I wonder if someone has early builds of RON. I was a temp tester on the Microsoft Games side back then and my first glimpse would've been like 1 or 2 one-hour playtests of an early build where (A) most buildings lacked art, (B) there were quite a few building differences (prototype buildings that never made the final cut; some final buildings weren't even in yet), (C) a lot of buildings that were implemented were obviously very incomplete, and (D) I think it also didn't have the Resource Rate Limit early on? I wish I could remember better, but it's been a while and I barely played those builds like I said. I suspect probably there are some Microsoft servers that still have those builds, and maybe Coleman or Reynolds or someone at BHG saved some too. Eventually when Mechwarrior 4 Black Knight wrapped up I moved to RIse of Nations as my main focus, where I'd do standard software testing and also balance team work. We had a team of 4 (including me) who were all high-end RTS players (a couple of the other guys had won AOE1/2 tournaments if I remember right). My own tastes at the time were rooted in Starcraft Brood War, so I too was disappointed by the lack of asymmetry in the factions. That said, it's strange Nation Powers aren't mentioned here as they're fairly extreme: you're definitely going to notice playing as Maya (25% building HP, -20% construction time, -25% building timber costs) vs. China ( _instant_ Citizen training!) for example. The least popular feature from the balance team's point of view was *Focus Fire Diminishing returns.* Casual players might not notice, but the more troops who shot the same target, the less damage that target would take from every additional attacker. This meant combat micro had a dramatically reduced importance relative to other RTS games, and you essentially just attack-moved onto the enemy army for best results. There were a few things like flanking, river penalties, and supply that at least added _limited_ value to microing, but for the most part it was a micro-lite, macro-heavy style of RTS. I did like the game overall, so criticisms like that didn't ruin it for me. I particularly liked the flow of the resource techs on Lumber/Granary/Smelter buildings, where when you're low on Metal, you need a Smelter upgrade, and that costs "the other two" resources (ie food and timber). While your economy was still liable to be lopsided if you hadn't planned it well, these costs helped offset most of the basic small-scale resource imbalances you wanted to solve. Territory was another popular feature, and I liked the various ways you were able to play with it (temple upgrades, careful city placement, forts, etc); it felt very impactful without being too dominant. Strangely there are fewer specific "working at MS games" tales I can remember from this time period, compared with other games I worked on early in my career. I think the only distinct thing I remember was the little 4-person office we worked in and how Warcraft 3 (or maybe TFT?) came out around that time and a couple of the balance team were pretty hyped to play it. Towards the end, my temp contract expired, and I was hired directly by BHG for ~3 months to work over in Baltimore. I did some strategy guide writing and helped Pancake (nickname of the AI programmer) finish off the game's skirmish AI, including being able to field strategies like rushing, teching, or defense. (Honestly the rushes were pretty brutal sometimes; I think they still are?)
Focus Fire Diminishing returns is my favourite feature of RON! I talk about it a lot whenever it comes up on reddit :) It suited the scale of the game and meant you could simply attack-move an army and leave it to it, and only focus on the macro-scale movements of flanking, which seems like the more 4x thing to do. It was never fully documented, and even the RON wiki doesn't talk about it now, instead you have to dig through old interviews to find out that I wasn't hallucinating this feature.
@@Axehilt have you ever seen units garissoned inside another unit? Checking the unit data gives impression that initially, APC and helicopters may carry troops. Maybe the transport was a separate unit before the release.
@@habibainunsyifaf6463 For APCs I don't think we ever got a build where they could transport. For Helicopters, I seem to faintly remember being able to transport Commandos (only?), but it's been so long I'm not confident in that. For Naval Transports, I do remember a fair amount of balance see-saw between (A) land armies being impossible to stop as they cruised across the sea to your continent vs. (B) land armies disappearing super fast if the enemy had sea out there. It was in fairly early (maybe from the start of the balance team's inception), and things like embark-time, speed, and durability all changed a fair amount. (I don't think naval transports were ever manually loaded when I played the game. Maybe they were for those really early 1-2 games, but they were land games so I wouldn't haven't known.)
The nuclear annihilation clock is such a good addition because not only does it disincentivize using nukes all the time, it also gives losing players the ability to get back in the game through nuclear threats. “Yes I’ll lose. But I can make sure you don’t win either.” When all is lost, flip the table.
In theory it sounds good, but when you are 30 minutes into the game against harder AIs and they just start using nukes left and right ending the game in a stalemate, that's not satisfactory. That's why I play with nukes off.
Recently I started playing RoN again and had a blast. Economic Boom and focus on research works really well against the AI. This stragegy mixes well with the consensus governments. One is rather weak at first, but once one outscales the AI economically and has more advanced units one can force the AI into a war of attrition it has no hope of winning. Getting there is a little bit of a challenge but the payoff is satisfying. Glad to see there are others enjoying this classic.
I tend to get excited by a bit of both. Sometimes it's nice to have comfortable things you understand, especially if they are well executed - but other times you need something that breaks the mould or introduces new elements you weren't expecting.
The "slightly longer video" probably is a welcome gift to all of us. Thank you and you brought up very interesting points. I for one only ever played the "sequel" rise of legends ... and felt kind of meh... and them stumbled across this obscure game "supreme commander" in case some of you ever heard of it ;) But this seems like a really solid game i will give it a go
Oh i remember this one. Sadly i never played too much of it because "Act of war: direct action" came out shortly after and that stole the show for me as a sort of last hurrah of the RTS golden age and in many ways like the original C&C but tom clancied up and complete with hammy acted FMV cutscenes. It was another very innovative RTS with many highly unique and rough/niche features that set it apart from anything out there(for example helicopters could be landed on buildings or ground to make them harder to target,foot soldiers could be put on roof or in buildings and some needed a roof or balcony to use their specific weapon) for quite a while but also sadly forgotten outside a very bad spiritual reboot attempt a while back.
Another forgotten RTS gem there! Eugen are constantly on the periphery of mainstream success, but they seem to just court the same few thousands players with their MP-focused iterations of the Wargame franchise.
@@iwantagoodnameplease yeah the constant copypasta of those games is quite sad. They used to push the envelope but then they settled on the same formula, and when they decided to stray from it they made the utterly mid "act of aggression ". It was a clear attempt(given the marketing) to try to get the E-sports/starcraft crowd in a really bad attempt to compete with something that has a hardened dedicated crowd. Its not a shame to try to compete but it is that u do it with something thats clearly just a copy gameplay wise of SC and yet is so utterly boring to play. Later they did release a MP only revamp to try and get their old AoW audience but that too was utterly mid trying to pander and attracted neither audience.
I'm glad you liked it! Imagine if you played it back in the day? At least this way you don't have to suffer through the disappointment of nothing big ever coming from it, and instead seeing an endless stream of Starcraft or Total Annihilation clones. Of your two main complaints, I've always shared the fist, about not having any real "campaign" mode. I like the campaign map, but it was just an endless series of skirmish missions, and something felt wrong about taking over the world but each time you start with just a town centre. (I think you could pay to get a better starting city?) The second complaint (of symmetrical gameplay) isn't something I'd considered at all, but makes a lot of sense. Perhaps they thought that too, which is why they pivoted to Rise Of Legends for their second game, which is much more like Age of Mythology in it's gameplay and styling, and it has a full story campaign mode. I often wonder why RON never got big, and I think it was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. By that point consoles were starting to dominate, which mean publishers pushed for games like COD etc that could be played all platforms, whereas RTS will always be for crusty PC players. (Though some modern games have done great jobs of working on a controller!) Something rarely talking about in RON is the UX is amazing. Everything has a tooltip, which can have a user-selected level of detail. _Every_ action has a bindable hotkey, the only one that doesn't is the left-click-select/move action.
I'm not sure why I never played it on the original release, although I suspect it was because I was heavily into massively multiplayer games back then, spending all of my gaming time in Planetside and Star Wars Galaxies with a big group of friends. You're right about the UI - everything was so well signposted and it made it really to learn not just the basics but the more complex stuff too. Rise of Nations did well when you compare it to other games in the genre, it had sales figures in the same ballpark as Red Alert 2 which is very impressive for the first game in a new series by a new developer. It just takes a very, very special game to break into the mainstream.
Mega-Lo-Mania ruled! Every sensible game did. It ws definitely a proto-RTS. It's a shame it didn't spawn a lot of copycats, ala Dune 2. That would have been an interesting mirror to the different style of RTS play.
You should do a video on Rise of Legends as well, the Rise of Nations spinoff game. When I heard about it back in the day it seemed really interesting with how different the three factions were, but it was fairly tough to get ahold of.
RoN was a great follow up to AoE when I was growing up, with AoE being my first RTS. It also came at a time when Risk was big at my school, though Risk quickly fell out of favour with me for it's one-dimensionality. RoN inspired me to make a more in-depth boardgame. However it never reached finality, moving on to college, of course.
Rise of nations and rise of legions are 2 games that I unfortunately didn't play in the olden days but there are mechanics and concepts I would feel could spice up most RTSes. Even Empire earth is a game with some small tiny bits that would change the game if implemented in age of empires.
Rise of Nations is the game I would pick to. Yes, I do find Empire Earth charming. But overall I do like Rise of Nations better. Now if only we could get a remaster of Rise of Legends. I would buy that in a heartbeat.
I had this game installed from a neighbourboys CD-Rom. Played it up and down with endeless recources. Than tried my hand at the campaign. I was quite dispointed, when the old laptop on wich it was isntalled brroke, becasue my sister had to insert a disk from a dollar store surprise bag.
I don't think I've ever experienced a dollar store surprise bag myself - especially not one with a CD in. That sounds both exciting and terrifying in equal measures.
i loved RoN, but it kinda always felt just one step shy of really going for the streaming economic approach and unit queues like a medieval annihilation game
I really enjoyed this game when it came out. Recently i played the steam version with an old friend and it felt like it held up well. Too bad there was never a second. I wanted to like the Empire Earth games, but they felt like such an ugly cluttered mess.
Im suprised you played Gold Edition in this review. Nothing exactly wrong, perhaps even fitting for retrospectve kind if video. Nevertheless I do reccomend checking out the Extended Edition on Steam. It still gets some minor updates every now and then, mostly troubleshooting or moving services cause yes this version has integrated still working online lobbies. And also game has very softly refreshed graphics, UI, better resolution supports, integrated workshop etc. I reccomend getting it, especially on some sale.
It received some patches, never really encountered any game breaking bugs. I played multiplayer multiple times even across platforms. 100+ hours in it. Graphics are very nice upgrade, didn't see weird graphics. Higher resolution and most terrains have much better colour pallet.
He said in one of the youtube community posts when buying the game he did it as the CD cost a few pounds, whereas a copy on Steam at the time was a bit more expensive. Plus, it's technically a "retro" review! But I agree, if Kaluven wants to play more he should get RON:EE on Steam. It's often on sale for cheap.
@@iwantagoodnameplease Yeah I agree, I think it's especially correct way to review it considering he is comparisoning both Empire Earth games that never got any kind of re-release/remaster so comparisoning it to the original one is only fair.
"... there isn't much innovation." of course there isn't. People prefer to stick to the old formula or simply just to a single game, never giving other titles a chance. You play Heroes 4 or 5? Heresy! AOE3? Wow, you really lack good taste. Stronghold 2,3 or Legends? How can you enjoy those atrocious 3D graphics when 2D is clearly superior. It's a shame really, there is so much to discover and enjoy in other games. Some of them may not be e-sport material, but that's a good thing. Not every game has to be ultra competitive. That's why from time to time I return to Rise of Nations, it has some amazing mechanics and after learning a few tricks like TAB for checking available upgrades, it makes you feel like you are truly building an empire without much sweat. It just feels good and sometimes that's all that matters.
Interesting that the re-release from 2014 was not mentioned, so I presume it was simply not known to exist. It's on Steam for 20 bucks and should run on modern systems straight up and does contain the expansion as well (as expected from these updated re-releases). Personally, I remember playing the basegame ages ago and found it fun, but a full campaign taking too long for me overall, and feeling a bit repetitive as you got kicked back an age or two every combat scenario.
In a community post thingy that appears on the youtube front pages he said the CD on ebay cost a few quid, whereas currently the RON:EE on Steam was £15. So it's understandable that he punted for the cheap version just for a review.
I had no idea that the steam version was some sort of official re-release! But yeah I got the physical CDs from ebay for £2.50 which seemed like a bargain, plus it was nice to have an old-school manual and it's been so long since I put a CDROM in my PC. I only have a physical media drive because I lost one of the blanks from the front of the case so put in old DVD drive in there just to fill the gap :)
@@kaluventhebritish It's official alright, as both the original and Extended Edition are released by Microsoft (as XBox Game Studio now), and the Steam Page credits both the original team and the EE Team as developers. Full Steamworks online-multiplayer and Steam Achievements included as well. Probably done when the Age of Empires 2 HD and Age of Mythology EE releases were successful enough in the mid-2010s, as all three came out at around the same time, by the same dev-team as those two (and also the guys that made the Definitive Editions of AoE trilogy)
I wonder if someone has early builds of RON. I was a temp tester on the Microsoft Games side back then and my first glimpse would've been like 1 or 2 one-hour playtests of an early build where (A) most buildings lacked art, (B) there were quite a few building differences (prototype buildings that never made the final cut; some final buildings weren't even in yet), (C) a lot of buildings that were implemented were obviously very incomplete, and (D) I think it also didn't have the Resource Rate Limit early on? I wish I could remember better, but it's been a while and I barely played those builds like I said. I suspect probably there are some Microsoft servers that still have those builds, and maybe Coleman or Reynolds or someone at BHG saved some too.
Eventually when Mechwarrior 4 Black Knight wrapped up I moved to RIse of Nations as my main focus, where I'd do standard software testing and also balance team work. We had a team of 4 (including me) who were all high-end RTS players (a couple of the other guys had won AOE1/2 tournaments if I remember right).
My own tastes at the time were rooted in Starcraft Brood War, so I too was disappointed by the lack of asymmetry in the factions. That said, it's strange Nation Powers aren't mentioned here as they're fairly extreme: you're definitely going to notice playing as Maya (25% building HP, -20% construction time, -25% building timber costs) vs. China ( _instant_ Citizen training!) for example.
The least popular feature from the balance team's point of view was *Focus Fire Diminishing returns.* Casual players might not notice, but the more troops who shot the same target, the less damage that target would take from every additional attacker. This meant combat micro had a dramatically reduced importance relative to other RTS games, and you essentially just attack-moved onto the enemy army for best results. There were a few things like flanking, river penalties, and supply that at least added _limited_ value to microing, but for the most part it was a micro-lite, macro-heavy style of RTS.
I did like the game overall, so criticisms like that didn't ruin it for me. I particularly liked the flow of the resource techs on Lumber/Granary/Smelter buildings, where when you're low on Metal, you need a Smelter upgrade, and that costs "the other two" resources (ie food and timber). While your economy was still liable to be lopsided if you hadn't planned it well, these costs helped offset most of the basic small-scale resource imbalances you wanted to solve. Territory was another popular feature, and I liked the various ways you were able to play with it (temple upgrades, careful city placement, forts, etc); it felt very impactful without being too dominant.
Strangely there are fewer specific "working at MS games" tales I can remember from this time period, compared with other games I worked on early in my career. I think the only distinct thing I remember was the little 4-person office we worked in and how Warcraft 3 (or maybe TFT?) came out around that time and a couple of the balance team were pretty hyped to play it. Towards the end, my temp contract expired, and I was hired directly by BHG for ~3 months to work over in Baltimore. I did some strategy guide writing and helped Pancake (nickname of the AI programmer) finish off the game's skirmish AI, including being able to field strategies like rushing, teching, or defense. (Honestly the rushes were pretty brutal sometimes; I think they still are?)
Focus Fire Diminishing returns is my favourite feature of RON! I talk about it a lot whenever it comes up on reddit :)
It suited the scale of the game and meant you could simply attack-move an army and leave it to it, and only focus on the macro-scale movements of flanking, which seems like the more 4x thing to do. It was never fully documented, and even the RON wiki doesn't talk about it now, instead you have to dig through old interviews to find out that I wasn't hallucinating this feature.
This is some really nice insight. Thanks for posting!
@@Axehilt have you ever seen units garissoned inside another unit? Checking the unit data gives impression that initially, APC and helicopters may carry troops. Maybe the transport was a separate unit before the release.
@@habibainunsyifaf6463 For APCs I don't think we ever got a build where they could transport.
For Helicopters, I seem to faintly remember being able to transport Commandos (only?), but it's been so long I'm not confident in that.
For Naval Transports, I do remember a fair amount of balance see-saw between (A) land armies being impossible to stop as they cruised across the sea to your continent vs. (B) land armies disappearing super fast if the enemy had sea out there. It was in fairly early (maybe from the start of the balance team's inception), and things like embark-time, speed, and durability all changed a fair amount. (I don't think naval transports were ever manually loaded when I played the game. Maybe they were for those really early 1-2 games, but they were land games so I wouldn't haven't known.)
The nuclear annihilation clock is such a good addition because not only does it disincentivize using nukes all the time, it also gives losing players the ability to get back in the game through nuclear threats.
“Yes I’ll lose. But I can make sure you don’t win either.”
When all is lost, flip the table.
In terms of game design it's a fascinating idea that I'm not sure I've seen before or since, not to mention a rather terrifying dose of reality.
@@kaluventhebritish civ 2 had a similar mechanism, if I recall, and Reynolds was responsible for that game too.
In theory it sounds good, but when you are 30 minutes into the game against harder AIs and they just start using nukes left and right ending the game in a stalemate, that's not satisfactory. That's why I play with nukes off.
Empire Earth : wild sandbox RTS
Rise of Nations : streamlined macro RTS
best nuke visuals i have ever seen in game
Recently I started playing RoN again and had a blast. Economic Boom and focus on research works really well against the AI. This stragegy mixes well with the consensus governments. One is rather weak at first, but once one outscales the AI economically and has more advanced units one can force the AI into a war of attrition it has no hope of winning. Getting there is a little bit of a challenge but the payoff is satisfying. Glad to see there are others enjoying this classic.
Rise of Nations is SUCH a great RTS. I will probably have a week or two every year I go back and play this bad boy.
The innovativ part is very true. I can't get exited by yet another C&C Red Alert/AoE2 clone or remake coming out 20+ years after the original.
I tend to get excited by a bit of both. Sometimes it's nice to have comfortable things you understand, especially if they are well executed - but other times you need something that breaks the mould or introduces new elements you weren't expecting.
Painfully underrated RTS
The "slightly longer video" probably is a welcome gift to all of us.
Thank you and you brought up very interesting points. I for one only ever played the "sequel" rise of legends ... and felt kind of meh... and them stumbled across this obscure game "supreme commander" in case some of you ever heard of it ;)
But this seems like a really solid game i will give it a go
I hate how the RoN dev was right about the RTS genre in 2003 and is still correct in 2024 :/
What did he say?
Oh i remember this one. Sadly i never played too much of it because "Act of war: direct action" came out shortly after and that stole the show for me as a sort of last hurrah of the RTS golden age and in many ways like the original C&C but tom clancied up and complete with hammy acted FMV cutscenes.
It was another very innovative RTS with many highly unique and rough/niche features that set it apart from anything out there(for example helicopters could be landed on buildings or ground to make them harder to target,foot soldiers could be put on roof or in buildings and some needed a roof or balcony to use their specific weapon) for quite a while but also sadly forgotten outside a very bad spiritual reboot attempt a while back.
Another forgotten RTS gem there! Eugen are constantly on the periphery of mainstream success, but they seem to just court the same few thousands players with their MP-focused iterations of the Wargame franchise.
@@iwantagoodnameplease yeah the constant copypasta of those games is quite sad. They used to push the envelope but then they settled on the same formula, and when they decided to stray from it they made the utterly mid "act of aggression ".
It was a clear attempt(given the marketing) to try to get the E-sports/starcraft crowd in a really bad attempt to compete with something that has a hardened dedicated crowd.
Its not a shame to try to compete but it is that u do it with something thats clearly just a copy gameplay wise of SC and yet is so utterly boring to play.
Later they did release a MP only revamp to try and get their old AoW audience but that too was utterly mid trying to pander and attracted neither audience.
I'm glad you liked it! Imagine if you played it back in the day? At least this way you don't have to suffer through the disappointment of nothing big ever coming from it, and instead seeing an endless stream of Starcraft or Total Annihilation clones.
Of your two main complaints, I've always shared the fist, about not having any real "campaign" mode. I like the campaign map, but it was just an endless series of skirmish missions, and something felt wrong about taking over the world but each time you start with just a town centre. (I think you could pay to get a better starting city?)
The second complaint (of symmetrical gameplay) isn't something I'd considered at all, but makes a lot of sense. Perhaps they thought that too, which is why they pivoted to Rise Of Legends for their second game, which is much more like Age of Mythology in it's gameplay and styling, and it has a full story campaign mode.
I often wonder why RON never got big, and I think it was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. By that point consoles were starting to dominate, which mean publishers pushed for games like COD etc that could be played all platforms, whereas RTS will always be for crusty PC players. (Though some modern games have done great jobs of working on a controller!)
Something rarely talking about in RON is the UX is amazing. Everything has a tooltip, which can have a user-selected level of detail. _Every_ action has a bindable hotkey, the only one that doesn't is the left-click-select/move action.
I'm not sure why I never played it on the original release, although I suspect it was because I was heavily into massively multiplayer games back then, spending all of my gaming time in Planetside and Star Wars Galaxies with a big group of friends. You're right about the UI - everything was so well signposted and it made it really to learn not just the basics but the more complex stuff too.
Rise of Nations did well when you compare it to other games in the genre, it had sales figures in the same ballpark as Red Alert 2 which is very impressive for the first game in a new series by a new developer. It just takes a very, very special game to break into the mainstream.
One game that span multiple tech levels is Mega-Lo-Mania where you start trowing stick and end up throwing nukes. But it was more arcade than full RTS
Mega-Lo-Mania ruled! Every sensible game did. It ws definitely a proto-RTS. It's a shame it didn't spawn a lot of copycats, ala Dune 2. That would have been an interesting mirror to the different style of RTS play.
Nice nostalgia blast, I used to love this game!
You should do a video on Rise of Legends as well, the Rise of Nations spinoff game.
When I heard about it back in the day it seemed really interesting with how different the three factions were, but it was fairly tough to get ahold of.
RoN was a great follow up to AoE when I was growing up, with AoE being my first RTS.
It also came at a time when Risk was big at my school, though Risk quickly fell out of favour with me for it's one-dimensionality. RoN inspired me to make a more in-depth boardgame. However it never reached finality, moving on to college, of course.
Rise of nations and rise of legions are 2 games that I unfortunately didn't play in the olden days but there are mechanics and concepts I would feel could spice up most RTSes.
Even Empire earth is a game with some small tiny bits that would change the game if implemented in age of empires.
Rise of Nations is the game I would pick to. Yes, I do find Empire Earth charming. But overall I do like Rise of Nations better. Now if only we could get a remaster of Rise of Legends. I would buy that in a heartbeat.
god dang i loved this game back in the day!
A RING TING TING A RING TING TING
I had this game installed from a neighbourboys CD-Rom. Played it up and down with endeless recources. Than tried my hand at the campaign. I was quite dispointed, when the old laptop on wich it was isntalled brroke, becasue my sister had to insert a disk from a dollar store surprise bag.
I don't think I've ever experienced a dollar store surprise bag myself - especially not one with a CD in. That sounds both exciting and terrifying in equal measures.
i loved RoN, but it kinda always felt just one step shy of really going for the streaming economic approach and unit queues like a medieval annihilation game
Hopefully not the medieval annihilation game I'm thinking of, as they made one of those and it was terrible :)
I really enjoyed this game when it came out. Recently i played the steam version with an old friend and it felt like it held up well. Too bad there was never a second. I wanted to like the Empire Earth games, but they felt like such an ugly cluttered mess.
Im suprised you played Gold Edition in this review. Nothing exactly wrong, perhaps even fitting for retrospectve kind if video.
Nevertheless I do reccomend checking out the Extended Edition on Steam. It still gets some minor updates every now and then, mostly troubleshooting or moving services cause yes this version has integrated still working online lobbies. And also game has very softly refreshed graphics, UI, better resolution supports, integrated workshop etc.
I reccomend getting it, especially on some sale.
Extended Edition is bugged, doesn't have working multiplayer, damage of unit is broken, weird graphics in some places
It received some patches, never really encountered any game breaking bugs. I played multiplayer multiple times even across platforms. 100+ hours in it. Graphics are very nice upgrade, didn't see weird graphics. Higher resolution and most terrains have much better colour pallet.
He said in one of the youtube community posts when buying the game he did it as the CD cost a few pounds, whereas a copy on Steam at the time was a bit more expensive.
Plus, it's technically a "retro" review!
But I agree, if Kaluven wants to play more he should get RON:EE on Steam. It's often on sale for cheap.
@@iwantagoodnameplease Yeah I agree, I think it's especially correct way to review it considering he is comparisoning both Empire Earth games that never got any kind of re-release/remaster so comparisoning it to the original one is only fair.
"... there isn't much innovation." of course there isn't. People prefer to stick to the old formula or simply just to a single game, never giving other titles a chance. You play Heroes 4 or 5? Heresy! AOE3? Wow, you really lack good taste. Stronghold 2,3 or Legends? How can you enjoy those atrocious 3D graphics when 2D is clearly superior.
It's a shame really, there is so much to discover and enjoy in other games. Some of them may not be e-sport material, but that's a good thing. Not every game has to be ultra competitive. That's why from time to time I return to Rise of Nations, it has some amazing mechanics and after learning a few tricks like TAB for checking available upgrades, it makes you feel like you are truly building an empire without much sweat. It just feels good and sometimes that's all that matters.
I really wish I had known that tab selected the library. I could have used this comment two weeks ago!
Interesting that the re-release from 2014 was not mentioned, so I presume it was simply not known to exist.
It's on Steam for 20 bucks and should run on modern systems straight up and does contain the expansion as well (as expected from these updated re-releases).
Personally, I remember playing the basegame ages ago and found it fun, but a full campaign taking too long for me overall, and feeling a bit repetitive as you got kicked back an age or two every combat scenario.
In a community post thingy that appears on the youtube front pages he said the CD on ebay cost a few quid, whereas currently the RON:EE on Steam was £15. So it's understandable that he punted for the cheap version just for a review.
I had no idea that the steam version was some sort of official re-release! But yeah I got the physical CDs from ebay for £2.50 which seemed like a bargain, plus it was nice to have an old-school manual and it's been so long since I put a CDROM in my PC. I only have a physical media drive because I lost one of the blanks from the front of the case so put in old DVD drive in there just to fill the gap :)
@@kaluventhebritish It's official alright, as both the original and Extended Edition are released by Microsoft (as XBox Game Studio now), and the Steam Page credits both the original team and the EE Team as developers.
Full Steamworks online-multiplayer and Steam Achievements included as well.
Probably done when the Age of Empires 2 HD and Age of Mythology EE releases were successful enough in the mid-2010s, as all three came out at around the same time, by the same dev-team as those two (and also the guys that made the Definitive Editions of AoE trilogy)