Recent reviews by Monz

AOE3 DE is a good game. A little bit disappointed from so little improvement between the vanilla and DE compared to AOE2 DE. Anyway, this one is still good.

I recommend this game for people who only played the vanilla version of AOE3 (no DLC). That's my case. For 20€, I can play the game with all the DLC and some added contents two new civs, art of wars)
I already finished the first campaign and the art of wars. I play some skirmish in local and with a friend ajainst AI.SO here is my impressions on some points. Carrefull, it's quite long ^^'

-+ More graphicssss
The backbone of this definitive edition is the improved graphics. I found it clean and good but it's not breathtaking. I remember some strange light glitch on texture from the Vanilla version. I don't find any of these in this one and its a good point to me.maybe because my actual PC is far better than my previous one... Anyway, I didn't have any problem with my computer in high.

- The Artificial Intelligence is too easy ?
The AI need to be refined. For exemple, I play on difficulty "hard" or "very hard"/"expert" (same level of difficulty but for skirmish and multiplayer ?). The AI just change his "fight intensity" but dosen't make profit of their attack by destroying your economy or overboost their economy. It's seems that theyare capped to a certain level and they can succed a transition on infinite ressources. When natural gold and wood run out, they become less frightening meaning that surviving until late age IV and you can overcome the AI. In AOE2DE, it's not that possible because the AI expandand a lot. Maybe it's because I'm better on the 3 than on the 2.

+ User interface and interaction (You mean HMI right ?)
A really god job on this one. Different layout available, I use DE layout and I like it. A lot of option for shortcut. And a VERY GOOD endscore stats and the graph with various option. I found it very interesting to debrief a game.

* Too politicaly correct ?
At the first start of the game we are aware of some changes for historical correctness of the game and more respect of the civilisations. Alright, seems good to me because it's an "historical" gameso let's see what I found. I have the game in french so some change are language dependants. "Iroquois" civs and indigenous are renamed as "Haudenosaunee" and some pictures changed. The voiceline in the campaign remain unchanged and they say "Iroquois" instead of the new name. "Plantation" building is now named as "Domaine", because a reference to slavery ? I didn't find anyother change and they stricly don't impact the gameplay. I see some complaints about this point but I think it's the aversion agains't overuse of PC these days.

- HO MY GOD THE EPICNESS OF THE INtro... Wait what ?
Yhea that was my feeling ^^ The enhanced graphics give me a chill until the first drop of the music. The light is too clear and it highlight the default like inexpressive faces. Moreover, the original intro was speedier and softer in the movement, more shaddy as the smoke obscure the battlefield, more expressive in the faces, less buggy to sheat this sword, more brutal in that pirate shoulder hit... I'm disapointed

- And here is the bugs
Don't panic, nothing excessive for the first week.
First their is bug on multiplayer games. I didn't experience it but a lot of people complain about this. I let some times to the devs to corrects this because it was the case on the AOE2 DE (and my first review was very slaty about this). For now, I play in MP with a friend agains't 2 to 3 bots and we have no problems.
8 player skirmish freeze every 5 seconds but 6 is fine. I expect this to be fixed soon.
Some traduction bugs like a victory message for a mission of Art of War is a number, "55454" If I remember correctly.
Playing revolutionnary sweds (USA) with improved minuteman give me a really strange unit name...Maybe it's an easter eggs, idk.

To conclude, yes this game is great but a little bit dissapointing compared to the quality of AOE2 DE. If you only played the vanilla AOE3 and you would like to play the DLC and more, I to me it's a big yes.
I'm looking forward some addition and improvement like the AOE2 DE was able to benefit in one year.

Edit june 2020 : The recent patches fixed a lot the multiplayer issues. Some problems could occur sometimes but it's pretty good now and ping is less than 100ms the majority of the time. I let my first impression on multiplayer for comparaison.

Back to nostalgia, but just for the solo.

Campaign, historic battle, challenges to learn advance tips, skirmish and editor will bring you a lot of fun in solo.
You have replay from your last game. Pretty good if you want to learn from your mistake.

But we are in 2020 and we want to play online. So, what we got ?
A ranked queue to get your behind destroyed because you're a noob. You can tag with three friends in two gamemode wich is nice.
Then the custom server where you can create a private or public room and choose all the settings you want. Great

But the multiplayer experience is wasted by a lot of technical problem :
- Game are often laggy
- The framerate drop even if you have a very good score at the benchmark.
- Multiplayer game start with an unstopable freeze/lag (seems to be partialy fix recently)
- Crash during a game is very common
- You CAN'T go back in a game where you crashed. The game continue and your allied can't get helped.
-> If you play with your friend, you can restore the game with an automatic save.

I can't rate the game great if this problem are not fixed. I was in a good multiplayer game and it crash... again. And you want me to rate the game ? Here it is.

My first VN experience and a very good one.
No choice but a good story, good soundtrack and drawing. I like the original voices.
If you like anime with drama and you are not afraid to read, it should be good for you.