Recent reviews by Sheyq-

*Edit: 05.06.2021 - forgot to mention AI*

I really wanted to enjoy this game, and write a positive review but it would be just like smiling through your teeth. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

First let me point out what the remaster did right. The graphics, the music, and little QoL changes (such as farm reseed button, farms having no collision option, UI changes and so on) are spot on. These alone make the Definitive Edition look like a true remake. But frankly, that's about it.

The reason why I decided to make it a negative review is because it doesn't "play" like a remake or even just a remaster. The units still have issues with colliding with each other and the pathfinding is still nearly linear (as in - a unit will try to go to their destination in a straight line, which was painfully apparent in the Hannibal scenario). Too many times I've had a situation where I had two Legion units stuck in themselves, unable to move. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The attack-move command does nearly nothing - the units will bump into each other politely moving out of the way because they targeted some other unit at the back while attack-moving. Unless we're supposed to micro manage the whole fight unit-by-unit, I wouldn't say it's a well done feature. More than that I had many situations where I ordered a melee unit to attack another unit that was moving. My unit then just moved to the location the enemy unit was in, while the order is given and just THEN started chasing said unit. Things like these made me so incredibly sad about the state of this game.

The AI is also another issue. Throughout the campaings it put up a reasonably good fight but only untill like 40 mins of the game. After that it just stopped attacking entirerly. When it came to me attacking however, I saw tons of units just stationed around their respective barracks not moving at all. I wonder if it's because of the difficulty setting (I was playing at "Standard" difficulty). Another fun little glitch I found is that you can bait the AI priests into converting a unit that has "No attack" stance - the unit will also not move and will not fight back when you attack it, allowing you to deal with the priests and then safely recapture the unit. I found out that it's most easily done with War elephants. Finally I'd like to mention the AI behaviour in random maps. I've played 4 player FFA where after scouting the map I had 3 other AIs at my base, even though I wasn't even first on the scoreboard (I'd assumed that they may join forces only if another player was a threat, but they consistently attacked only me for like 3 games).

Unless the whole "clunkiness" of the game was an intention of the devs - to trurly port a game from 1997 with all of it's flaws, then I would say that they made a job well done. But if not, then I'd just reccomend you getting a dosbox or some other way to just play the original 1997 release - you will get the same experience, with worse graphics but at least it may save you the price of the remaster.