I´ve never posted anything here and i hope you won´t dismiss my opinions because of this. I´ve been a hardcore age fan since I got my first glance at AOE I and I must say I´m very disapointed at AOE III.
You all have the right to disagree here, and being this MY opinion I don´t have to be reminded that ES couldn´t care less to what one guy thinks and that I am not obligated to buy a game I don´t like. Yet, I must ask that before flaming me you read the whole post first and I thank you all who have enough patience to do it.
The main reason I say this is that ES got too excited in building wonderful environments that they forgot all about the gameplay that made the series so famous. After the first week of playing, most of us won´t notice the reflections, the detailed houses, the beatifully designed trees, we´ll be clicking on units so fast that some of us might even tone these features down. Of course this is great to atract buyers, but what´s the point if 3 months later most of them drop the game and never play it again? ES and Microsoft marketing guys should remember that graphics and innovations are great for getting a game the desired media attention, but what makes a great game is the fun it provides.
If the un-necessary graphics were toned down a little, maybe we could support larger pops, or even more detailed individual units. Let´s face it: Compared to some games out there AOE III units suck.
Another thing that bothers me is why ES still can´t make cavalry stump over guys. That was the whole point of having cavalry in an army and why cavalry was so effective. They didn´t stop in front of infantrymen and attacked them one by one, they ran over them, breaking their formation and causing havoc among the lines. I understand why this feature wasn´t in the other age games, but come on guys, if the technology nowadays lets us be more realistic than yesterday why not take advantage of this!? It´s like ES got stuck in time.
I would recommend everyone who disagrees with me to play Rome: Total War for a few hours.
Someone from ES already stated that different games have different goals and I even agree with him, but many features from Rome are innovative enough to change the face of Strategy games in the future. It doesn´t have that much detail on the environment, but the units are extremely well designed, the battles the most realistic I´ve seen in a game and I must say I haven´t been so addicted to a game since Age of Kings. The way units morale, formations and even the direction they face affect the outcome of battles is impecable!
This said, I can bet a thousand dollars that most of us played the other age games for the battles, not for building cities (except for those creative moments that all of us go through once in a while).
For those of you who, like me, are more interested in realistic historical battles, unfortunately I think it´s time to change franchises.