If you’re into real-time strategy at ALL, you’ve played- or at least heard of – the Age of Empires series. It’s been a staple of that particular genre for a very long time. I was hesitant to back a new iteration of the game at first, but after watching some gameplay, and then trying it out myself on Gamepass, I went in with both feet. This is a GREAT version of the game, that not only improves gameplay, but adds some REAL history into it – making it an educational game. Which is something I really enjoy, and the videos and articles in game about the real history are well-filmed, and well-researched. It’s like watching a documentary that you can actually play along with. (Which, for me.. is a super good thing!) If you’re not into the history, I suppose you could skip those – but why would you play this sort of game if you don’t like the history???

Game Info:

As I mentioned, Age of Empires has been a “thing” for a very long time. The first game was released in 1997. Beyond that, they’ve published NINE separate games in the series as of October 2021, along with a multitude of expansions for the core games. I’ve been enough of a fan that I own most of the games involved, sometimes even more than one version of the game (there have been “definitive” editions of at least the main games 1-3, as well as owning the digital as well as physical copies.) I will say, however, some of the games didn’t do as well as some others… Their attempt at making Age into an Online game was a flop, and the definitive editions had bug issues at launch for each edition (although I think that’s mostly been fixed now). Barring those issues, though, most of the games have gotten above an 80 of 100 on the review scores, and rightly so.

My Editorial:

I am very sure I will be playing this on both Monday and Tuesday next week, and I’m very much looking forward to it. It may be pricier than most the games on these lists, but in my opinion, the game is worth it, especially for the real history included. It’s nice that a big game company actually took into consideration the real history stuff, and not added it to the game, but did a good job of adding it. I hope you all will enjoy the game as much as I do!!

(Oh, and expect this to be a thing from now on – I will be announcing the next week’s game on Wednesday mornings, instead of the Sunday before. I hope this will give me more free time on Sundays, as well as allow you all to know what’s coming a bit sooner.)

Stay Tuned for afterthoughts!*

*(coming next week when I publish the VODs from this week’s playthroughs on Youtube)