"...Huh? Wha? What is this?"
Basically, instead of Empire Earth II, I got Rise of Nations, but in 3D. What i'm trying to get as is that this game does not look, feel, or play at all like Empire Earth. The game is completely different. They might as well have called it a completely different name instead of making it a sequel to an existing game.
Empire Earth has clearly defined ages. If you were in the middle ages, you could look around at your castles and fortresses and thatched roof cottages and see that yes indeed, it looks like the middle ages. The same goes with almost every other age in the game. Imerial? totally. Atomic? sure thing. you could name the year that you were playing in with one look at the map. Now look at EE2. For one they don't even tell you what time period it is. It's just "epoch V" or "epoch XI' or something, which doesn't help one bit, but to make matters worse, many of the buildings could fit in many time periods. The town center in the modern age looks like a mix between a castle and a mosque. The "bay cannon" from the imperial age looks like a fairly modern artillery gun. These are just a few examples.
I'm not going to go into all the different game play differences, because i don't have all day, but let me just say one thing: all techs are researched at the town center. Maybe I'm just not used to it yet and I need to give the game more time, but from here it seems that It's not a sequel at all, It's a completely unfamilar new game, and it's kind of scary. I just want someone from ES to reassure me that, while things have been changed and added, AOE3 still plays like, and is true to the experience of, an Age of Empires game. [This message has been edited by Carltheshivan (edited 04-29-2005 @ 09:43 AM).]
*"Two-ified" is not a real word that i am aware of.