The game’s art style is severely different to any of the previous games in the series, and while many people on the in-game chat have been complaining about it, I love it. The cartoony style looks inviting and makes everything easily identifiable. The vibrant colourful maps are beautiful to look at as well, and makes it enjoyable to play.
The game has you work in a persistent central hub that is your Capital City. The city works as a sort of glorified menu for the game, and is the part of the game that continues running even when you’re not logged in. In the city you have quest givers who will give you your proper missions, as well as a variety of stores and buildings that are used to customize and further your game.
There is a store for buying the premium items of the game (premium civilizations, booster packs), which you can buy with real life money. There are also numerous shops for buying in game consumable items and crafting ingredients with in-game currencies.
There is also a technology tree much like a skill tree in an RPG game, allowing you to choose which technologies you learn. Things like new buildings, unit attributes and new units themselves are all things that can be unlocked in the tech tree.
Quest givers are present in your city prepared to –obviously- give you quests. These quests function more like the Age of Empires games of old. Start with a basic town, and work your way towards an objective such as destroying the enemy town, defending your town, or rescuing a select NPC. Upon completion, quests reward you with experience points, currency to spend in the various stores in game, and the occasional item.
When you get enough experience points, as with other MMO games, you level up. Levelling up gives access to new technologies, and when you hit certain levels, you advance to the next Age in your civilization. Experience is not only earned by completing quests, but also by discovering treasure, or merely destroying the units and buildings of your enemies, giving you a reason to stick around at the end of quests to destroy the last pieces of their town.
All the features you come to expect from levelling up your character in an RPG have been worked rather nicely into the Age of Empires style of game, and it all wraps up together in a neat little package.
I want to talk about the whole Premium gameplay side of things (As it’s an F2P game with the ability to upgrade), but I feel that is worthy of a separate post. It’s a good free game though, and I’m definitely enjoying it.
The First impressions of Age of Empires Online. by ZombieSkittles, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
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