Recent reviews by debux

This version of the game is categorically not worth it, except for if you're looking for multiplayer, and even then I'd be iffy about it. I even bought this on a significant discount and I still feel it wasn't worth the near 5 dollar price.

The graphical additions are miniscule, especially when you consider that the same old 2002 models haven't been changed, which makes it almost nonsensical. I even believe that a lot of what was done to the terrain obstrucs clear vision of what's going on (especially at sea), which detracts to the actual game. What's the worst part is that in the one game I played, I encountered a weird flickering happening during the "Eclipse" god power, so I assume some of these changes still cause bugs like these, which is absurd when this game was released 6-7 years ago (and it doesn't happen in the original, 2002 version).

My PC is well above the required specs, yet I encountered stuttering I never had in the original game, which apparently is a common issue with other players. How can a game that was released almost 19 years ago, that mostly received graphical updates and some extra functionalities in multiplayer services and workshop additions, struggle so much on PC's that could run about 6-8 instances of this game at the same time? I understand editing code of old games is hard, but it's absolutely ridiculous when you consider how relatively little they added to the base game.

Honestly, I believe you can get most of the significant additions done in this "Extended Edition" for free elsewhere. There is a whole forum dedicated to user created mods, where you can get higher quality textures. The one change that I appreciated in this version, which was the extra zoom capabilities (to zoom in and out further), can be easily done to the original version by changing two lines on an ingame file. And you might be able to play multiplayer by using free services like Voobly or Gameranger, and I imagine that there is an active community for AoM there, judging by the popularity of AoE2 there, in spite of the success of the steam versions.

Finally, I'll address how my review contradicts the current "Very Positive" average of all reviews. The vast majority of them address the nostalgia factor of playing this game, NOT the benefits of getting this version of the game over the original. I understand that people are happy to be able to play their childhood game (I am myself), but this is not a good product. The original game is not a significant downgrade (even is better in several areas, as I said before), and getting it to work in modern systems is not hard (I only needed to download one file from the Official Microsoft Support page in order to play the game on Win10).

Don't buy this game just for the nostalgia. It's not worth it to support these developers. Just compare the differences in how the developers have treated the original content and expanded it in the case of AoE2 and of AoM, if you want something beyond just my opinion.

all in for devs releasing demo's. Seriously considering getting the full game just for releasing a demo, with the coop features of the main game?? Insane, and the game itself is pretty darned good too

Fun.

Especially with friends

Nice and relaxing, especially because it doesn't have the time pressure of the usual city builders. Music is great as well. Only thing I'd complain about is a lack of information on the UI (like, knowing what bonuses you'd get from a "Buildings Pack" before you invest into it), but the positive far outweigh the negatives

Pretty sure that with the new EULA this is already the third time that some kind of invasion to privacy has been done, counting the whole RedShell thing and some other thing that happened late 2018 (didn't follow it closely so I never learned much about it). Three strikes, you're out.