I’m an enormous fan of Age Of Empires. Age Of Empires 2 was one of many first video games I ever performed. The sound of the buzzing villagers as they choose berries is firmly cemented as a core reminiscence, the kind of factor that I’d consider, for no matter motive, on a random Tuesday—having not performed AoE for years at this level. Consequently, it’s a recreation that can also be tied to a really particular time and place: sat at my desk, on an older pc, most likely on a wet day. The concept of enjoying it on my cell phone has by no means actually appealed.
So after I sat down with the crew from TiMi Studios at Gamescom 2024, I used to be skeptical of its Age Of Empires Cellular. What adopted was 40 minutes of an entire bombardment of issues to do. The sport has a degree of element method past what I used to be anticipating, with a number of empires fleshed out with distinctive heroes, unit designs, metropolis designs, and siege weapons. There are a number of recreation modes, together with a Vampire Survivors-style mode, multiplayer sieges, and metropolis constructing. And sure, your villagers nonetheless choose berries.
What most stood out was the large array of heroes you could possibly unlock. Every hero has a prolonged part on their historic significance and their very own detailed intro cutscene. Harald III bursts onto the display screen swinging his axe in a snowy forest. It’s a gacha mechanic for positive – it is a cell recreation in any case – however the quantity of effort put into the context of every hero is a pleasant contact. There’s an array of recognisable historic characters, like Solar Tzu, Hannibal, and King Arthur, however some others you won’t have heard of, like Yi Shun-Sin and Queen Seondeok. A historical past lesson on my cell recreation? Yeah, go on then. These heroes are necessary for fight as you assemble a crew of three to help your armies.
These armies are used to battle different gamers, achieve expertise by killing NPC armies, and help your empire on a bigger, macro scale as you attempt to conquer territory. That is the important thing tug-of-war within the recreation as empires with dozens of gamers battle for management of necessary sources on a world map. On the core of that is the siege gameplay and having seen among the gameplay of those battles, these are nearly extra spectacular than Age Of Empires on PC. There are a whole lot of items, all managed by totally different gamers. It’s whole chaos. In a great way. Will my cellphone soften in my fingers? In all probability.
I requested the event crew what kind of measures can be put in place to forestall an enormous pay-to-win empire from simply dominating the map, they usually mentioned they have been nonetheless engaged on balancing this facet of the sport. They prompt to me that empires can be part of alliances with one another and work collectively to carry down the dominant factions, which all sounds excellent—however I’ll must see it in motion earlier than I can correctly choose simply how pay-to-win this cell recreation is.
Past all this large-scale conquering and fight, the sport has quite a lot of different duties to occupy your time. You possibly can go fishing, for instance, or play the Vampire Survivors-style mode I discussed earlier. So far as I’m conscious, this mode is repeatable, which solves one of many basic issues I’ve all the time had with these kinds of cell video games: every little thing is time-gated and also you spend most of your time simply ready round for some arbitrary timers to complete. If I get pleasure from your recreation, simply let me play it.
Age Of Empires Cellular took me fully without warning. I’m not one to get excited for cell video games however I’ll positively be at the least attempting this one out when it absolutely releases. TiMi has completed the Age Of Empires model justice thus far, and I’m to see how really replayable the sport’s content material is and simply how a lot cash it expects me to spend.
