

I would've liked to see a lot more of AOE4, but the short glimpses I got were still enough to pick up on how many changes can fall under the umbrella of modern." Age of Empires 4 will have 8 civilizations, but there's room to expandĮight civs is a decent start, but Relic plans to keep expanding them. For any history buffs playing the game, this feels like a love letter directly to them."Three big things fans will want to know about right away: the plan is to launch with eight civilizations (largely from Europe and Asia, but not exclusively), there will be four campaigns tracing the histories of some of those civilizations, and naval combat is in.

The cutscenes are also a joy, using real-life images and videos mixed with digital recreations of battlefields.

Rather than just taking the player through some real-life encounters and explaining their effects on history, you're instead treated to a lovingly crafted historical recap before each mission.ĭuring the gameplay, a narrator informs you of your next objectives through very clever storytelling. One of the first parts of Age of Empires 4 that truly grabbed my attention was the story mode. A gentle prompt to suggest checking out the various entry-level/tutorial content is all I would suggest, ensuring every player is suitably prepared for battle! A Bright Light in the Dark Ages This may lead to inexperienced players having a rough introduction to the game and not understanding the various layers to gameplay and it shouldn't be our responsibility to seek out more knowledge about the game. The only issue I have is that you aren't guided towards this content and can instead throw yourself into the heat of battle knowing very little. Finally, the Art of War section contains some basic challenges to test how well you've picked up these teachings and all of these materials make for a fairly comprehensive tutorial.
