Hey guys Spirit Of The Law here, in this video
I'll be giving my review of the new Definitive Edition for Age of Empires 2 which came out in November 2019
Three months later is a bit delayed for a review
I know, but it sort of worked out as the devs have been really active in patching bugs and making balance tweaks
To keep some general structure in this I've broken down the review into eight categories
And I'll be going through them and giving each aspect a grade out of five
So let's jump in. To start off pretty surface level, let's talk about the graphics and audio
This is of course pretty subjective
but I think the superficial updates alone are enough reason to pick up Definitive Edition if you're unsure which version to get.
Some of the early glimpses of gameplay that surfaced had me worried about identifying units and the overuse of visual effects
but after getting the game and turning a lot of that extra stuff off
I think it's a pure upgrade over the original
I am of course playing with the enhanced graphics pack, which is optional and free to download
there are lots of little things that they added besides just redoing how things look, like the zoom function and the collapsing buildings.
That just make the game that much more immersive and modern feeling.
You don't notice it until you look back at the old games to see how much we were actually adding with our
Imaginations to make it all work, of course if there's something with the graphics
You don't like you can probably either tweak it in the settings or change it with a mod
Which we'll get into a bit later. A really nice touch as well
Is that the music can now be chosen from different playlists ranging from the familiar soundtrack to a dynamic soundtrack
Which plays songs based on which civilizations are in the current match
The new expansions always had great music and this is again no exception. The one downside of the new graphics I think is the file size.
On Steam it lists the recommendation as 30 gigabytes and my steamapps folder is 39 gigabytes with the graphics pack and everything
In contrast HD was under 5 gigabytes
Which shows you how quickly those 4k graphics bump up the file size
Still though, the graphics and audio have been a massive jump forward and I think achieved the goal of making the game feel
Today how people remember it being 20 years ago. For this category, I definitely give it a 5 out of 5
Next up is the quality of life improvements
There's a pretty long list and this isn't exhaustive
But the two standouts for me are the automatic farm reseed and the new queues whether it be for villager
actions, building queues or the ability to see the global queue
Another great addition is being able to see the number of villagers on each resource
And at this point I can't imagine playing without that. Like the visual effects
A lot of quality of life improvements are easy to disable, though
I don't know why you would since they just make life a little easier. Personally
I find them really hard to go back from and I don't really play HD anymore because it's just a less enjoyable experience
I can't even think of an obvious quality of life feature
they overlooked, and they thought of a few that I never knew I wanted. So I'd give them a 5 out of 5 for the
new features
In fact are the main reason why I think once people try Definitive Edition for any period of time
They won't want to go back to HD or Conquerors anymore. Next up category
Number three is the new civilizations and balance updates, which I'll put under the umbrella term of just new content. Definitive Edition
of course includes a new expansion for free with four new
Civilizations that are balanced, for the most part, and even some new campaigns that I'll touch on later
Between just the new expansion as well as including all of the old ones you could argue that it justifies the $20 price point
Right there
The one negative I have to point out is that I'm not totally sold on the design philosophy of making the new
civilizations so overpowered
I understand the idea is that you want to introduce civilizations that people can pick up for the first time and compete with older
Civilizations people know in and out, and have been playing for years. In a way
they do have to be able to keep up. But in the case of the Cumans at least, they definitely
Overshot that mark. To the devs credit they did address that and dial things back
But November was a rough introduction to a few of the new civilizations. There have also been so far monthly balance updates
Which have helped the Khmer for example become a lot more competitive. For this category
I think it's a 4 out of 5. The new content is another great reason to make the switch though
The actual rollout was a little rough for the first few weeks, moving on. Let's talk about the multiplayer experience
Now my reference here is HD as that's what I've been playing for years and I'd say it's been a pretty big improvement in performance
From that. I know some people had trouble with performance and reaching the benchmark to play ranked online
But overall the switch to the server model has been really successful
It's easy to find a variety of types of games whether that's through the new ranked matchmaking or on ranked
Lobby. That said given the number of people who play in the unranked lobby
I think that could use a bit more work
It needs the ability to see other people's ranked rating, a win-loss record or even just their total games played could be helpful when balancing
teams. At this point you either have to ask people what their rating on another platform is or just leave it to random teams to
Sort it out and hope for a reasonably balanced game
The introduction of the ranked map pool with map bans has also been a bit controversial
Replacing the previous system of hosting lobbies and waiting for people to self select which games they want to join
I do think it's an improvement over that though
It's not a system that everyone's happy with especially with the limited number of bans
But with the devs showing they're continuing to listen to feedback and improve the game. That might be something that's
Fine-tuned in the future. At the very least, It's something that's already functional
and for the multiplayer
I'd give it another four out of five with the caveat that there's still some fine-tuning to be made.
Next up I want to quickly talk about the spectator system. Coming from HD
It's really nice to have that finally implemented and prior to that
Spectating required taking up a slot in the game before it started and the spectator
Contributed to lag, which obviously wasn't ideal to say the least
It is again missing some pretty obvious features, like being able to filter games by average rating
Which means you need to either know someone who's playing a game and search for them or just pick one randomly
I know Voobly and other user created content like capture age set a really high bar for spectating that I don't think definitive edition is
In the same league as yet, but at least it's functional and gives the average player a chance to spectate live games
I think a 3 out of 5 is fair at this point
But it is something I'm hoping they expand on in future the next category
I want to talk about is mods
The big change here is that they're now built into the game from the main menu. You can jump to the mod interface
Where you can turn them on and off as well as search for new ones
Which can be narrowed down by type and sorted by popularity
Another great feature is old scenarios from HD can be converted over which has really helped populate it with mods right from day one
There's everything from graphic changes to scenarios, the original soundtrack and even new AI packs
The scenario editor as well has had more content and trigger options added
Which just helps people be a bit more creative than they could in the past
Previously, you needed external tools to access a lot of these features even to do something as simple as copying a trigger
The only thing I missed from the steam workshop is their default to sort by the most popular recently
Which I think really helped increase the discoverability of new mods
The way the system works on definitive edition at the moment the first mods that go up get the most downloads so they get more
Exposure and then they're downloaded more and so on
That kind of system makes it hard for new mods to get traction and make it to the top
Still just the fact the mod system is actually integrated into the game is massive and even with a few shortcomings
I think it's still a 4 out of 5
Next up is the AI now
I guess the majority of games are actually played against the AI
Whether it be people who never play online, or if you just want to practice. In definitive edition
There's been two main changes to the AI. First of all, the jump between difficulties was smoothed out and second
The upper difficulty was extended with the new extreme AI
It's continuously getting new updates and seeing it matched up against the older AIs reveals. It's the best one
We've seen yet from official releases. Some of the things that's able to do now
Like push deer is way beyond what people probably thought was possible in
1999 when Age of Empires 2 first came out so it's worth taking a moment to appreciate
Personally though in the back of my mind
I was really hoping for a machine learning AI to be included
The AI master Promi has said to this point they've avoided going down that road
But secretly I was hoping Microsoft would make a push for that
Google's deepmind
subsidiary has made a lot of headlines in the Starcraft world with their alpha star machine learning AI and I'd hope that
Microsoft would put together a team to develop something like that on their flagship RTS games definitive remaster
But apparently not. like I said Promi's done a great job on the scripting side of things
Especially considering he's a team of one
But I can only give four out of five considering the big missed opportunity by Microsoft to
Push the envelope.
Then again, maybe I'm being too hard on a $20 game. And finally the last category I want to look at is the campaigns.
In addition to new campaigns, something that's gone a bit under the radar is they also
Remade the Forgotten empires ones from scratch. As well as adding a handful of stand-alones to the Battle of the conquerors missions
they have some really talented people making the campaigns and it shows
They're interesting to play while also clearly being made by people who love history and storytelling
I like that the challenge level is now
indicated by the number of swords helping people figure out where to start if they're just jumping in. Maybe somewhat controversially the pictures and
voiceovers were also redone
They're really fighting against nostalgia there and the smartest thing might have been to just leave the old campaign intros alone
That said if you're coming to the game fresh
I think the new ones are probably higher quality, as hard as that would be to admit for people who grew up hearing the old
Voice actors. Another cool variation on the tutorial is the new art of war
It's sometimes hard to know when you're ready to venture
Online, and the regular campaigns don't always stick to the normal three villagers start format that you get in random maps
So it's hard to say how well the conventional campaigns are actually preparing you for multiplayer
The art of war scenarios fill that important role, teaching important skills while also giving you feedback of how well you're doing
I think it's a great inclusion for people just starting out and for the campaign's overall
I give it a 5 out of 5
Overall taking the average of those eight categories and putting it together that comes to a final score of
8.5 out of 10 which feels about right to me. It does everything you'd want from a Definitive Edition
The game looks awesome and gives the best experience
I've had so far with Age of Empires whether it be campaigns AI games or multiplayer
There's a lot of attention put into details that no one would have complained about not being included
But they went above and beyond anyway
I'd say my favorite change personally has been all of the new mechanics and content.
You guys know I like fiddling around with that stuff and it keeps the game fresh for everyone
For a game that already had so much strategy and replayability to begin with
I think the new content has just added to that. Giving more depth for seasoned veterans while the quality of life features made it simultaneously
more accessible to newcomers to the franchise
But those are just my thoughts on definitive edition at this point three months after release. As always, Thanks for watching guys
I'll see you next time