I was a fan of AOE I and II (age of empire) and I had 12 years RTS game play experience.

This game has a pack of 'new technologies' under its belt. The Havoc physical engine, real time shade and light tracing, blah,blah.

Well, on my P42.8 HT + ATI 9250 with 128M video card, the game looks not impressive at all. I read the reviews of the performance on some high end card, so in order to get the 'supprising' experience I have to put down $700 to get the card that can only get 45 frame/second with everything turned on.

The game play is mediocre.

1. Not all of you farmer can build town centers(TC). In AOE2, that is a common ugly problem for the players to keep building TC as their "aircraft carrier" to defence and invasion.

now in this game, you can not even build buildings close to enemies' TC. so you can not play 'tower rush' I guess.

2. The home-town card system and trading system are not impressive at all. Personaly I don't like them

3. Voice acting is still pool

4. STILL no limit on the farms working on one resource.

In starcraft and all other good RTS games, you can only assign a limited number of farmers to one resouce location( a mine or something), but in AOE3, you can send 100 workers to one mill

(one farmer can not work on one farm in AOE2, they ruined it in new version).

In the old AOE2 time, because of the resource/farmer issue, they have to release a patch because most people will keep doing farming with no or less than 5 soilders and more than 100 farmers in the beginning of the game.

Although this game potentially have a great achievement in its graphic (under the condition of an expensive video card), the lacking of solid game play still makes it a mediocre, if not poor.
I was a fan of AOE I and II (age of empire) and I had 12 years RTS game play experience. This game has a pack of 'new technologies' under its belt. The Havoc physical engine, real time shade and light tracing, blah,blah. Well, on my P42. 8 HT + ATI 9250 with 128M video card, the game looks not impressive at all. I read the reviews of the performance on some high end card, so in order to get the 'supprising' experience I have to put down $700 to get the card that can only get 45 frame/second with everything turned on. The game play is mediocre. 1. Not all of you farmer can build town centers(TC). In AOE2, that is a common ugly problem for the players to keep building TC as their "aircraft carrier" to defence and invasion. now in this game, you can not even build buildings close to enemies' TC. so you can not play 'tower rush' I guess. 2. The home-town card system and trading system are not impressive at all. Personaly I don't like them

3. Voice acting is still pool

4. STILL no limit on the farms working on one resource. In starcraft and all other good RTS games, you can only assign a limited number of farmers to one resouce location( a mine or something), but in AOE3, you can send 100 workers to one mill

(one farmer can not work on one farm in AOE2, they ruined it in new version). In the old AOE2 time, because of the resource/farmer issue, they have to release a patch because most people will keep doing farming with no or less than 5 soilders and more than 100 farmers in the beginning of the game. Although this game potentially have a great achievement in its graphic (under the condition of an expensive video card), the lacking of solid game play still makes it a mediocre, if not poor.