Total eye candy
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Tiny elephants!
Cons
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Say goodbye to your social life
History will not judge my military tactics kindly, but it🏅 will mark Age of Empires 4 as a benchmark for real-time strategy games in 2021. The highly-anticipated PC game will remind you just why you love🧜d the series so much, and then overwhelm you with a generous amount of missions, scenarios, and multiplayer options like your rich grandma handing out gifts at Christmas.
Fast Facts
Release Date: October 28
Platform(s): PC
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: Microsoft
If you're new to the series, think of it as a management sim, but one where the aim is to save your people from invaders or to crush whole nations beneath your mighty fist. Control freaks, step right up because you🔴 are about to live your best life. You'll have worker townspeople at your disposal to build up settlements and collect resources, and an army - complete with specialized units and siege weaponry - to command. You need ꦑfood, gold, wood, and stone to purchase everything you need, collect or trade enough and you can advance your civilization through different historical ages, offering more advanced technology. Winning is about using all of the above as efficiently as possible depending on the enemy, the map, and its resources and landscape. Maybe you'll terrorize the local populace with endless legions of archers and swordsmen, or maybe you'll work on your defenses and focus on building a "Wonder" to prove your people's dominance.
Empirically brilliant
There are eight different civilizations to play with, either in campaigns or in Skirmish mode against other players, and each has been meticulously designed to offer different gameplay experiences. My personal favorite is the Mongols, who can earn resources by burning down enemy buildings - rather than focusing on just building out a base with numerous farms and mines and mills - and travel with their own sheep. The Mongols are also impressively mobile, able to pack up the settlement's buildings to move to a more strategic location. The Rus, or Russians, have Warrior Monks, the Abbasid Dynasty have camels and a House of Wisdom that can be expanded with extra wings to grant new research options, and the Dehli Sultanate has elephants. Elephants! Each civilization has beautifully detailed differences in their clothes and armor and architecture, so even if you're playing as the boring old English ther﷽e are tiny visual treats to savor.
