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 :