Hey guys, this is my first attempt at branching out into Reviews. I have no idea if people are actually interested in this and would appreciate some feedback!
This was great - I would never say it was your first attempt. You were objective, expressed your opinion clearly and focused on things that matter. I especially appreciate the single player focus.
It's more like 50/50. If people know that creator talks about things in the description, they look at it. If the creator instead promises to put links in the description, but never does and instead there is just his twitch info and advert link, people would rarely check it. And if person switches from latter to former, it'll take people some time to notice. But thanks to you, we did:)
@@TheArklyte "If the creator instead promises to put links in the description, but never does and instead there is just his twitch info and advert link" We call this one "pulling a Lowko"
The Hundred Years War: "This campaign is _super unique._ You have a series of locations to defend, each of which is attacked by progressively stronger forces of enemies. "
Ah my favourite kind of description. It's nice when content creators write their thoughts, it's a relaxing read reading into someone basically talking to themselves. Plus it helps with the algorithm. Some CZcamsrs try to put as many possibly viral keywords inside a jumbled mess of a paragraph, although it's dubious if that works.
Not having activated abilities (or only a few of them rather) is pretty much what AoE players want, the series has always been focused on macro and broader strategy. Micro is still rewarded in competitive play, just not on SC2 level.
Really? From what I understand from AoE2, the game is FAR more reliant than micro and macro. Mostly because controlling surrounds is way more beneficial than the AI doing it
@@zaxtonhong3958 You've clearly never watched trash wars or you believe clicking a formation button to dodge a magonel shot is more clickity than manually splitting your marines/zerglings from storms or aoe dmg. Micro in aoe2, vanilla aoe2 is more intense than de2 but the most you have use is flush archer+skirm battle which is just focus fire on vills for raiding while avoiding tc fire.
You could argue that, if the population cap wasn't still 200. Like if it was actually higher than Starcraft 2 a game that came out in 2010, or Starcraft 1 which came out in 1998. Imagine if Age of empires 4 was a next generation game. Where you had 1000, 2000 population cap. Huge armies like in history, doing battle and leaving actual gore, blood and stuff on the ground. Instead we live in the sad timeline, where we got Age of Empires 4 the mobile and tablet game...
However, AoE4 does not have cheat codes that let you spawn sports cars with machine guns or other silly things. Huge fail. Sometimes you just want to steamroll an enemy army in a nice shiny "lamborgunny."
@@RMJ1984 it expands the playerbase by offering the game to more low end computers. yes high end gaming pcs can do insane stuff but a lot of people don't have the resources for that especially if they've been playing aoe since the 90s and are old now, not likely to be invested in a gaming pc. also 1000-unit armies make micro flatly impossible because the entire screen is filled with units that get stuck on each other
This was a great review, if anything i would recommend bringing the style of humour your commentary in your challenge runs has to reviews as well, rather than just giving a "professional" analysis, it makes it all the more entertaining whilst not deviating from how informative the video is, definitely looking forward to more ^^
Totally agree. What makes the difference between this review and the 1000 others on CZcams is Grant himself. The guys at the mineral line will not believe this.
Yeah, let the channel trademark style permeate the content, gives a vibe that won't turn regular viewers away, and if someone finds it by chance they're more likely to stay if they decide to watch other videos
The Narration was something Age 2 did pretty well starting out each mission with a personal stylized historical narrative about a historical event by someone else the event wasnt about, it was always someone else from the period looking on at the events and figures happening, there were voice lines for each character about in game events which made it great but I suppose they thought even those were still approximations
oh man i HATE that about this campaign. video games aren't documentaries. they're exercises in immersion. so fucking immerse me! bring back the bawdy aoe2 tutorial scotsman and im sold. i want king harald taunting me from the top of the hill so i feel better about murdering him in broad daylight. i want to be personally, directly responsible for wiping the shit eating grin off the khan at the ugra river. thats what video games are for!! that's what they do, that's their narrative potential! how do you miss that
aoe3 also did it well, even though they went a little bit ahistorical. The lack of characters and iconic voicelines is disappointing. I still have some iconic aoe2 campaign lines burned into my consciousness from when i was a child, such as "Kushluk: Run away! Run away!" or "Saladin, where are you going with that great army?" "The blood on La Hire's sword is almost dry!" "Help! Crusaders are attacking our trade routes!" "Behold! The horde of Genghis Khan approaches!"
@@mrguysnailz4907 I really miss when games were made with the passion they were made with back then, 20 years ago we had some solid stuff that would put everything made today to shame. The real problem is, the current generation doesn't know this, and puts up with low standards that are produced by producers who only care about the bottom line. So they assume that the low standards are good standards without even knowing how good things could be and used to be.
It’s a different style more than anything. As an upcoming history teacher, I actually appreciated the heavier focus on actual historical events (not that AoE2 didn’t, but you know what I mean), as well as all the extra side content and overlay with the real locations of the events (where possible). Definitely less personal though, that I cannot dispute.
I liked this review, it was quite short and it showcased some of the things AoE did right and some of the issues it had really well. After watching winter's review too it really seems like they went for a cinematic experience with this one, through and through. Can't wait for november 6
In this game? No can do. Proper micro is near impossible thanks to allies body-blocking your units, enemy hitboxes like to overlap and take priority over your own troops when clicking on said troops (unless you drag-select at which point it will be a group selection due to how close they all are), or even just the amazingly slow response to your commands.
"If you want the soundtracks they're already up on youtube" Well said Usually indie titles have soundtrack dlc specifically to support the musicians but I feel confident saying that isn't the norm with larger titles
I feel like I agree with you on the documentary-style narration, that it works in between missions, but in actual missions, it feels kind of detached. But that's the feeling I got overall. It was very immersion-breaking for me, and the weird artstyle remniscient of Civilization 5 and 6 kind of took me out of it. It plays like AoE, but it doesn't really feel like it. Still, it has a lot of interesting presentation and cool documentaries that do work as a bonus feature.
Actually really like the review format Grant. Nice change of pace from your usual stuff. Been enjoying AoE 4 campaign so far and you definitely put a lot of my thoughts about it into very succinct and well though out points. You definitely had a few ideas about the game and viewpoints I hadn’t considered, I think greatly helped by your experience with RTS in general. And yes, people read the descriptions ;)
Thanks for the review, Grant! Personally, to me, the campaigns in the original AoE 2 have always been a pretty mixed bag. Though they had a more 'personal' approach to characters, rather than the documentary thing (which I do enjoy but I can see it will be divisive), the missions themselves have a lot of AIs with infinite resources or who are scripted to build very simple compositions, like 'this one only builds longbows and 4 rams'. And the difficulty of missions is all over the place. I remember in the... Dracula campaign? The first three missions were mostly just an A-move with little resistance, then suddenly you are dropped into a town with real bad defensibility with 3 aggressive AIs surrounding you. For me, the campaigns are... fine for playing once. The real meat of AoE 2 for the majority of the playerbase, backed up by statistics from MS, has always been skirmish versus the AI and I have personally been enjoying AoE 4's skirmishes and comp stomps a lot. Would you be willing to make a little follow-up discussing the skirmish modes and all the stuff they offer? In the long run, those are what people will be playing.
Yeah, then ppl criticize AoE 4 campaign, they usually forget how most of the AoE 2 campaign are unbalanced as fuck, or with very similar objectives and mechanics (Level of Legacy of the Void similar)
@@Kriegschwein Getting late to the discussion, but the Definitive Edition did a lot of fixes to Campaigns that were considered very unbalanced. The Sforza Campaign was redesigned completly, Dracula one got a lot of fixes for maps that were ridiculously unabalanced( Maps 4 and 5 come to mind), the Inca Campaign also changed completly+some of the maps from the Battles of the Conquerors got changes( like Honfoglálas). DE's dev team fixed a lot of shit that came from the previous interations of AoE2,, which helped to revive the game that to this day continues to receive balance tweaks, expansions and extra content. I hope that AOE4 brings in more people back to the RTS genre, just like its "elder brother" did recently
The one thing that stopped me playing was after accidentally discovering just how much the AI cheats. On the Mongol campaign, I think it's the third mission, you have to destroy an inner city, outer city & a trade district. I went for the trade district first, built siege towers, put about 40 Men-At-Arms inside and went for the walls. They inside only had Spearmen & Archers, so it was easy for the Men-At-Arms to deal with. The Men-At-Arms started attacking the buildings in the trade district and then....about 20 enemy Spearmen + Archers spawned. And about every 30 seconds or so they spawned more Spearmen + Archers until a max number of both had been reached within the walls, around 30 I think, but once the Men-At-Arms had killed enough the game just spawned more. All my Men-At-Arms ended up dying but just before the last few died, I destroyed the gate with my knights, who I originally had sit out because I thought the Men-At-Arms would be more than enough to destroy the Trade District. After the gate was destroyed, the enemy units stopped spawning. I accidentally found a trigger that stops the AI from spawning in a mass of units, I also accidentally avoided said trigger, thinking I was smart to not destroy the gates. Really ruined it for me, if I had accidentally found that, how many small things such as that exist within the game?
I love your review. Unbiased, not sponsored review is hard to find. Reviews from people that know what they're talking about, even more so. And beyond that, your personal touch of actually bringing in your personal opinions beyond "it's good/it's bad" made watching it enjoyable.
Honestly I’m just excited for the rts genre to be making a comeback. SC2 will always have an incredibly special place in my heart, but it being the only offering for a decade was a bit much
That AI thing's been a problem for a while. I remember once playing a mission in the Joan of Arc campaign in AoE2 where I blocked off one of the two chokepoints on the map since it involved a giant river, than dropped a couple of castles at the one closer to my base and waited. The AI kept sending villagers to attempt to harvest resources on my side after harvesting all of the stuff on their side, along with some rather weak attack waves that barely made it past said castles. Took HOURS to bleed them dry, but it was a simple task because the AI was brain-dead. :P
The ai in DE is actually incredibly good on the harder difficulties, but in skirmish matches, I can't speak for the campaigns as I've never touched them.
@@coldblowcode This was on Normal. I imagine that the intent was "resources on map exist; go harvest and bring back" regardless of anything that was in the way. :P
"What even is it, it's t- it's too yellow!" We're on the same page. I got used to it eventually but it was like... it was almost jarring, how visually loud the effect is for something as rote as setting a rally point. Would've felt less out of place as an objective marker or, I dunno, maybe a neat effect when reviving a downed hero unit. Some event or location worthy of being struck by a giant yellow space ribbon.
I really, really enjoyed this review. I certainly hope you will do more! Even if they are retrospective reviews of older RTS games and how they hold up today.
I like your review style. One caveat - when you review music/sound design, please put more examples in video (samples of the narrator, ambient music samples, battle clutter and so on.) Overall great, hope to see more :)
Solid review! I really appreciate you pointing out things you liked and disliked so concretely. A good reviewer is one who aligns with your personal tastes, and that is easier to discover when the reviewer makes it clear what things they thought were worth mentioning specifically, without relying on broad strokes and sweeping statements.
ok since you took the time to upload this long video (yes I read the description) , I can take the time to write my ideas about it I really liked your review. This was so much better than most of the stuff you see on youtube. No need for playing the angry card or hypeing it up in the heavens. You just give an idea, about good and bad stuff. God how I miss this kind of content. Thanks for taking your time.
Appreciated the honest take, the mostly spoiler free review, and both the good and the bad being highlighted. AI in AoE games has always been weird but it's disappointing that AoE4 seems like it's not just bad but doubling down on the blatant cheating, at least in the campaigns. Half the fun of beating older AoE campaigns is figuring out what moves you can get away with to cripple or trick the otherwise overwhelming AI, but it does feel a bit rough when the AI just blatantly acts in an extremely preset manner regardless of what the player does. Thanks for the review, I will most likely look into AoE4 but I'm not going to be in a massive rush to do so.
Please continue to do reviews, I always enjoy seeing content creators who branch out into reviewing because usually, they branch into reviewing games in fields that they love and do it from a place of wanting the genre to grow while providing seasoned advice and critics. Also, this review was well structured and nicely paced so keep up the good work GGG!
"What I didn't expect was the history channel"? What, you mean that William the Conqueror was actually a vampire and his soldiers was augmented by alien technology?
Yeah I've got zero interest in MP, but the AI cheating resources is a big deal breaker for me. I didn't have a whole lot of hope for 4, so I'm not too torn up about passing over it. I still have campaigns on 2 DE to beat on hard anyway.
The review is mostly the campaign ai. I think you can't execute great campaign design without giving the ai an advantage in terms of lot of resources at the start, or big amount of units as that ties with the difficulty as well. Skirmish ai also cheats but this requires more observation to see how much obvious it is.
Starcraft 1 did this too for the most part. I remember using a hack that let me see other player's income in real time, and the CPU's income would increase regardless of them having workers. They might have changed it in SC2, but i can't say.
I'm so happy that AoE4 is quite successful so far. I'm hoping this will bring golden age of RTS. It's not perfect compared to AoE2DE but it's really good. I hope they fix the broken stuffs and more QoL
I do hope for golden age of RTS but I don't think it going to happen anymore the player base is simply pitifully low compare to those popular game out there. Maybe the golden age might happen again one day in the future due to technological advance in gaming industry but not real soon that for sure.
@@devin6968 some for of pre set formation button like setting a group of units to do a pincer formation, get half of them to loop round back or smash straight forward with a button can make micro way more friendly and add some flash to the combat could be a new mechanic rts could adopt
Great video Grant, and as usual great content :D Yes, we read the description. Remember not to burn yourself out again, and when the next video comes out we will love it!
Hey GGG, been loving your campaign playthrough so far, but I wanted to give you a quick hotkey tip that might help you going forward You can set hotkeys to select every military building at the same time, there's also one for every tech building, and one for every town center I believe. If I recall correctly these are F1 F2 and F3 by default, personally I rebound them to 1, 2, and 3 for convienence sake, and set F2 to select all military units SC2 style. Pretty much every time you said "I can't believe there's not a hotkey for this" there was, in fact, a hotkey for it. You just have to do a LOT of digging to find them...
If you have to find something relative to the game Not within the game itself (such as the many quirks of AoE 2 engine, y'know, SotL's and T-West's goldmine of content) But in the _main menu..._ ... It's bad
Love to see you give impression/review on the other Single player RTS game in the future. Success of any RTS always start with a strong/solid single player content.
I really enjoyed this game, and I'm okay with the unit designs, tbh. The thing that I really struggled with was the architecture. Maybe I'm just dense and it'll take some getting used to, but I'm constantly finding myself clicking on all the buildings in my base to find a blacksmith, for example.
Nice video tho, would love some of your humor from other videos too, cause i love it everytime thinking how you would make it. The sound effect and performance are good, thats a good news, because it'd be almost impossible for dev to update those things early, others can come later and its a blessing knowing it, thanks alot
A very grantual review. Nah but for real though, I thought this was pretty great even if I’m not the biggest aoe wiz, and I also really liked that bit you had about the game’s soundtrack. You should def make more of these!
Grant that was so good. Can't believe this was your first review. Please do more, you're really talented and your dedication is apparent. And please don't let perfect get in the way of good, it will just delay your videos too much for little benefit.
I saw every minute of his Campaign and I have to say I am amazed he gave such a good review, I objectively thought he will trash this game in it, he fumbled constantly with the bad UI (cat with a bow lol) horrific lack of instructions on factions (he didn't even knew the French had a keep bonus till after he finished the whole campaign, they never told him, in fact he thought building farms next to it was a good idea because the English had farm bonuses when it looked like that), and his constant frustration with the early game, he either got crushed at the start or he's effortlessly oveemacro at the end... No inbetween. What Grant forgot to say about the campaign is that its broken... The blanc.e changes from late June for multiplayer broke the campaign, many upgrades do nothing (10 ranger archer mongol, instant catapult packing) or units are cripled (he thought for the majority of the campaign spearmen are bad at cavalry because they don't get their bonus Dmg) to straight out overpowered (the archer and mangonel balance was not introduced so the whole game Grant thought Why would you make anything else than archers and mangonels?) Lastly he slaves over the entire campaign spoiler free And letting the game tell him what to do, it was apparent how bad the game treats a new player, he'd constantly misunderstand objectives or even fumble over because the game Gave him bad ideas, in one mission with the French in particular he fought the impossible raiders with only spears because he had no gold, when he finished the grueling task he walked 5 feet to the right and the game went (You must capture the town for it's very rich gold mine deposits, at that moment Grant burst into laughter, what the hell ). To conclude his review of the campaign is generous, he was blinded on these problems because he didn't know they even existed, since I play both multiplayer and campaign it was painfully obvious of the terrible things left unfinished, if you'd think the campaign would prepare you for the real game you are sorely wrong. If nothing else the campaign would ruin your experience, I recommend do Not play the campaign wait for it to be fixed play multiplayer now. Thanks for reading and a huge shout-out to Grant for suffering to the whole thing, the best experience I ever had watching him was when he was at his lowest. I loved to see his skill be wasted at every moment because the game said "no" , more please?
But in AOE series the campaigns almost never tell you about the bonuses unless they are extremly important in a certain scenario, the game always treated the player as someone who already knows all this stuff. I also don't thing multiplayer patches actually affect the campaign as there are a few building and technology differences like blacksmith and fletcher being two separate buildings instead of one or separate mining upgrades for stone and gold. If so then it's a good thing. One of the most important things in RTS games is scouting so the game doesn't have to tell you "oh look, there is a gold mine" you have to search for it yourself, it was also the case from the beginning of AOE series
@@kesiazezebajki1982 That doesn't excuse it being broken and bad though, that's like saying "This games standards are so low but I'ma still defend it just cause my standards for gaming these days are MUCH lower then they would be if I was born 20 years earlier". Patches do broke campaigns, I mean look at the new Blizzard, they patched SC2 and 100% broke all their campaigns. Patches to C&C3 made it so that all harvesters are nerfed making EVERY SINGLE mission much harder then intended. C&C3 now patched up to date is an incredibly hard RTS due to Multiplayer updates.
I Thought he was being overly kind to this game for some reason, I'm glad I saw your comment Mista jay, explains more to do with what I saw other reviews saying. As someone who grow up playing AoE 1 and 2, Aoe 4 is a massive let down. Interesting that he was rather ignorant to the game being broken, as well as making mistakes that the game never told him to avoid. It sounded like he was constantly going to say that the game was terrible but kept stepping back and trying not to be entirely truthful.
@@GoremizeFirst, have you actually played the game and if so how many hours do you have in it? Second, what is broken and bad here? There were a few patches already and they addressed a few issues of the multiplayer experience, not all, but it keeps getting there. Patches, right, as I said I don't think they affect the capmaign. Literally, the patches just don't change anything in it, they only do it in single or multiplayer games vs bots or real opponents. Or so I think, not 100% sure here, but the issue with insta packing mangonel was either not there and is simply false, or was not an issue at all when I played it on hard, cannot remember right now. Sure, the game is not perfenct, it has issues and sometimes has easily forgettable campaign levels, but the basics are there, the idea is there, and while not the best, it still stays strong as one of the better RTS games made in the last 10 years. What it actually lacks is spirit and character, it's just too generic.
Reviews from you sound good to me. You have already established yourself as someone who has experience and expertise with RTS games, as well as a unique perspective since it's clear you enjoy seeking out every ounce of novelty you can from them by constructing challenges to change the intentions of the game. Because you have experience and a unique perspective that shows new perspectives in how to play the game. If you continue to do reviews in the future I would love to see what sort of challenges or ideas the RTS made you consider, though I know the audience would likely think of that as a promise to do it in the future unless you said something about it. Thank you for your thorough review. I hope the experiment works out.
I just want to say THANK YOU for something I've been screaming into the void for literal years. The vast majority of the rts player base do NOT play multiplayer. All the talk about having balanced races does not matter as much as the vocal minority says it does. Quantic Foundry has done some studies that show that on average the rts player base is older and also that on average as you age your desire to play competitively online diminishes. Seriously go look at any rts achievements and the multiplayer ones are in the minority every single time. I am so sick of them pushing multiplayer for rts. No. Make a good campaign. Is watching pros micro like mad fun? Yes. Do I play that way? No. Not even close. Most players like to turtle, build up an army, then crush the enemy. They aren't learning build orders. I'd much rather play Dawn of War with 10 factions, each completely broken in fun ways than touch the abomination that was Dawn of War 3 with it's terrible campaign and "balance" focus. I literally choose who I play as in AoE2 based on what their castle unit is because it's cool. Not because of how strong the civilization is.
I bought AoE IV to build cities and castles, lol. Then I learned CZcams is all StarCraft 2 level casts of the game with build orders and villager micro and stuff, lol. They play so completely differently from anyone I've ever seen play an RTS before. If they played RA2 I bet they'd win with G.I. deploy micro and never even build a prism tower the whole game, lol.
@@Kathrynerius yess omg, I played red alert 2 as a sim city thing then I'd save the last objective and just role play with units for hours cus it was fun, mental omega tho 👀 I actually had to learn to deply micro and stuff and build orders 😭
@@WonderlandGhost mental Omega 3.3.6 just came out today!!! Give it a try, it now has over 100 campaign missions total. c: I love building big bases in RA2 complete with walls and gates and stuff in skirmish, lol.
@@Kathrynerius same!! It came out 2 days actually! I was waiting on it being announced in the discord and instead they announced it in a different channel so I missed playing unfortunately 😭 I'm gonna play tmrw
Yeap. People do read descriptions. For your first review it was great! Informative and entertaining. Also has your opinion and personality, which I feel really matters. Would love to see more
I want you to know that I seriously love your videos. I love your style and you are super good at it, too. This is the video that pushed me over the edge to pledge on patreon. Keep doing what you're doing!
The only thing missing from this review: How's the AI in custom skirmishes? I can understand AI being... well, trash for the campaign - if they want to tell a 'specific story' through essentially scripted events, then AI or not the same thing's gonna happen regardless. But if the AI is that dumb and just cheats their way through regular skirmishes, I'm not gonna be happy EDIT: I'm aware this is specifically a campaign review, but it would have been a nice bonus to include for those of us who play offline rather than multi. I did enjoy the review
i understand your feeling but is a hard "no" not a bit too ... yeah ... hard? AI can be fixed through updates so gibe it time and look into it in a few months again? but maybe i am just weird here. have a nice day
Ditto. The AI is so bad that it really should have been fixed at least a little bit before release. Stuff like 7:35 is unforgivable, a game shouldn't be released in that state, this is just sloppy, It looks like they don't even care. just *SLAM* 'there's a game. It's OK. give us money now. we just want money' - :(
@@DarkPlay134 I'd argue that the mentality of "we'll fix it in post" is the problem, not the buyers. Spending money on a product that'll *probably* work right at a later date is irresponsible
There are lots of professional game reviewers out there that are less qualified and do a worse job reviewing strategy games then you ma man. You're doing great. There might be some appeal to doing reviews of older games then new ones, but im sure you know the algorithm better so thats up to you. Im sure that there are people who would enjoy a retro review if it came to it. Also some people dont really mind when the game is not micro heavy. Personally, i love starcraft but cant really micro so i just build units that i dont have to micro and rush them in. I enjoy the spectacle of the fight more the active unit response. Cant wait for nov 6th. ^^ Keep up the great work!
Just discovered you made reviews as well. Good job, I hope there will be more coming... even older games would be cool since new RTS game releases aren't exactly common nowadays.
5:10 actually that's an age of empires thing, even multiplayer matches focus more on keeping your macro game while big battles unfold, the price of economy in victory value is harder than starcraft.
Reviews of games similar to what you normally play on the channel are welcome. I already bought Age 4, but I'm happy to see what others think of it as well. If you keep reviewing new RTS titles, it will help me and others find RTS games we didn't know about, and help us decide whether a game is worth trying if we are on the fence about it.
I always read the description. If you check out some classical YT vids especially of RuneScape gameplay people would fill it with hilarious stuff. Loved this description 👊
I think the thumbnail size is just right ( I didn't even noticed it without reading description... Maybe it's the color hiding it .) Also I read the description only because someone say people do read them...ty that person.
I personally really enjoyed this review! It really lets your experience with the genre show as well as rely on your voice, which I find to be very nice as a narration voice, to keep the audience soothed while you explain your thoughts on the game! I love RTS games, but I am much more driven by personal narrative stories, so I don't think I'll pick this one up. I hope you'll do a review of the DLC's! Also, yes! We read the descriptions and I think the thumbnail is lovely.
From watching much of your other content, you've always come across as someone who had a firm grasp on what makes up a good game. I have a bias going into this video because I already am familiar with what makes you pleased with a game. That being said, you come across as very objective, while not shying away from highlighting things you like. Your criticism is fair and valuable. I would very much look forward to see more reviews from you!
Good work on the review Grand. I feel informed about about the game, it's strong sides and flaws, it's problems and potencial ways, for it, to grow. Plus Your personal input, showing that you really played this game, makes it pleasant to watch. About the feedback: One, yes, people read the description🙂. Two, logo is fine, but if you make it a bit smaller, it might be even better. Tree, great that you try something new (review), You are a natural in it.
Looking forward to the vid on the 6th. AoE4 has also grabbed my attention for the time being, interesting to see where it ends up in the current landscape
I'm surprised you didn't mention the arrow physics under "annoying things". They made arrows unable to miss and sometimes they look like homing missiles because of it! :D
Huh, there's no shitstorm of comments saying how much better it is to not have micro in the game. Must have been something good going on at the retirement home and they werent on youtube for a bit.
@@booradley6832 Probably watching Hamsterwheels video about how "incredibly hard" Naxxramas was and actually believing it, lol. Nobody tell them that it was beaten within hours of release in Classic. The delusions of the elite boomer gamer make Jihadists look moderate.
_"Huh, there's no shitstorm of comments saying how much better it is to not have micro in the game."_ - I imagine that the casual players don't mind not having to micro. Low micro = chill game; high micro = spectacular games but with high skill-ceiling. RTS as a genre has been in decline for quite a while now, so I imagine that AoE4 coming out with something new, rethreading the waters and not immediately asking players to micro their hearts out like SC2 pro's do might be a good thing for the genre as a whole. Games are primarily supposed to be fun. The other 3 lines of the 2 replies look like a totally random string of words generated by machine learning bots! :D So I won't be replying to those.
I mean hey, if you think lowering the skill ceiling and replayability of a game and having someone who is very passionate about RTS and wants to see them flourish (Grant) not be able to recommend it to anyone except existing fans is "trying something new" then sure. There are ways to not micro in other games as well. By playing on easy, by playing against people of your skill level, by playing units that dont require much micro to succeed. But if removing an entire tier of gameplay depth, the literal ability to control your units in a satisfying manner that affects gameplay outcomes, is more engaging, then something is seriously wrong here. Most of us have pretty well mastered the concepts of rock paper scissors by now. But for those that havent I'm sure this game will be very enthralling.
@@booradley6832 The problem is you and I buy video games with the intent of a skill curve. That's too much for some people. You're supposed to be able to sit there and have the game reassure you that you're great, not to have to do shit like learning or improving. Besides if everyone buys your game on title recognition, it totally blows and they abandon it that's a win win. You get the box price and then don't have to support it after a year because everyone has stopped playing. And then everyone goes back to the game you made 20 years ago and buys it for a second or more times. This game legit looks and plays like a f2p cellphone game concept ported over to PC, and then the documentary parts added.
You did really well man. You talked about the parts of the game that matters, told both positive and negative. Short-ish, informative, on point. Much much better than half hour long reviews where they talk, but say nothing of value.
That'd probably be a pretty good suggestion, considering Total War is really just one big sandbox campaign. It wouldn't fit his challenge run ideas so well though.
the description is very entertaining and as to the question why i'm watching a review of Age of Empires 4 and reading the description of it? Mainly because the video was made by you.
I would say 99% of players play skirmish mode, either alone or coop with friends in Age games. Campaign is nice, and probably multiplayer, but not as much as skirmish with friends for 7 hours.
Your criticism on the battle feel, unit look and clunky AI are spot on. I really wanted to love this, but can't be bothered to even start it up after 4-5 hours of game time.
It's also worth noting that aoe2 DE and other re releases have received tons of post launch support, even changing campaigns slightly besides just balance. They have shown that the game is always likely going to be improved. Which is nice to know that it will likely be better as the game ages. I think the most interesting thing is that if a civ in aoe2 DE was represented as best as it could and the new civ was added that fits better, they typically update it. For example sometimes the Burgundians were represented by the Franks, until the Burgundians were released in a new dlc.
Hey man, I follow your VOD channel so I'm pretty biased. But I really enjoyed your video and appreciated your insight on this since I'm wanting to dive into RTS games again. I adored the old AoM series and wish this would have been similar.
+1 algorithm comment, I engaged with and enjoyed the content displayed on my screen. Joky banter aside, I can't think of any real complaints about the review, GGG. Maybe make the game's BGM during your talking points a bit louder? Was a bit difficult to hear it.
You did what appears to be a level-headed and even-handed review of the game. The lack of fake hype really made it sing. Your analysis was succinctly delivered, covered many of the important bases of an RTS game and had little in the way of fluff. Well done.
Honestly I've been wanting to find a replacement for Totalbiscuit's WTF series, and this is the closest I've gotten and I love it. I'd love to see one of these on Age of Mythology!
That's a great point, Grant will be a great guy to do a series like WTF for single player RTS. Man, I really missed Totalbiscuit, the WTF series is so good.
Would like to see how the AI works in skirmish. I welcome the Campign at moment cause I feel it actually be encourage a new generation with 0 rts experience to be walked into the game the Norman t reminded me of the Scottish tutorial Campaign it’s something I remember as a kid brought me into RTs world cause I wasn’t swarmed by all the tactics etc. This was needed to revive the Rts community.
![TheViper Faces A Defensive MASTERPIECE [AoE4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/BLUpj9_E8Xs/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey guys, this is my first attempt at branching out into Reviews. I have no idea if people are actually interested in this and would appreciate some feedback!
Dew it mor
So when are you doing rexxar campaign?
This was great - I would never say it was your first attempt. You were objective, expressed your opinion clearly and focused on things that matter. I especially appreciate the single player focus.
i will use your opinion to decide my purchase.
Yes, more of such reviews, please!
Yes, people actually read the description.
Tbh, I read the description because of your comment
Same, I always read it
I only read it because of this comment
It's more like 50/50. If people know that creator talks about things in the description, they look at it. If the creator instead promises to put links in the description, but never does and instead there is just his twitch info and advert link, people would rarely check it. And if person switches from latter to former, it'll take people some time to notice.
But thanks to you, we did:)
@@TheArklyte "If the creator instead promises to put links in the description, but never does and instead there is just his twitch info and advert link" We call this one "pulling a Lowko"
The Hundred Years War:
"This campaign is _super unique._ You have a series of locations to defend, each of which is attacked by progressively stronger forces of enemies. "
well thats the hundered years war for you
Ah my favourite kind of description. It's nice when content creators write their thoughts, it's a relaxing read reading into someone basically talking to themselves.
Plus it helps with the algorithm.
Some CZcamsrs try to put as many possibly viral keywords inside a jumbled mess of a paragraph, although it's dubious if that works.
It used to
Not having activated abilities (or only a few of them rather) is pretty much what AoE players want, the series has always been focused on macro and broader strategy. Micro is still rewarded in competitive play, just not on SC2 level.
Really? From what I understand from AoE2, the game is FAR more reliant than micro and macro. Mostly because controlling surrounds is way more beneficial than the AI doing it
@@zaxtonhong3958
You've clearly never watched trash wars or you believe clicking a formation button to dodge a magonel shot is more clickity than manually splitting your marines/zerglings from storms or aoe dmg.
Micro in aoe2, vanilla aoe2 is more intense than de2 but the most you have use is flush archer+skirm battle which is just focus fire on vills for raiding while avoiding tc fire.
You could argue that, if the population cap wasn't still 200. Like if it was actually higher than Starcraft 2 a game that came out in 2010, or Starcraft 1 which came out in 1998.
Imagine if Age of empires 4 was a next generation game. Where you had 1000, 2000 population cap. Huge armies like in history, doing battle and leaving actual gore, blood and stuff on the ground.
Instead we live in the sad timeline, where we got Age of Empires 4 the mobile and tablet game...
However, AoE4 does not have cheat codes that let you spawn sports cars with machine guns or other silly things. Huge fail. Sometimes you just want to steamroll an enemy army in a nice shiny "lamborgunny."
@@RMJ1984 it expands the playerbase by offering the game to more low end computers. yes high end gaming pcs can do insane stuff but a lot of people don't have the resources for that especially if they've been playing aoe since the 90s and are old now, not likely to be invested in a gaming pc. also 1000-unit armies make micro flatly impossible because the entire screen is filled with units that get stuck on each other
This was a great review, if anything i would recommend bringing the style of humour your commentary in your challenge runs has to reviews as well, rather than just giving a "professional" analysis, it makes it all the more entertaining whilst not deviating from how informative the video is, definitely looking forward to more ^^
Totally agree. What makes the difference between this review and the 1000 others on CZcams is Grant himself.
The guys at the mineral line will not believe this.
Yeah, let the channel trademark style permeate the content, gives a vibe that won't turn regular viewers away, and if someone finds it by chance they're more likely to stay if they decide to watch other videos
The Narration was something Age 2 did pretty well starting out each mission with a personal stylized historical narrative about a historical event by someone else the event wasnt about, it was always someone else from the period looking on at the events and figures happening, there were voice lines for each character about in game events which made it great but I suppose they thought even those were still approximations
oh man i HATE that about this campaign. video games aren't documentaries. they're exercises in immersion. so fucking immerse me! bring back the bawdy aoe2 tutorial scotsman and im sold. i want king harald taunting me from the top of the hill so i feel better about murdering him in broad daylight. i want to be personally, directly responsible for wiping the shit eating grin off the khan at the ugra river. thats what video games are for!! that's what they do, that's their narrative potential! how do you miss that
aoe3 also did it well, even though they went a little bit ahistorical. The lack of characters and iconic voicelines is disappointing. I still have some iconic aoe2 campaign lines burned into my consciousness from when i was a child, such as "Kushluk: Run away! Run away!" or "Saladin, where are you going with that great army?" "The blood on La Hire's sword is almost dry!" "Help! Crusaders are attacking our trade routes!" "Behold! The horde of Genghis Khan approaches!"
@@mrguysnailz4907 All of those lines just echoed through my mind as I read them. Oh, the nostalgia.
@@mrguysnailz4907 I really miss when games were made with the passion they were made with back then, 20 years ago we had some solid stuff that would put everything made today to shame. The real problem is, the current generation doesn't know this, and puts up with low standards that are produced by producers who only care about the bottom line. So they assume that the low standards are good standards without even knowing how good things could be and used to be.
It’s a different style more than anything. As an upcoming history teacher, I actually appreciated the heavier focus on actual historical events (not that AoE2 didn’t, but you know what I mean), as well as all the extra side content and overlay with the real locations of the events (where possible). Definitely less personal though, that I cannot dispute.
I liked this review, it was quite short and it showcased some of the things AoE did right and some of the issues it had really well. After watching winter's review too it really seems like they went for a cinematic experience with this one, through and through.
Can't wait for november 6
Not at all. This game was 90% built for multiplayer and 10% for campaign.
"It's not even a PNG"
Literally unplayable!
But how much of the campaign can we do without things dying...? [Fry squint]
Campaign ends at mission one
It's middle ages. No matter how you micro, majority of your units will die due to natural causes before the battle even begins...
@@TheArklyte peasant: exists
Common cold: allow me to introduce myself
In this game? No can do. Proper micro is near impossible thanks to allies body-blocking your units, enemy hitboxes like to overlap and take priority over your own troops when clicking on said troops (unless you drag-select at which point it will be a group selection due to how close they all are), or even just the amazingly slow response to your commands.
"I happen to know a thing or two about rte campaigns." Heh. Yeah.
Just a small bit
rte?
"If you want the soundtracks they're already up on youtube"
Well said
Usually indie titles have soundtrack dlc specifically to support the musicians but I feel confident saying that isn't the norm with larger titles
I feel like I agree with you on the documentary-style narration, that it works in between missions, but in actual missions, it feels kind of detached. But that's the feeling I got overall. It was very immersion-breaking for me, and the weird artstyle remniscient of Civilization 5 and 6 kind of took me out of it. It plays like AoE, but it doesn't really feel like it.
Still, it has a lot of interesting presentation and cool documentaries that do work as a bonus feature.
Actually really like the review format Grant. Nice change of pace from your usual stuff. Been enjoying AoE 4 campaign so far and you definitely put a lot of my thoughts about it into very succinct and well though out points. You definitely had a few ideas about the game and viewpoints I hadn’t considered, I think greatly helped by your experience with RTS in general. And yes, people read the descriptions ;)
Good review, wouldn't mind seeing you review more RTS games (both old and new) in this style
Thanks for the review, Grant!
Personally, to me, the campaigns in the original AoE 2 have always been a pretty mixed bag. Though they had a more 'personal' approach to characters, rather than the documentary thing (which I do enjoy but I can see it will be divisive), the missions themselves have a lot of AIs with infinite resources or who are scripted to build very simple compositions, like 'this one only builds longbows and 4 rams'.
And the difficulty of missions is all over the place. I remember in the... Dracula campaign? The first three missions were mostly just an A-move with little resistance, then suddenly you are dropped into a town with real bad defensibility with 3 aggressive AIs surrounding you.
For me, the campaigns are... fine for playing once.
The real meat of AoE 2 for the majority of the playerbase, backed up by statistics from MS, has always been skirmish versus the AI and I have personally been enjoying AoE 4's skirmishes and comp stomps a lot.
Would you be willing to make a little follow-up discussing the skirmish modes and all the stuff they offer? In the long run, those are what people will be playing.
Yeah, then ppl criticize AoE 4 campaign, they usually forget how most of the AoE 2 campaign are unbalanced as fuck, or with very similar objectives and mechanics (Level of Legacy of the Void similar)
I basically only play skirmish too
I've always thought of Campaigns in RTS as fun ways to introduce the different factions with neat stories, not as the main gameplay of the game.
@@Kriegschwein the DE camapaigns really stand out as top quality.
@@Kriegschwein Getting late to the discussion, but the Definitive Edition did a lot of fixes to Campaigns that were considered very unbalanced. The Sforza Campaign was redesigned completly, Dracula one got a lot of fixes for maps that were ridiculously unabalanced( Maps 4 and 5 come to mind), the Inca Campaign also changed completly+some of the maps from the Battles of the Conquerors got changes( like Honfoglálas). DE's dev team fixed a lot of shit that came from the previous interations of AoE2,, which helped to revive the game that to this day continues to receive balance tweaks, expansions and extra content. I hope that AOE4 brings in more people back to the RTS genre, just like its "elder brother" did recently
The one thing that stopped me playing was after accidentally discovering just how much the AI cheats.
On the Mongol campaign, I think it's the third mission, you have to destroy an inner city, outer city & a trade district.
I went for the trade district first, built siege towers, put about 40 Men-At-Arms inside and went for the walls. They inside only had Spearmen & Archers, so it was easy for the Men-At-Arms to deal with.
The Men-At-Arms started attacking the buildings in the trade district and then....about 20 enemy Spearmen + Archers spawned.
And about every 30 seconds or so they spawned more Spearmen + Archers until a max number of both had been reached within the walls, around 30 I think, but once the Men-At-Arms had killed enough the game just spawned more.
All my Men-At-Arms ended up dying but just before the last few died, I destroyed the gate with my knights, who I originally had sit out because I thought the Men-At-Arms would be more than enough to destroy the Trade District.
After the gate was destroyed, the enemy units stopped spawning.
I accidentally found a trigger that stops the AI from spawning in a mass of units, I also accidentally avoided said trigger, thinking I was smart to not destroy the gates.
Really ruined it for me, if I had accidentally found that, how many small things such as that exist within the game?
I love your review.
Unbiased, not sponsored review is hard to find. Reviews from people that know what they're talking about, even more so. And beyond that, your personal touch of actually bringing in your personal opinions beyond "it's good/it's bad" made watching it enjoyable.
This was a refreshing change from your usual video schedule, I hope we end up seeing more reviews!
Looking forward to Nov 6th! LoTV No build sounds like a ton of fun
Honestly I’m just excited for the rts genre to be making a comeback. SC2 will always have an incredibly special place in my heart, but it being the only offering for a decade was a bit much
That AI thing's been a problem for a while. I remember once playing a mission in the Joan of Arc campaign in AoE2 where I blocked off one of the two chokepoints on the map since it involved a giant river, than dropped a couple of castles at the one closer to my base and waited. The AI kept sending villagers to attempt to harvest resources on my side after harvesting all of the stuff on their side, along with some rather weak attack waves that barely made it past said castles. Took HOURS to bleed them dry, but it was a simple task because the AI was brain-dead. :P
The ai in DE is actually incredibly good on the harder difficulties, but in skirmish matches, I can't speak for the campaigns as I've never touched them.
They updated the the ai and all the campaigns in de
The ai in de version is one of the better versions of any rts game
In other words: there is hope that they update the aoe4 AI to be good
@@coldblowcode This was on Normal. I imagine that the intent was "resources on map exist; go harvest and bring back" regardless of anything that was in the way. :P
"What even is it, it's t- it's too yellow!"
We're on the same page. I got used to it eventually but it was like... it was almost jarring, how visually loud the effect is for something as rote as setting a rally point. Would've felt less out of place as an objective marker or, I dunno, maybe a neat effect when reviving a downed hero unit. Some event or location worthy of being struck by a giant yellow space ribbon.
I really, really enjoyed this review. I certainly hope you will do more! Even if they are retrospective reviews of older RTS games and how they hold up today.
I like your review style. One caveat - when you review music/sound design, please put more examples in video (samples of the narrator, ambient music samples, battle clutter and so on.)
Overall great, hope to see more :)
Great to see you branching out into different kinds of content keep it up and hope you enjoy it!
Solid review! I really appreciate you pointing out things you liked and disliked so concretely. A good reviewer is one who aligns with your personal tastes, and that is easier to discover when the reviewer makes it clear what things they thought were worth mentioning specifically, without relying on broad strokes and sweeping statements.
ok since you took the time to upload this long video (yes I read the description) , I can take the time to write my ideas about it
I really liked your review. This was so much better than most of the stuff you see on youtube. No need for playing the angry card or hypeing it up in the heavens. You just give an idea, about good and bad stuff. God how I miss this kind of content. Thanks for taking your time.
Appreciated the honest take, the mostly spoiler free review, and both the good and the bad being highlighted. AI in AoE games has always been weird but it's disappointing that AoE4 seems like it's not just bad but doubling down on the blatant cheating, at least in the campaigns. Half the fun of beating older AoE campaigns is figuring out what moves you can get away with to cripple or trick the otherwise overwhelming AI, but it does feel a bit rough when the AI just blatantly acts in an extremely preset manner regardless of what the player does.
Thanks for the review, I will most likely look into AoE4 but I'm not going to be in a massive rush to do so.
AOE II DE has one of the best AIs I've seen in RTS.
Yay another video! Absolutely love ur videos! regardless of the content, Your personality always brings me back!
Please continue to do reviews, I always enjoy seeing content creators who branch out into reviewing because usually, they branch into reviewing games in fields that they love and do it from a place of wanting the genre to grow while providing seasoned advice and critics.
Also, this review was well structured and nicely paced so keep up the good work GGG!
I know this type of video isn't the kind that gets the most traffic on your channel, but I do appreciate these.
"What I didn't expect was the history channel"?
What, you mean that William the Conqueror was actually a vampire and his soldiers was augmented by alien technology?
Shit man, I wanna play *that*, though!!
Seriously, that history channel makes amazing games. Feels very age of mythology.
I'm not saying it was aliens... But it was aliens.
As a descendant of the saxons who went with him...did you not know that?
Yeah I've got zero interest in MP, but the AI cheating resources is a big deal breaker for me.
I didn't have a whole lot of hope for 4, so I'm not too torn up about passing over it.
I still have campaigns on 2 DE to beat on hard anyway.
The review is mostly the campaign ai. I think you can't execute great campaign design without giving the ai an advantage in terms of lot of resources at the start, or big amount of units as that ties with the difficulty as well. Skirmish ai also cheats but this requires more observation to see how much obvious it is.
I'm still grinding through SC2 coop for my RTS fix.
Starcraft 1 did this too for the most part. I remember using a hack that let me see other player's income in real time, and the CPU's income would increase regardless of them having workers. They might have changed it in SC2, but i can't say.
why the hell nobody talks about how fucking bad is the projectiles in this game? is soo damm ugly
I'm so happy that AoE4 is quite successful so far. I'm hoping this will bring golden age of RTS.
It's not perfect compared to AoE2DE but it's really good. I hope they fix the broken stuffs and more QoL
I do hope for golden age of RTS but I don't think it going to happen anymore the player base is simply pitifully low compare to those popular game out there. Maybe the golden age might happen again one day in the future due to technological advance in gaming industry but not real soon that for sure.
Why do you need new ones?
@@aveomnissiah2896 as much as I would love a RTS resurgence it feels like the genre has almost hit its peak and cant evolve much further.
@@devin6968 A better controlling supcom style game?
@@devin6968 some for of pre set formation button like setting a group of units to do a pincer formation, get half of them to loop round back or smash straight forward with a button can make micro way more friendly and add some flash to the combat could be a new mechanic rts could adopt
Very cool! I loved how it was all informative while still having the more fun/less serious side towards the end
I always read descriptions. Thanks for the announcement of the next great challenge!
Great video Grant, and as usual great content :D Yes, we read the description.
Remember not to burn yourself out again, and when the next video comes out we will love it!
Hey GGG, been loving your campaign playthrough so far, but I wanted to give you a quick hotkey tip that might help you going forward
You can set hotkeys to select every military building at the same time, there's also one for every tech building, and one for every town center I believe. If I recall correctly these are F1 F2 and F3 by default, personally I rebound them to 1, 2, and 3 for convienence sake, and set F2 to select all military units SC2 style. Pretty much every time you said "I can't believe there's not a hotkey for this" there was, in fact, a hotkey for it. You just have to do a LOT of digging to find them...
If you have to find something relative to the game
Not within the game itself (such as the many quirks of AoE 2 engine, y'know, SotL's and T-West's goldmine of content)
But in the _main menu..._
...
It's bad
Love to see you give impression/review on the other Single player RTS game in the future.
Success of any RTS always start with a strong/solid single player content.
I really enjoyed this game, and I'm okay with the unit designs, tbh. The thing that I really struggled with was the architecture. Maybe I'm just dense and it'll take some getting used to, but I'm constantly finding myself clicking on all the buildings in my base to find a blacksmith, for example.
GGG is such a good reviewer. Please more reviews! I have hardly seen such a well articulated review.
I read video descriptions, just to let you know =)
Nice video, I find it useful and entertaining!
Nice video tho, would love some of your humor from other videos too, cause i love it everytime thinking how you would make it.
The sound effect and performance are good, thats a good news, because it'd be almost impossible for dev to update those things early, others can come later and its a blessing knowing it, thanks alot
Man I really don't like rts games but I could watch you play and talk about them all day. Thanks man keep doing you
I like the logo size better in the thumbnail like this. It's bold, it's prominent, and it's instantly recognizable
A very grantual review.
Nah but for real though, I thought this was pretty great even if I’m not the biggest aoe wiz, and I also really liked that bit you had about the game’s soundtrack. You should def make more of these!
Grant that was so good. Can't believe this was your first review. Please do more, you're really talented and your dedication is apparent.
And please don't let perfect get in the way of good, it will just delay your videos too much for little benefit.
The logo is kinda big but then again it's chungus in the profile pic too so it's coherent. Only a little bit smaller it's perfect. Great review btw
I saw every minute of his Campaign and I have to say I am amazed he gave such a good review, I objectively thought he will trash this game in it, he fumbled constantly with the bad UI (cat with a bow lol) horrific lack of instructions on factions (he didn't even knew the French had a keep bonus till after he finished the whole campaign, they never told him, in fact he thought building farms next to it was a good idea because the English had farm bonuses when it looked like that), and his constant frustration with the early game, he either got crushed at the start or he's effortlessly oveemacro at the end... No inbetween.
What Grant forgot to say about the campaign is that its broken... The blanc.e changes from late June for multiplayer broke the campaign, many upgrades do nothing (10 ranger archer mongol, instant catapult packing) or units are cripled (he thought for the majority of the campaign spearmen are bad at cavalry because they don't get their bonus Dmg) to straight out overpowered (the archer and mangonel balance was not introduced so the whole game Grant thought Why would you make anything else than archers and mangonels?)
Lastly he slaves over the entire campaign spoiler free And letting the game tell him what to do, it was apparent how bad the game treats a new player, he'd constantly misunderstand objectives or even fumble over because the game Gave him bad ideas, in one mission with the French in particular he fought the impossible raiders with only spears because he had no gold, when he finished the grueling task he walked 5 feet to the right and the game went (You must capture the town for it's very rich gold mine deposits, at that moment Grant burst into laughter, what the hell ).
To conclude his review of the campaign is generous, he was blinded on these problems because he didn't know they even existed, since I play both multiplayer and campaign it was painfully obvious of the terrible things left unfinished, if you'd think the campaign would prepare you for the real game you are sorely wrong. If nothing else the campaign would ruin your experience, I recommend do Not play the campaign wait for it to be fixed play multiplayer now.
Thanks for reading and a huge shout-out to Grant for suffering to the whole thing, the best experience I ever had watching him was when he was at his lowest. I loved to see his skill be wasted at every moment because the game said "no" , more please?
But in AOE series the campaigns almost never tell you about the bonuses unless they are extremly important in a certain scenario, the game always treated the player as someone who already knows all this stuff. I also don't thing multiplayer patches actually affect the campaign as there are a few building and technology differences like blacksmith and fletcher being two separate buildings instead of one or separate mining upgrades for stone and gold. If so then it's a good thing. One of the most important things in RTS games is scouting so the game doesn't have to tell you "oh look, there is a gold mine" you have to search for it yourself, it was also the case from the beginning of AOE series
@@kesiazezebajki1982 That doesn't excuse it being broken and bad though, that's like saying "This games standards are so low but I'ma still defend it just cause my standards for gaming these days are MUCH lower then they would be if I was born 20 years earlier". Patches do broke campaigns, I mean look at the new Blizzard, they patched SC2 and 100% broke all their campaigns. Patches to C&C3 made it so that all harvesters are nerfed making EVERY SINGLE mission much harder then intended. C&C3 now patched up to date is an incredibly hard RTS due to Multiplayer updates.
I Thought he was being overly kind to this game for some reason, I'm glad I saw your comment Mista jay, explains more to do with what I saw other reviews saying. As someone who grow up playing AoE 1 and 2, Aoe 4 is a massive let down. Interesting that he was rather ignorant to the game being broken, as well as making mistakes that the game never told him to avoid. It sounded like he was constantly going to say that the game was terrible but kept stepping back and trying not to be entirely truthful.
@@GoremizeFirst, have you actually played the game and if so how many hours do you have in it? Second, what is broken and bad here? There were a few patches already and they addressed a few issues of the multiplayer experience, not all, but it keeps getting there. Patches, right, as I said I don't think they affect the capmaign. Literally, the patches just don't change anything in it, they only do it in single or multiplayer games vs bots or real opponents. Or so I think, not 100% sure here, but the issue with insta packing mangonel was either not there and is simply false, or was not an issue at all when I played it on hard, cannot remember right now. Sure, the game is not perfenct, it has issues and sometimes has easily forgettable campaign levels, but the basics are there, the idea is there, and while not the best, it still stays strong as one of the better RTS games made in the last 10 years. What it actually lacks is spirit and character, it's just too generic.
Reviews from you sound good to me. You have already established yourself as someone who has experience and expertise with RTS games, as well as a unique perspective since it's clear you enjoy seeking out every ounce of novelty you can from them by constructing challenges to change the intentions of the game. Because you have experience and a unique perspective that shows new perspectives in how to play the game. If you continue to do reviews in the future I would love to see what sort of challenges or ideas the RTS made you consider, though I know the audience would likely think of that as a promise to do it in the future unless you said something about it.
Thank you for your thorough review. I hope the experiment works out.
I just want to say THANK YOU for something I've been screaming into the void for literal years. The vast majority of the rts player base do NOT play multiplayer. All the talk about having balanced races does not matter as much as the vocal minority says it does. Quantic Foundry has done some studies that show that on average the rts player base is older and also that on average as you age your desire to play competitively online diminishes. Seriously go look at any rts achievements and the multiplayer ones are in the minority every single time. I am so sick of them pushing multiplayer for rts. No. Make a good campaign. Is watching pros micro like mad fun? Yes. Do I play that way? No. Not even close. Most players like to turtle, build up an army, then crush the enemy. They aren't learning build orders. I'd much rather play Dawn of War with 10 factions, each completely broken in fun ways than touch the abomination that was Dawn of War 3 with it's terrible campaign and "balance" focus. I literally choose who I play as in AoE2 based on what their castle unit is because it's cool. Not because of how strong the civilization is.
Yes! My thoughts exactly, in age 2 I would honestly not upgrade my nights higher cus I loved the design
I bought AoE IV to build cities and castles, lol. Then I learned CZcams is all StarCraft 2 level casts of the game with build orders and villager micro and stuff, lol. They play so completely differently from anyone I've ever seen play an RTS before. If they played RA2 I bet they'd win with G.I. deploy micro and never even build a prism tower the whole game, lol.
@@Kathrynerius yess omg, I played red alert 2 as a sim city thing then I'd save the last objective and just role play with units for hours cus it was fun, mental omega tho 👀 I actually had to learn to deply micro and stuff and build orders 😭
@@WonderlandGhost mental Omega 3.3.6 just came out today!!! Give it a try, it now has over 100 campaign missions total. c: I love building big bases in RA2 complete with walls and gates and stuff in skirmish, lol.
@@Kathrynerius same!! It came out 2 days actually! I was waiting on it being announced in the discord and instead they announced it in a different channel so I missed playing unfortunately 😭 I'm gonna play tmrw
Yeap. People do read descriptions. For your first review it was great! Informative and entertaining. Also has your opinion and personality, which I feel really matters. Would love to see more
I want you to know that I seriously love your videos. I love your style and you are super good at it, too. This is the video that pushed me over the edge to pledge on patreon. Keep doing what you're doing!
The only thing missing from this review: How's the AI in custom skirmishes? I can understand AI being... well, trash for the campaign - if they want to tell a 'specific story' through essentially scripted events, then AI or not the same thing's gonna happen regardless. But if the AI is that dumb and just cheats their way through regular skirmishes, I'm not gonna be happy
EDIT: I'm aware this is specifically a campaign review, but it would have been a nice bonus to include for those of us who play offline rather than multi. I did enjoy the review
I don’t know if the ai cheats, but when attacking them I consistently found 5-10 villagers at each production building
Thanks man, you saved me wasting time on researching the game and possibly money. The crummy AI definitely makes it a hard "no" from me.
i understand your feeling but is a hard "no" not a bit too ... yeah ... hard? AI can be fixed through updates so gibe it time and look into it in a few months again? but maybe i am just weird here.
have a nice day
yep same for me, this AI that is build for cheese is no-no for me, at leat until they upgrade it
Multiplayer is the only reason to get this game. But even that is very unbalanced.
Ditto. The AI is so bad that it really should have been fixed at least a little bit before release. Stuff like 7:35 is unforgivable, a game shouldn't be released in that state, this is just sloppy, It looks like they don't even care. just *SLAM* 'there's a game. It's OK. give us money now. we just want money' - :(
@@DarkPlay134 I'd argue that the mentality of "we'll fix it in post" is the problem, not the buyers. Spending money on a product that'll *probably* work right at a later date is irresponsible
There are lots of professional game reviewers out there that are less qualified and do a worse job reviewing strategy games then you ma man. You're doing great.
There might be some appeal to doing reviews of older games then new ones, but im sure you know the algorithm better so thats up to you. Im sure that there are people who would enjoy a retro review if it came to it.
Also some people dont really mind when the game is not micro heavy. Personally, i love starcraft but cant really micro so i just build units that i dont have to micro and rush them in. I enjoy the spectacle of the fight more the active unit response.
Cant wait for nov 6th. ^^
Keep up the great work!
I enjoyed the video! I respect your opinion on RTS and I thought the video did a great job of painting a clear picture of how the game is.
I liked the review a lot. Also you should definitely give the AOE2:DE new DLC campaigns a try, they are spectacular
Just discovered you made reviews as well. Good job, I hope there will be more coming... even older games would be cool since new RTS game releases aren't exactly common nowadays.
5:10 actually that's an age of empires thing, even multiplayer matches focus more on keeping your macro game while big battles unfold, the price of economy in victory value is harder than starcraft.
Yep, totally read them. And I really enjoyed your review. So much so I SUBBED. Well done!
Reviews of games similar to what you normally play on the channel are welcome. I already bought Age 4, but I'm happy to see what others think of it as well. If you keep reviewing new RTS titles, it will help me and others find RTS games we didn't know about, and help us decide whether a game is worth trying if we are on the fence about it.
I always read the description. If you check out some classical YT vids especially of RuneScape gameplay people would fill it with hilarious stuff. Loved this description 👊
Dude I love that intro sentence. RTS IS awesome! XD
And wait what? Am I one of those weird multiplayer only guys?
This was a very thoughtful review. I largely play single player in RTS so it is nice to have a review completely focused on it.
I really enjoyed this review, thanks for making it. I'd love to see more from you
I think the thumbnail size is just right ( I didn't even noticed it without reading description... Maybe it's the color hiding it .)
Also I read the description only because someone say people do read them...ty that person.
I just want to say that you review was interesting, clear, and straight to the point. Thank you.
This review is better than any out there. I so agree with you. Thank you for this, priceless! And yes, sound is indeed the best about this game :(
I personally really enjoyed this review! It really lets your experience with the genre show as well as rely on your voice, which I find to be very nice as a narration voice, to keep the audience soothed while you explain your thoughts on the game! I love RTS games, but I am much more driven by personal narrative stories, so I don't think I'll pick this one up. I hope you'll do a review of the DLC's! Also, yes! We read the descriptions and I think the thumbnail is lovely.
Well, I really enjoyed this review, and I am hoping that in the future we will see more of them, even for indie games.
I wanted a review on this game and you delivered 😅 good stuff 👍🏻
From watching much of your other content, you've always come across as someone who had a firm grasp on what makes up a good game. I have a bias going into this video because I already am familiar with what makes you pleased with a game. That being said, you come across as very objective, while not shying away from highlighting things you like. Your criticism is fair and valuable. I would very much look forward to see more reviews from you!
(It’s because he was a game designer before starting CZcams)
Good work on the review Grand. I feel informed about about the game, it's strong sides and flaws, it's problems and potencial ways, for it, to grow. Plus Your personal input, showing that you really played this game, makes it pleasant to watch.
About the feedback: One, yes, people read the description🙂. Two, logo is fine, but if you make it a bit smaller, it might be even better. Tree, great that you try something new (review), You are a natural in it.
Looking forward to the vid on the 6th. AoE4 has also grabbed my attention for the time being, interesting to see where it ends up in the current landscape
I'm surprised you didn't mention the arrow physics under "annoying things". They made arrows unable to miss and sometimes they look like homing missiles because of it! :D
Huh, there's no shitstorm of comments saying how much better it is to not have micro in the game.
Must have been something good going on at the retirement home and they werent on youtube for a bit.
@@booradley6832 Probably watching Hamsterwheels video about how "incredibly hard" Naxxramas was and actually believing it, lol.
Nobody tell them that it was beaten within hours of release in Classic. The delusions of the elite boomer gamer make Jihadists look moderate.
_"Huh, there's no shitstorm of comments saying how much better it is to not have micro in the game."_
- I imagine that the casual players don't mind not having to micro. Low micro = chill game; high micro = spectacular games but with high skill-ceiling.
RTS as a genre has been in decline for quite a while now, so I imagine that AoE4 coming out with something new, rethreading the waters and not immediately asking players to micro their hearts out like SC2 pro's do might be a good thing for the genre as a whole. Games are primarily supposed to be fun.
The other 3 lines of the 2 replies look like a totally random string of words generated by machine learning bots! :D So I won't be replying to those.
I mean hey, if you think lowering the skill ceiling and replayability of a game and having someone who is very passionate about RTS and wants to see them flourish (Grant) not be able to recommend it to anyone except existing fans is "trying something new" then sure.
There are ways to not micro in other games as well. By playing on easy, by playing against people of your skill level, by playing units that dont require much micro to succeed. But if removing an entire tier of gameplay depth, the literal ability to control your units in a satisfying manner that affects gameplay outcomes, is more engaging, then something is seriously wrong here.
Most of us have pretty well mastered the concepts of rock paper scissors by now. But for those that havent I'm sure this game will be very enthralling.
@@booradley6832
The problem is you and I buy video games with the intent of a skill curve. That's too much for some people. You're supposed to be able to sit there and have the game reassure you that you're great, not to have to do shit like learning or improving. Besides if everyone buys your game on title recognition, it totally blows and they abandon it that's a win win. You get the box price and then don't have to support it after a year because everyone has stopped playing. And then everyone goes back to the game you made 20 years ago and buys it for a second or more times.
This game legit looks and plays like a f2p cellphone game concept ported over to PC, and then the documentary parts added.
I think this was a really fair and well thought out review, well done with it.
You did really well man. You talked about the parts of the game that matters, told both positive and negative. Short-ish, informative, on point.
Much much better than half hour long reviews where they talk, but say nothing of value.
Have you thought about trying the Total War series? I think it could be a breath of fresh air compared to other RTS gmaes you are used to playing.
That'd probably be a pretty good suggestion, considering Total War is really just one big sandbox campaign.
It wouldn't fit his challenge run ideas so well though.
the description is very entertaining and as to the question why i'm watching a review of Age of Empires 4 and reading the description of it? Mainly because the video was made by you.
Cool new concept for a video. I hope it does as well as I know it can.
i loved the videos after you beat a mission where you get to learn new things about the times
I would say 99% of players play skirmish mode, either alone or coop with friends in Age games. Campaign is nice, and probably multiplayer, but not as much as skirmish with friends for 7 hours.
I will watch any of your content Grant. You do a fantastic job. This was no exception.
Your criticism on the battle feel, unit look and clunky AI are spot on. I really wanted to love this, but can't be bothered to even start it up after 4-5 hours of game time.
The Giant Grant Games logo was fine. I didn't even notice it was any bigger until looking again after reading the description.
many thanks for this. it feels like the first "real" review iv seen of this game.
Good Review! Would love to see more like this.
It's also worth noting that aoe2 DE and other re releases have received tons of post launch support, even changing campaigns slightly besides just balance. They have shown that the game is always likely going to be improved. Which is nice to know that it will likely be better as the game ages.
I think the most interesting thing is that if a civ in aoe2 DE was represented as best as it could and the new civ was added that fits better, they typically update it. For example sometimes the Burgundians were represented by the Franks, until the Burgundians were released in a new dlc.
Hey man, I follow your VOD channel so I'm pretty biased. But I really enjoyed your video and appreciated your insight on this since I'm wanting to dive into RTS games again. I adored the old AoM series and wish this would have been similar.
10:10 That's the sound of a 90kg stone being launched over 300 meters.
+1 algorithm comment, I engaged with and enjoyed the content displayed on my screen.
Joky banter aside, I can't think of any real complaints about the review, GGG. Maybe make the game's BGM during your talking points a bit louder? Was a bit difficult to hear it.
You can hear the creaking metal of the mechanism as it fires... judging from the sound, it fires inside a small room :D
You did what appears to be a level-headed and even-handed review of the game. The lack of fake hype really made it sing. Your analysis was succinctly delivered, covered many of the important bases of an RTS game and had little in the way of fluff. Well done.
Honestly I've been wanting to find a replacement for Totalbiscuit's WTF series, and this is the closest I've gotten and I love it.
I'd love to see one of these on Age of Mythology!
That's a great point, Grant will be a great guy to do a series like WTF for single player RTS.
Man, I really missed Totalbiscuit, the WTF series is so good.
Very well done review, and I'd encourage that you do more. Maybe a retrospective on the starcraft games someday?
I usually read the description while the ad is playing, yep!
Would like to see how the AI works in skirmish. I welcome the Campign at moment cause I feel it actually be encourage a new generation with 0 rts experience to be walked into the game the Norman t reminded me of the Scottish tutorial Campaign it’s something I remember as a kid brought me into RTs world cause I wasn’t swarmed by all the tactics etc. This was needed to revive the Rts community.
I remember in the old days playing Red Alert.. the AI would go absolutely insane if you took a potshot at their Ore Truck.