I find myself missing a lot from Age of Empires II. Fact is, Age of Empires II HD does exist, and I’ve been playing it for almost five years now-and it’s a better game. That said, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is more interesting to me as an archival document than a game proper. Basic real-time strategy ideas, and the tutorial seems incredibly long and drawn out by today’s standards. It’s basically the Age of Empires tutorial campaign, teaching prospective players how to use their villagers to build structures, chop wood, farm crops, construct military camps, use those camps to train troops, attack neighboring factions, and so on. Take the “Ascent of Egypt” campaign, for instance.

Every faction, every campaign, is informed by historical context. That’s part of what I loved about the series.

History has always been so intrinsic to Age of Empires though. You could certainly argue names like “Phalanx” and “Legion” are just fancy set-dressing, the units indistinguishable from their Age of Empires II counterparts. That separation might not matter if you’re concerned only with mechanics. By contrast, Age of Empires II focused on the Medieval Era and early Renaissance, while Age of Empires III focused on the Colonial Era. Thus the original Age of Empires focused on ancient history-the Hellenic Greeks, Egyptian Old and New Kingdom, the Phoenicians, Persians, and as of the Rise of Rome expansion, the Roman Empire.

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