Summary

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I was kind of disappointed with AoE III. I and II were immensely addictive and Age of Mythology was really fun. AoE III was a real step up in terms of graphics but the game play was actually less good. There is less distinctiveness between the unit types and the artillery are overwhelmingly powerful. They act like tanks. Once you have them you mostly don't want to build anything else. Not at all true to the era and unbalanced from a game perspective. In AoE II there was a lot of strategy with respect to building walls and castles and so forth and in how to take them down. This really isn't the case for AoE III. It's much harder to build castles and they are far less powerful. The campaign is reasonably entertaining though. I didn't play against other human players so I can't speak to that part but the computer matches seemed rather uninteresting. The home city aspect is interesting but ultimately doesn't make up for the rest of it. Still worth trying out. Just not as good. I'm still firing up A of M when I want a quick game.