I have to admit, I jumped at the chance to review Empire Earth 3. Having really enjoyed the first game, and also the second one, I did have some high hopes for the third installment. What I got really did not stand up to my expectations.

After installation, I immediately tried out the tutorial. The tutorial itself is very well planned out, and the gentle narrator lead me through the very easy to grasp controls. After getting through my EE3 training sessions, I jumped right into the new World Domination mode. World domination is a turn based Risk style mode that has the player start with a specific region of the world, with the intent of taking over the globe. Each region gives different points that can be used for various purposes. When a region is taken over, it can be selected to generate points (imperial, commerce, research) or be left as a military region, raising maximum army size and allowing purchase of individual armies. These armies are used to invade other territories.

The points are used to research technologies, or to advance ages. In this mode, you can only advance through ages by saving enough research points from your turns. When one or more of your armies invades another region, you have the choice of deciding the battle yourself, or letting the computer do it for you, based on various factors such as comparative army strengths and technology. At this point, the real meat and potatoes of the game, the battle mode, is brought into play.

Generally speaking, when you go into a region, your main goal is to either destroy or assimilate the natives. Often times the game will put you through side missions which usually involve more of the same destroying or assimilating the native tribes. Sometimes a "protect this person" or "destroy this specific type of unit" mission will pop up. Amazingly, in some missions, these goals were completed as soon as they were offered, and somehow I gained a region automatically before I could even set up my own base. When another army is in the territory, your goal changes depending on whether or not you are actively at war with them. World Domination switches back and forth between the global map and the regional map until you either take over the world, or you lose control of everything.

World domination mode is in place of any actual story or campaign mode. While admittedly, most RTS story lines are cheesy, they do tend to tie the game together, and really give you a reason to continue playing. The lack of story line isn't really my main concern with this game. The biggest problem that it suffers is that it's just too watered down, and really does not improve on, or even live up to the last two titles in the series.

The game really fails when you get into the battle or skirmish mode. The relative “dumbing down” of the game is immediately apparent when resources come into play. Although there are multiple types of resources, any one type can be used for any of your resource needs. In essence, a school of fish can be used to train a swordsman, build a catapult, or even an entire carrier battle group. There are only 4 ages this time, including one future age. This really limits the amount of unit uniqueness that is possible. In the first couple of stages you are really limited in what you can create, and some units are actually quite useless. Later on you can build air bases and carriers, but unlike previous games, you have very little choice in the aircraft you make. Being simple and easy to play isn't always a bad thing, but they way it is implemented in Empire Earth III really ruins the game.

Another big problem is crashing and memory hogging. A recent patch does address this, and multiplayer issues, but it should still be noted. Probably the biggest problem is pathfinding, whether player or AI controlled. Selecting a group of units and trying to actually get them to an enemies city may actually be harder than dealing with defenses. Units are very stubborn in how they like to be formed up. So much so, that a large group of them may decide to fall short of of the place they are directed to. Meanwhile, on their way to the destination, they're sure to collide with each other and spin around in place while trying to get things right. It seems like a bit of a 'grind it until you find it' method of going about things that may have worked for that old 10 speed, but really fails here. What it does, ultimately, is hinder the rock-paper-scissors relationship between units. Normally, a group of cavalry should be able to decimate a group of regular ranged units, which is even what the tool tips will tell you. Unfortunately, while your mounted cavalry is stumbling to get to its target, crashing into one another and spinning in circles, the ranged units may just end up tearing them apart before they ever get close enough.