There's no doubt that Age of Empires III is technically a really good game. It follows, more or less, the same basic design found in the classic RTS Age of Empires II. Sure, developer Ensemble has made tweaks and adjustments to that formula, but if you played the old warhorse, it won't take you long at all to get accustomed to the new game. But that's also part of the problem. The genre has advanced quite a bit since 1999, and Age of Empires III's most noticeable advancement is in the area of graphic quality. You're still pushing peons (who still need babysitting) and building a large army and throwing it at the enemy, and just like other games in the series, it's usually the player that builds the best economy who ends up winning the game.

What's New

Perhaps the biggest addition to the design is the Home City. Since the game takes place during the discovery of the New World, the idea of receiving goods, tech advancements, and military units from your country's capital city is a very sound one. The Home City actually acts as a separate character; it gains levels as you play skirmish and multiplayer games, and with advancement in level new and improved "cards" become available for you to choose from; this allows you to really customize your Home City the more you play the game. You may only have 20 cards in your home city deck, and you get mix and match different cards to try various strategies as you continue to play skirmish games. As cool as an idea as the Home City is, it's not something that revolutionizes the gameplay. As with most of the tweaks in AoE 3, it's more of an evolutionary step.

In addition to the Home City, you may now set up trading posts and ally yourself with Native American civilizations during the course of a game. You also get an explorer unit to start the game (an advanced scout) who may secure various guarded treasures on the map such as a cache of gold or a kidnapped settler unit. Finally, you can build trade routes that deliver experience on a steady basis. All of these are nice additions to the design, but again they don't really jump out at you as being something that you couldn't live without six years ago.

Graphics and Physics

Age of Empires III has the best scenery graphics of any real time strategy game ever made. The units themselves look good, but it's the setting and the surrounding knick-knacks that steal the show. The water looks like it was ripped out of Morrowind, the leaves on the New England trees look so real that you want to reach out and grab them, and the terrain looks spectacular. Age of Empires III just looks flat out gorgeous. In addition to the great graphics, the new physics engine plays a cool role, as well. Take a cannon and blast an infantry unit at point blank range and it gets blown back several feet in a dead lump. Just sitting back and watching the game in action is a real joy, and is easily the most glaring change to the old AoE formula. It's clear that this is where Ensemble put most of its resources; it really foes look that good.

Solo and Multi

The single player campaign is a bit of a letdown. For a company that is so wrapped up in history it's a surprise that the solo campaign contains no historical central character. You won't get a Joan of Arc of William Wallace campaign here like you did in AoE2; instead you get a story that details a family's hunt for the Fountain of Youth. It's not terrible, but the meat of the game remains the skirmish and online play. .

Skirmish games are a lot of fun because your computer allies actually have a brain. You'll see them send aide when needed, and generally act like an ally. The same goes for the CPU teams. When playing against Spain and France, you will most likely have to deal with both nations – sometimes simultaneously. It adds another level of challenge to the skirmish games when the CPU plays as a real team. The same can be said for multiplayer play. The game ships with 15 skirmish maps ranging from New England and the Rockies all the way to the Bayou, so you are going to have to deal with various climate and landscapes. It's a very good mix of maps.

Multiplayer games are grouped based on the level of your Home City. As with most games like this, playing a random game with someone that you don't know is sometimes a recipe for disaster. It's best to play with people with whom you are familiar. Still, battling it out against other people who have different Home City decks definitely adds to the fun.

The Details

Surprisingly enough, the third game in the series lacks some of the details found in the other games. It's difficult to manage your armies during the course of a battle. There are no formation settings – everything is automated and the game decides where it wants to place your units when they are grouped. It's hard to locate individual units in a group to pull them out of the fray once they get damaged. There is also limited hotkey support; there's no way to set a unit on patrol, or to tell a unit to guard another unit. Artillery have a hell of a time during a fight as they like to limber and unlimber the cannon for no apparent reason. Infantry and ranged units will, at times, just sit around doing a whole lot of nothing while there's a fight literally ten feet from them. Little things like this really get under your skin after a while and it's a surprise that an Ensemble game would contain such things.

Again, Age of Empires III is definitely a fun game and if you loved Age of Empires II you're most likely going to love this one, too. And perhaps it's a bit unfair to criticize the game for not trying to add more innovative design features rather than just tweaking an already proven formula. This is without a doubt the safer route to take and one that many gamers will surely appreciate. It's is a very familiar experience, for better or for worse. Still, there are some problems with the design, the unit AI, and the high level of micromanagement that is required to play the game on the higher levels of difficulty. In the end, Age of Empires III truly feels like a continuation of the 1999 classic. If that's good enough for you, then you'll definitely want to check it out. - William Abner