Micro in general doesn’t feel impactful, due to how fights play out.
Archers seem to be the strongest unit, without a proper small unit counter (skirmishers don’t exist).
No way to micro against archers, leading to very uninteresting fights.
Archer-unit-type projectiles always hit, even without any upgrades.
Hard to select individual units, making microing hard.
Crazy 0.3 second input delay, even on nearby servers.
ALT key is HARD BOUND to camera rotation?!.
No mouse button hotkeys other than LMB and RMB, not even scroll up and down available.
You HAVE to use the Grid layout for hotkeys, no way around it.
No fully-customizable hotkeys, only basic rebinds.
At game end you’re sent back to lobby, can’t analyze the map after finishing.
SHOULD I BUY AGE OF EMPIRES 2 OR 3 MOD
No Mod support at launch, maybe in 2022.
High-contrast team colors make the game look cartoony (not necessarily bad, but makes some people not want to play).
144 fps only achievable on Lowest settings, that make the game look worse than AoE 2.
High graphic settings overload most GPUs out there.
Now that we’ve set up the stage, let’s look at the gameplay.
When playing AoE 4, I didn’t get a single moment where I was awed or simply impressed by how good the game was.
We’re desperate for a new RTS game, so we close our eyes when faced with the truth.
The game is far from an esport-viable title.
Mechanics have been dumbed down so much that the skill ceiling appears to be quite low.
Not copying games that did certain things right.
Constant feeling of Devs trying to “Reinvent the wheel”.
Open beta, aka Stress Test, announced just few days before start – while ALL big streamers and creators are playing an AoE 2 tournament in Germany.
Worst marketing campaign ever (no real gameplay shown until mid September).
Trying to please every audience type at once.
They even had to cancel the expansion for it
Relic’s latest game, Dawn of War 3, was a disaster.
Main developer is Relic Entertainment, that hasn’t done any prior AoE titles (they did make some decent games in the past), and second being World’s Edge that have only co-produced the latest Definitive editions.
Big shoes to fill (Age of Empires 2 comparisons, the franchise in general).
Some of the reasons that I mention will get fixed even before launch, but that doesn’t change the fact that there will still be 50+ others that won’t. You see, I’m not even going to focus on bugs, because those would probably get ironed out over the course of the first year, but design choices, philosophy, approach, attitude. Age of Empires 4 was a dream come true… Until I got to play it. And to calm down the AoE elitists in the comments, that seem to attack anyone that speaks against AoE4 on any platform – I’m a big RTS fan – played AoE over 20 years ago (I’m that old), played competitive Starcraft 2 for 3 years and even the AoE2 Definitive edition over the last 2 years. You’ll probably get the enjoyment you’re looking for from the current game. If you’re only interested in single-player, then this video is not going to affect your buying choice all that much.