It is genuinely hard to describe just how bad this is. I did the best job I could of my own review over on the official Age of Empires forums. Its worst sin is probably the simple fact that it barely even feels like a game where you make choices. You just click what it tells you to do.

It's telling that they don't have an official subforum for this game, although there is one for AoE1, 2, 3, and 4, and Age of Mythology.

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I got a good chucke of of the minireview review for it.

Age of Empires Mobile is a fantastic real-time strategy game… oh, wait. Scrap that. This mobile version of the beloved RTS franchise has nothing to do with the original PC games. The gameplay is different, and the monetization is extremely pay-to-win. Unfortunately.

Didn't know it was also a Tencent production. Eww

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 1 month ago

I had a read over the rest of that review. Damn it was a good read. And sadly very, painfully accurate to my experience.

[–] ConHoliousDonFrankle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

That was a really good review. I only know about this game because my xbox advertised it, and I assumed it was some new xbox game. It's sad to see mobile ads on my xbox as 95% of the games are trash.

[–] Cmor@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Are we pretending that Age of Empires Online never existed?

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think so, why? I only played it very briefly, but I thought it had a small but happy fanbase still playing on third-party servers.

[–] Cmor@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I played at release and haven't followed it since then. At the time, I remember it being highly criticized and not popular with the community. It has been over a decade, and I could be misremembering.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah I'm not really sure either. I get the sense that either it got better over its lifetime or over time people came around to it à la the Star Wars prequels. But I don't really remember it. I played it a little early in its life but don't remember anything about it.