I mean, they each do play a bit differently unique techs, units, and landmarks are great at establishing an identity evoking their historical inspiration and varying up how you maximize your economy. Naval combat is fairly well fleshed-out, making island maps a thrilling proposition.īut for six out of the eight playable factions, I just didn't feel like there was enough new going on here. And while I was worried naval combat would feel like an afterthought with how little Relic talked about it leading up to launch, it's fairly well fleshed-out, making island maps a thrilling proposition of their own. But overall, it's a great variety of well-designed battlefields. Some of them can feel a bit unbalanced, though mountain passes will always favor castle-building civs over nomads like the Mongols, for instance.
They each present different tactical challenges, from two opposing ridges overlooking a valley that feels very much like a StarCraft 2 tournament map, to very open layouts with lots of unit-concealing forest in the middle that encourages a cheeky guerilla war and lots of misdirection.
AGE OF EMPIRES IV PS4 PROFESSIONAL
Massive numbers of hotkeys and shortcuts are used, especially in professional play, and a console’s controller typically just can’t do that nearly as well as a mouse and keyboard.I was also impressed with the semi-randomized skirmish maps, which let you choose a biome – defining the colors, tree types, and overall vibes, from European Temperate to Asian Steppe to Taiga – in addition to a layout.
These games are all about your actions-per-minute and staying on your toes, running as many tasks as possible to keep your base/empire going as strong as possible. While not impossible, the slower nature of console by demand of a controller makes the game quite different.
Real-Time Strategy games are also somewhat difficult to translate to console. Steam is about as eternal as a Lovecraftian Old One, so it’s a given that it’ll probably be released there, but will the PlayStation 4 still be relevant by release? Will it come to the Xbox One, or to the Scarlett? The Switch? That means that we don’t even know if we’ll still be in the current console generation by the time the game releases. There’s been no mention of a release date, and only one incredibly short gameplay trailer has been released. What remains to be seen is if it will come to other platforms, and if so, when? Still, with Microsoft so involved, it makes sense that the game would see release on their consoles. Famous for destroying most of the things they touch, this was a bit alarming to fans of the franchise, but it seems to have been left mostly to Relic thus far. "Age of Empires 4 has a “wide spectrum” of civs, from familiar to very different" – Īlong with the switch of hands, Microsoft Studios became the publisher. Though it’s switched hands from Ensemble Studios to Relic Entertainment, the bits that have been seen thus far have been tantalizingly beautiful. The first since Age of Empires III in 2005, this fourth installment in the famous historical RTS franchise has developed a massive amount of hype around it in a relatively short period of time. Maybe “rumors” isn’t the proper term, so let’s clear that up a bit Relic Entertainment, the developers of Age of Empires IV, has all but confirmed that the game will be coming to Xbox consoles, and have hinted that it might be ported to other consoles as well.įor those who may be unaware, Relic Entertainment has recently announced the fourth game in the Age of Empires series.