Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Review | Necessary, or Not? 

Good ole' forest nothing!

Yes - thank you! I should've mentioned that somewhere

@@Rolando_Cueva Mint

nice find

you misspelled Kipchaks

@@presnow3016 "funny"

I agree - one of the best RTS remaster's I've played imo

its shit

facts

That was already added in the HD version.

@George Rome or maybe too hard to please?

That's already in the HD version

ya i have heard a few noises are taken from that game

Skybox Labs is also the guys handling partially with the Definitive Edition so its no surprise they'll also be reusing similar assets they've purchased for use.

Lol thats quite funny

I'd love this so much.

They are going to make it.

Hopefully 🙏🏻

Just with better pathfinding!

I was more of an AoE guy - but I'd love to see that. Titans was so much fun... I'd say if it sells well (which I think it well) we will 100% see that at some point. Maybe Rise of Nations while we're at it @Microsoft???

Hah maybe... I guess time will tell! (I'd buy it)

Same story bro. Btw the Campaigns s should me remastered as well.

Highly unlikely, alas. Microsoft is investing heavily into aoe, but not even aom is getting a remaster.

@@NigraXXL the problem is that AOM didn't have the same support and revitalization that AOE had with the original mods that ended up being the main HD game.. I know AOM is great.... but what .Forgotten Empires did to AOE 2... it's just amazing, being able to actually invest players (old and new) in a game of 1999, and actually getting the attention of the company to make it an official game... it's simply amazing perhaps after AOE3 DE and the release of 4, they will focus on Mythology... but for now is AOE's second coming

Well it's 25% off for us so could be worse. In other words we pay as much as we did for any of the HD expansions, and this includes a new expansion too in addition to all the old ones so no loss there

@@GepardenK Yeah, the amount of content for its price its a win/win, especially if you compare to recent triple a games, wich doesn't have even close the amount of content and quality for the price *cough* Ghost Recon Break Point *cough* .

Yeah that might've been a good idea, rather than just lumping them together. Thanks for the advice!

Better late than never, friend! 👍

Thank you! Hope you enjoy it :D

Welcome to 1997

Welcome!

Thank you Peter!

Yeah its badly optimized and uses huge amounts of virtual Memory. Thanks to that it crashes very often for me, hope they fix this shit with an patch.

@@Crusadio yeah.. me too... thank god the autosave is pretty frequent.... otherwise it would be a pain in the ass to play campaings

16 gb ram is barely enough to run this for some reason lol

If I was reviewing the beta, I'd agree with you 100%. It was pretty poor. The release build has actually been pretty solid for me, aside from a few laggy loading screens - which I would like to see fixed!

So far, i played the game for 26 hours now and it never crashed once since i install it. But the things that i don't like is when i want to download the enhanced graphics pack it's the same size as the size of base game: 15 gb to download.

That'd be awesome!

There are building health bars already in the HD version

LUL well said!

It can be a bit jarring, that's for sure

Yeah, the sheer enthusiasm of some of the campaign narrators/assistants, especially William Wallace's one (first campaign so he made the biggest impression) was really great. I'm sure there will be "demastered" sound packs in the Steam workshop if there aren't by the time I'm typing this :)

You can play offline :) Logging into your Microsoft account is optional, if I'm not mistaken

Thanks man

Yep, and a new one made for this

Awesome! That's a fair point - design decision I guess :P

You and be both pal

PC :)

Thank you! Will do, appreciate it :)

I think it would - haven't tested personally though :)

Only if you have HD

I'd go for this one, personally. Sorry for the late reply :)

Yes, and no :)

Yes it is, the old AI used to cheat, in a way that it would know where you spawn and other things, researchs would be done instantly. The new AI doesn't cheat at all, they used machine learning and neural networks to teach it how to play like a human, so it won't cheat, instead will follow build orders and strategies ( like fast castle, rush, booming etc..) that it learned from pro Age Of Empires players. Besides that the new ai is able to fight mulptiple battles at multiple fronts wich the old AI struggled in doing and it supports allies in battles in a much more effective way. You are able to choose what version of the AI you want to play against in skirmish, you can play with the original CD age of empires 2 AI, the HD version AI or the new one. Theres other advantages to the new AI that i can't remember from the top of my head but yeah, the new AI its totally redone and doesn't play like the old one at all.

Thank you! Glad I could be of service :)

Definitely lacking the heart of the originals, that's for sure

I always skip those opening cutscenes, because nothing in them is ever important at all for any reason anyway.

@@xotl2780 Are you serious? Those cutscenes tell the Story of The Campaign.. it's the whole reason why you play The Campaign.

:\ can't answer that one unfortunately

Very true - or that people really want a game like this!

@@Zade_95 I would really like AoE 4 to keep elements from AoE2. And also wouldn't mind a Mythology Remastered

I'm with ya - timeless! And more to come, I hope!

Thanks! I'm thinking of doing it more in the future. Keep your eyes peeled!

Not far off!

aoe 3 is a game with so so so so soooo much potential, left for dead for so many years. Not even now, i think, microsoft has real expectatives for what became the least succesful game of the franchise. It's like they had a lot of cool ideas, tried them all without considering how they affected the key parts of the game, and ragequitted when it didn't work very well. I hope that, if they remaster it, they consider why it didn't boom like the rest of their games.

@@cfv7461 Yeah, I remember back in the day I played for a little while and dropped it forever. It was like a worst version of AoM, and I love AoM. And while AoE3 used the same engine and similar mechanics, it was... bad. I don't know why. I never felt like that playing AoE, AoE2 or AoM. Weird.

Soon

thanks ;)

That's true - unfortunately I can't mention everything and those are small things ;) Also I didn't play through all of every campaign (obviously, it would take AGES) so I may not have run into / remembered any changes to begin with!

@@Zade_95 I just play Jean d'arc and Barbarossa and the last mission of Jean D'Arc was hard compare to the older version

12 years ago a family member gave me 1 and 2 and loved them, but haven't played for about 10 years, this remaster imo deserves my money. Very happy to see rhe old with some new things.

The first one's remake felt kinda like a cash grab but that was only because it is a downgrade in overall player experience compared to Age of Kings. This is taking a bit of time to learn looks of units and adapting to the new hot key system where Q is used to build instead of A as well as not right clicking after using shift to make a unit travel a specific way. If anyone were to ask which to get DE is for sure the way to go and it is going to get updates as things go along.

For sure! Yeah the polish pass has done wonders

Very fair point! For me I didn't find it very captivating, but for others it may be effective in the style it's going for

I think so! Can always refund it if it doesn't work :)

Great to hear it!

I love the contrasting opinions. Some love em, some don't :P

Yeah, definitely. I like the music, not the voice over :P

Thanks!

Thank you algorithm! And yes, this is an actual good remaster 🤣

Yeah eventually I'm sure most will most over - after the game's gone on sale a few times :P

Yeahhhh pathfinding in this and AoE1 DE is not the greatest

I actually never played much of AoE3 - so I'm very excited to jump into the DE of that, whenever it may see the light of day

It has so many more deep diferentiation betwen civs they really look and play in unique way, it have an huge amount of units and strategys and the game engine (same as Mithology) alow to use the cenario editor with a larger amount of options

I get that for sure!

Personal preference :P

Nearly... there....

I think you are right!

..... I would too :P

Thank you!

@@Zade_95 he isnt lying

Yeah if you're serious about playing multiplayer then it's 100% worth imo

POGU

Yeah voice acting is definitely the weakest part of the remaster. If you're a big solo player I can see why it'd be a deal breaker!

I wouldn't say that's my primary complaint, but sure it is one I have. Overall, it's a small thing. I thought it worth mentioning as that combined with a few graphical concerns make some things feel janky or weird. I'm not saying the solution is to not allow units to run through - as you said that would be far more annoying game play wise ;)

Thanks for the kind words :)

And such is the spectrum of personal opinion :P

Zade hehe yes, great video quality by the way 👌🏻 I was by no means having a go at you 😇 just thought it was funny 😂

Glad you're into them! Personally not so much, but it's 100% personal preference :)

The HD edition still works just fine, I'm not sure about modding the original though! Don't think it was made for it :P

Exactly. The demolition porn is one of my favourite things in this remaster.

@@Tpoleful demolition porn. Nice lol

@@Tpoleful I even would say that I bought this game for this feature ;].Demolition porn haha.

That's awesome! Glad some people are into it. Contrasting opinions lol

new grapics are superb

That's fair enough - personal preference for sure. I love the graphics personally, but everyone's different!

@@Zade_95 That's true. And it is good to see it bring new players to the game.

@@kairos4486 I also like the graphics, but for people who don't they should have added classic graphics as an option just like they did in AOE1 DE, that was a let down for some people, including friends of mine. And they used this reason to not buy AOE2 DE even though they bought AOE1 DE, which makes me kinda sad as i really liked this remaster.

Agreed!

Yeah that one stood out to me as well

@H. G. Wells 50% would have been great tho

I see both sides I think. I agree, having 50% would feel a lot better and not just like you're getting scalped for buying the game again, but then Microsoft doesn't want to sell it for pennies. They do have to make money on it, after all. 25% feels like a good compromise all things considered

If anything, the game is criminally cheap. Amount of content and improvements are insane.