Age of Empires Mobile Preview – “RTS From Past to Future”

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  • A great and complete mobile chapter in the Age of Empires series
  • It combines its classic RTS style with modern casual handling
  • There is a lot to learn and a lot of attention online

Whether you're interested in the story or the games or could care less about both, you've probably come across Age of Empires at some point in your life. This is no surprise as it is one of the longest running real-time strategy series still in operation. It combines two of the best things: quick strategic thinking and historical fiction.

With Age of Empires Mobile, Ensemble Studios has turned more towards the narrative side of things, which is a good choice for a video game. It is a 3D real-time strategy game combined with management, city building and even some gacha elements. Let's see how Age of Empires plans fit into the modern era of mobile and tablet gaming.

What is Age of Empires Mobile?

The battle begins!

Age of Empires has always mixed and matched lore whenever it wanted to tell a new story or recreate historical events. With Age of Empires Mobile, it seems like the plot is going in a different direction. It follows the journey of Josephine, the Steel Rose, who is fighting to reclaim her throne after her people are driven from her kingdom.

It all begins with Josephine recruiting, leading, and fighting alongside the country's people against the Ottoman Empire as it continues to spread across the country. He gains a strong symbol of hope after retrieving the Holy Sword and using it to unite people. From that moment on, he will have to build his fortress and his camp to gain enough strength to take back what he had lost.

The state of the age of Empires Mobile

Meeting in the historic center.

When a series decides to create a mobile entry, there are many things to consider, and the most important decision is what stays and what gets removed. With Age of Empires Mobile, it seems like the developers have done their best to keep all the things that make the series great.

There's still that huge sense of grandeur that no matter who your heroes are, you're always building towards something. Whether it's regaining your old kingdom, expanding into new territory, or simply trying to ensure your company has the best, you always have the next big thing to work towards. All the elements blur into each other, but you can decide where to focus.

And your attention can go many places. You will start in the Dark Ages and want to progress through the story. You don't want to look at flimsy wooden boxes all over your kingdom, you want a castle on top of a mountain if you like the isolated villain style.

This means you'll be working hard on gathering resources, building new structures, and training villagers to keep the wheels of your society turning. From there, you can spend what you collect on expansions, exploring the surrounding lands, upgrades, or expanding your army. There are many opportunities to fight, but a successful campaign relies on a strong base that will need your strategic attention.

Are the battles as juicy as they should be?

When it comes to battle, the tap and drag controls work perfectly. Each hero has space for a certain number of soldiers and is treated as a unit for convenience. This simplifies combat by making it easier to choose which weapons are most effective against others. Island battles are even more streamlined since it uses a contained grid battle system and you only have to worry about the placement of your units at the start. There's still strategy involved, but you don't have to constantly worry about moving entire armies every time someone gets out of line.

Then there are the images and the presentation. The game combines the flashy new 3D graphics that many hero-based games use to showcase their complex characters while maintaining that retro Age of Empires charm. You can see it for yourself during some cutscenes with characters that look like low-poly paper dolls as they narrate the medieval drama, but it works. Since most fights take place at a distance, you won't notice most of the time and can still clearly understand what's going on.

A strong rise for Age of Empires Mobile

Getting hit by a flame attack in AoE Mobile

Age of Empires mobile has a lot to live up to and it's obvious that a lot of work has gone into creating a mobile game that still fits the series. However, as development continues, it runs the risk of falling into an obvious trap: doing too much.

So many elements, mechanics and rules are thrown at you in the first 20 minutes that it's hard to keep track of them all. There are still some questions about basic things like how to raise armies or add more heroes to your lineup, but the game already encourages you to join an alliance, ask for help, and then give help in return.

It's true that Age of Empires has always had an online element, but this may prove to be the most online installment in the series yet. This isn't a bad thing, but when most of the features are online, you're left with fewer when you just want to jump in and play.

There are missions and tasks to complete, but if you encounter an obstacle that requires a bit of grinding or passive resource gathering, then you need to turn to online for bigger rewards. Depending on how functional it ends up being, it could be a huge boon to the experience. Otherwise, you're left with an empire of features that run the risk of freezing and crashing your game.

The new era of mobile empires

Figurines of historical figures

Age of Empires Mobile is a developing entry in the Age of Empires series made explicitly for mobile platforms. It has all the look and feel of the other entries, while still adding enough to make it modern and more accessible to the casual player.

It may be putting too much on your plate early on with what looks like there will be a heavy reliance on online access, but it's still early days. All empires rise and fall, but in this age, being able to build them in our pockets will help them rise faster and fall slower, hopefully.

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