We'll never turn down a chance to play more Age of Empires, so when
Microsoft, Ensemble and
Big Huge Games
announced a brand new expansion pack for Age of Empires III, we were
all for it. The new game adds three new Asian civilizations, each with
new units and buildings and their own five-mission campaign. It's not
surprising that the expansion maintains the excellent unit balance and
exciting presentation that the series is known for. Still, while the new
Asian civs are enjoyable, the campaign lacks some of the drama and
variety that we'd hoped to see.
Asian Dynasties steps away a bit from the more fictional
campaigns of previous games in the series in favor of a slightly more
historical approach. Still, the fictional main characters in the
campaigns give the designers room to tell a relatively unique story set
within a firm historical framework. The Japanese campaign kicks things
off by retelling some key events in Tokugawa's efforts to unite Japan.
From there, we see a mutiny in the Chinese navy as the Treasure Fleet
moves first to India and then to the New World. Finally, the Indian
campaign puts players in charge of a British officer who decides to lend
his support to the cause of Indian independence.
I miss some of the cool resource-oriented missions of the previous
games, but Asian Dynasties has its own charms -- from finding and
securing beached treasure ships to stampeding elephants through enemy
towns. Naturally, a lot of the missions require players to capture and
hold trading posts, destroy enemy town centers, and protect your own
structures from enemy attack. The best missions move back and forth
between different objectives giving the player a chance to choose how
they'll tackle the overall scenario.
Sadly, only a handful of scenarios really present the player with
any wide range of approaches. There will sometimes be an option as to
which of two paths you're going to take into the enemy base, but there's
usually a "right" and a "wrong" answer even here. Most missions do
allow players some choice in determining the order in which they take on
secondary objectives but in all the campaigns here felt a bit more
linear than they have in previous Age games.
And for the life of us, we can't figure out why there wasn't more of
an emphasis on sea battles. We built two single docks in the course of
the entire 15-mission campaign and once it was just to get to the enemy
land base across the water. With the Chinese Treasure Fleet and the
British East India Company featuring so heavily in the campaign, it was a
bit of a letdown that there wasn't more opportunity for sea fights.
The Asian armies have all the cool units you'd expect, from samurai, to
firework rockets, to howdahs. Big Huge Games has really captured the
flavor of the combat very nicely with a wide range of colorful units
that provide significant enough advantages to encourage players to
create a well-rounded army. As with the other Age games, creating small
groups of balanced forces that can deal equally well with infantry,
cavalry and artillery keeps you from having to micromanage the target
priorities in each and every encounter.
Preview :