Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - The Mountain Royals Review (Claudius Aquila)
Been playing AoE since it was released back in 1998 or 1999, can't really remember the date.
As someone that took a degree asa historian and a Jurist then proceed to take a master in Legal History i was always fond of AoE games, well apart from the AoE3 campaign that was more make believe than an actual historical campaign. Nonetheless the game mechanics were quite and the dlc nice.
With this out of my chest it does pain me that the last dlc's are lacking in quality. Return of Rome delivered a much wanted faction, the roman, but no roman campaign in the AoE2, it was ported to aoe1 and it was good awful one of the worst things i've ever played.
These new campaigns, the ones in mountain kings, were quite frankly average. I enjoied the new civs, but that was it, not good or great, just ok and, on top of that, a bit overpriced since they added only 2 new civs. Remaking the persian civ was a nice touch for those who play it, but for me it was just another generic civ, since elephants are not exclusive to them anymore.
I think AoE teams should try to make a new game, and not ask relic to make a game for them, since aoe4, even with the byzantines, is not what i had expected. Played a good time on aoe4, but the game looks pretty, but is souless. It appears that in these games, aoe 2, 3 and 4 the only viable factions are English and Franks, for some reason. Overall i count them as really good and conforting civs, although they are not my favourite ones.
This dlc is overpriced, delivered not enough content and i miss the old days when campaigns where 6 mission long, or even more like aoe 1 (albeit these missions were quite simple). Now we have 5 mission casmpaigns for overpriced stuff. Some of the previous dlc introduced unique mechanics, like the romans attack boost, same going for the bungurdians (although that campaign was miserable), cover behind the wagon gunpowder units. But this new dlc is just a bit souless. The game is good, but it is time to innovate a bit more instead of adding factions that are copy paste with unique units. Changing the aesthetic of units would be nice, since it is so off putting using knights that are all the same and whatnot. at least on this regard aoe 3 was so unique. I ve the premium edition with the box which i played for hundred and hundreds of hours back when it was released and when i was a teen.