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Age of Empires IV - Reviews Are Out

Tschumi

Member
From what I gather it's a more faithful AoE experience than AoE3, so I'm on it. I'm sure I'll love it a lot more than 8/10.

I love relic, and the inclusion of historical cutscenes solidifes this love even more. I've pre-ordered.

Why couldn't Larian have treated BG with the same respect that Relic have treated AoE?

In my mind it's not an xbox game lol, PC through and through

ps. could not give less of a shit about visuals, i prefer age of mythology OG to aoe 3 re-release

General challenge: Anyone able to say stuff about this game that isn't about visuals?
 
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TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
he isn't wrong, though. It's really quite surprising, I was expecting a lot more for a flagship franchise like this.
Reminds me of the discussions about SC2, Diablo 3 and WoW when those came out.

"It doesn't look like it will make my PC sweat!"

Yes.
It's not meant to. It's meant to run well on YEARS old hardware because only a few top % can afford the latest.
The target audience isn't the same as e.g. with the Anno games.
Nothing is surprising about that in the least.

You can criticize the stylized art direction, if you want, but I think it is good because it makes it MUCH easier to tell units apart in the heat of battle.
Something that I for example always struggle with in many RTS.
 
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What. This game is coming out?

Did I miss the marketing hype or something?

Feels like it's releasing with very little marketing behind it.

That, or i'm just not paying attention to vidya game news recently.
 

Allandor

Member
Why do some reviewers (e.g. IGN) criticize that the game play almost like Age 2? The fans of the series loved Age 1 & 2 for what they were. Age 3 was ... well something else that was almost no longer recognizable.

Yes the gameplay is similar (hey it is Age and an RTS) but that is what a game series is good for. You (more or less) know what you get if you buy it.

From my perspektive (I already played the beta) it is good like it is. It doesn't need big innovations from other franchises or games.
 

Inviusx

Member
So hyped for PC gaming and RTS fans, it really looks great. As an old school PC gamer who grew up on AoE I'm happy to cheer from the sidelines.
 

sainraja

Member
After playing Warcraft 3 to the fullest, my friends and I switched to Age of Empires 3 to try something different. It was fun! So glad that we're getting AOE4 and it looks pretty good to me.
 
Almost all the relevant influencers and top players from all the other Age games got early media access to talk about the game, so they are targeting the core audience.
Huh. Well, I guess I really haven't been catching up on any gaming related news/videos.

I don't think a game like this need a marketing hype. It's literally the top selling game on Steam right now.

That's true, it's rare that an RTS gets any huge marketing push. But, I guess, being a huge IP, backed by MS, i thought I'd see a ad trailer or something.

No worries, not a bad thing. Just surprised that it's literally coming out sooner than I remembered.
 

RespawnX

Member
CnhSMYl.jpeg



VS

36c80ed023d44d6f0688bf03b380a8d9.jpg


Tell me its taa, or its just the visuals that look like washed out blurry as hell? i can't believe people can't seem to see it. And every video showcases it big time that people make. I got 4 screens with 3 from different brands all IPS and calibrated so no its not my screens that make it look bad.
I assume you took this screenshots from a video. As the game hasn't the best graphics they look notabliy worse due the lack of details/resolution. And there is another thing happening on this screenshot. You may notice they washed out grey on the upper border. It's like a "fog of war" post processing effect triggering at some zoom distance. But on this screenshot you are also look down a hill, so the buldings are physically further away from camera and the filter is stronger.

Here some screenshots at 90 jpge quality. You may notice the effect between screenshot 1 and 2, I choose a high position to demonstrate this "fog" effect (btw I don't like it either). Screenshot 3 and 4 are excact the same position zoomed in and zoomed out at max.

Edit: GAF compresses screenshots, have to figure out how to share better quality content. But I think you can still see the difference between your screenshot and the screens below.

E8xxcl2.jpg
mTpEm5w.jpg
woRxajX.jpg

B6pBc2c.jpg
6qlPHLh.jpg
 
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Vagswarm

Member
I wonder why they stuck with playing it safe if the genre has been on a steady downfall. It'd be nice to try but damn, I have no time for anything more than Diablo 2.
 
Has there been any sign of this getting a current gen console release yet?
They have a back catalogue of some really good games of this kind and with current gen consoles natively supporting mouse and keyboard it almost seems daft not.
I suppose it could happen later on as they'd have to implement an option to play with controllers which will take time to get right but over the past few years there has been far more of the traditional PC type games, for lack of a better description, that have been converted to console that play really well with control pads.
 

Kenpachii

Member


Great video

This probably explains why the game is so simplistic because it simple isn't coded to use CPU's much. It was noticable in the beta also. Sad but its what it is at this point.

I assume you took this screenshots from a video. As the game hasn't the best graphics they look notabliy worse due the lack of details/resolution. And there is another thing happening on this screenshot. You may notice they washed out grey on the upper border. It's like a "fog of war" post processing effect triggering at some zoom distance. But on this screenshot you are also look down a hill, so the buldings are physically further away from camera and the filter is stronger.

Here some screenshots at 90 jpge quality. You may notice the effect between screenshot 1 and 2, I choose a high position to demonstrate this "fog" effect (btw I don't like it either). Screenshot 3 and 4 are excact the same position zoomed in and zoomed out at max.

Edit: GAF compresses screenshots, have to figure out how to share better quality content. But I think you can still see the difference between your screenshot and the screens below.

E8xxcl2.jpg
mTpEm5w.jpg
woRxajX.jpg

B6pBc2c.jpg
6qlPHLh.jpg

I know what fog is mate, if you can't see the difference however between the two and no compression isn't much relevant here because it's not going to make that blurry ground non blurry even remotely then i dunno what to say mate.

I played beta and the visuals are dog shit and that comes from somebody that thinks they are billions and ragnarok online has good visuals which means i don't really care much for visuals in rts games other then that it needs to look clean. And this game is probably the furthest point of looking clean.
 
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AJUMP23

Member
Just amazing how that never happened. Warcraft 3 was such a juggernaut game.
They made a bigger game in World of Warcraft, then sold the company, sexually abused a bunch of people, and ruined what used to be one of the greatest development houses ever.
 

JCK75

Member
I completely forgot this was coming, I've used my gamepass ultimate a lot of xbox but haven't used it for PC in some time aside from flight sim.. looking forward to this.
 

Varteras

Gold Member
I agree the Blizzard dream is DEAD!
Yep. A ton of people who made Blizzard what it was aren't there anymore. Dreamhaven and the studios they partnered with as well as Notorious Studios, Uncapped Games, and Second Dinner are you best bets for that old Blizzard magic. That's where most of the talent went.
 
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