The Age of Empires franchise has long been a favorite of strategy fans. When Age of Empires Online debuted, fans of both MMOs and strategy games rejoiced. Does the game live up to his vaunted pedigree? Find out in our official Age of Empires review.

If you’ve played any previous entries in the series, you’re going to be in for a bit of a shock in terms of style.  Gone are the realistic environments and militaries, instead they’ve been replaced by a cartoony, cel-shaded look.  The troops have become heavily stylised with oversized muscles and little chicken legs; it’s not an Age of Empires experience you’ll have encountered before, and this will turn some people off.  Personally, I found the game on the whole to be so different from the others in the franchise that it didn’t bother me too much.  The animations are slick and again very in-keeping with the style of the game, whether it’s an archer attacking or a villager fishing.  It may not be what you were hoping for from your next Age of Empires fix, but the design is certainly coherent and doesn’t jar with itself.

Read more of Luke Karmali's The MMORPG.com Age of Empires Online Review.

This is a fair review, I agree with a lot of things and especially the price and the conclusion. I created a thread on these forums to express my anger about price:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/324167/Age-of-Empires-Online-is-scandalous.html

I played *A LOT* of RTS, even obscure ones not published internationally (I even bought some "local" RTS when I was abroad) and Age of Kings+The Conquerors is still the best RTS ever for me, it was simply PERFECT. So this AoE Online was a horrible disappointment in all aspects because they did so many things wrong and were so after money, abusing an established reputation...

My next hope now is Trion's future online RTS "End of Nations". Wait and see!

Noone even does pvp in this game and the designers made pvp an afterthought in this game. Go figure, pvp an afterthought in a rts game. Just goes to show this is nothing more than a money grab. They never cared about bringing a real rts experience to players.

6.7 was fairly generous IMO. It kept me occupied for a few hours though.

Sounds like just another cash grab. Imagine that.

Originally posted by Mephster

Noone even does pvp in this game and the designers made pvp an afterthought in this game. Go figure, pvp an afterthought in a rts game. Just goes to show this is nothing more than a money grab. They never cared about bringing a real rts experience to players.

 

RTS does not just mean PvP. The original games had very robust single player campaign. I hate the way that PvP player think every thing in the gaming universe revolves around them and if a game dares not focus on their needs it' 'fail' or whatever.

Saying that, this version is indeed lacking. I didn't care about the change in art style, I enjoy a wide variety of art, but it simply didn't negage me.

I did reinstall AoE III becaue of it though, so it wasn't all bad.

I have played this quite a bit, and have enjoyed it.  That said, I cannot disagree with the review's conclusions.

As an RTS alone, it is entertaining enough, and the persistent component helps provide continuity from one scenario to another.  But the relatively small supply of original scenarios ends soon enough, and the mid- to late-game is very same-y.  At some point, it just isn't interesting enough to keep playing on a regular basis.

Compared to SC2, AoEO's campaign is much longer, but with less variety.  Skirmishes with AI opponents are a bit more varied than SC2's skirmishes.  But PvP is not even a comparison - SC2 wins that hands down, and unfortunately for AoEO, in RTS, PvP is everything.  It's one fatal flaw that the game can't really recover from.

Still, it's a free download, so you don't lose anything by downloading it and trying it out.  $10 will buy one civilization, which is a lot of content.  I suppose the only aspect of the review I disagree with is the value -while I think AoEO falls far short of what it could have been, I have gotten more enjoyment out of it than many $50 games I've bought in the past.

Looks like old school Warcraft 2 lol.

But not as good ........

I think it is important to note the GPG took over development from Robot Entertainment after 6 months. So the question is how much groundwork had been done by then and how much was taken over by GPG. This article should have noted on that and as such I can say the reviewer should do more research next time. Or any research it seems since it's a 1 minute google search.

I'm going to guess the answer is no, but does "terrible pricing" reflect the newly reduced (significantly) prices?

I really don't like the game's graphic style. But I guess I'm one of those former Age of Empires players who is biased about the game's looks.

Yeah not bad grading ,even if 6.7 is quite generous towards this game.

Do they still limit the civilizations available, and make it so that pvp requires you spend REAL MONEY for the best gear because if so then it deserves an overall 3/10 and i'm a fan of F2P with shops if that lets you know just how bad this is.

I had a few hours of fun with this game. But as the article said, it quickly starts getting repetitive and boring.

About the delay in contents / new civilizations:

Do you know WHY there's a delay? They had (still have?) an option to pay 102 Euro for a so-called Season Pass that lasted 6 months. Very expensive, but this was supposed to give you everything they released during the 6 month period. So people who bought the Season Pass at release, or shortly after, would have gotten the contents supposed to be released around Christmas, without paying extra for it. But after the delay, most those Season Passes are expired, and people will have to pay for what they should have gotten for free. Imo, this is a scam, and reason enough to avoid this game.

Reviewer gave it 6.7? Considering all the issues in the article, that's way too high. Shouldn't be over 5, imo.

the Greeks and Egyptians are currently both on offer for free, though to access the best units and upgrade them fully you need to buy premium packs.

I stopped reading from there : / Dont like to buy items from items shop to be the strongest

Pros:

1.) It had a great title for a game.

2.) You can screencap the game while playing.

3.) If you try really realy hard you can find worse F2P games then AoEO.

Cons:

1.) Someone actually gave the green light for this game.

2.) They released the game.

3.) There are over 1,400 bugs, errors and crashes in the game that still have NOT been fixed 7 months after release.

4.) The remaining playerbase is on life support.

5.) Developers and moderators show no respect for the remaining players.

6.) GFWL

To see the full list go to the official technical support forum

I wasn't exactly pleased with this one to be honest. I got it, played it for a couple weeks, then installed the previous version and went back to playing the 'real' AoE game.

6.7 hmm.. generous enough I guess

Originally posted by Samhael

6.7 was fairly generous IMO. It kept me occupied for a few hours though.

         Same...Well if 3 or so hours is considered a few.......

The Spring patch released a month after this review addressed a lot of prior complaints and issues, including some mentioned in this review. June 2012 it goes full free to play, meaning all premium content in the game past and present can be earned simply by playing it and earning points.

"Champion mode" turns off gear and unlocks the full tech tree for all players regardless of level, thus ending the pay-to-win gripe.