Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition Reviews

Abandoned game with most of the bugs and unbalanced civs uncalled for. Buyer beware.

This game is 2nd to aoe2 in daily players on steam, yet Microsoft treats this as a dead project Microsoft’s refusal to update the game, as well as backtracking on DLCs is absolutely ludicrous. I’m calling on all players to negatively write a review to wake up key stockholders in these decisions. If you want a dead game, we’ll stop playing all AOE games.

This is a tough review to make after so much time, here comes the memeable 2k hours negative review but hear me out. I think for its price its a good buy to mess around with. Clearly, 2k hours in, gives you an idea of how much potential this game has. Unfortunately, the publisher and devs see nothing in this game and it shows so I can't shill this game in good faith even though I have enjoyed it. Pro- so much expanded upon since DE. more maps, more natives, more civs, more scenarios, more units, more cards etc. They really took the OG formula and ran with it. - usually solid gameplay, its fun to mess around with friends or try ranked as long as you dont take it too seriously. -skirmish mode is fun with a few cool scenarios - they did fix alot of issues from a rough launch -Really a lot of cool references to the time period. -Overall, when things works, its one of the deepest and unique RTS out there. So many ways to express your style of game play Cons: Bugs bugs bugs bugs. attack move bugs. plaza mand mill vills getting kicked off and idling. Vills getting stuck. Single player first 8xbow shipment still bugged. several campgain missions can bug Lobbies bug. Exploits have abounded through the ranked. WE does not hotfix this game ever and it has impacted as legacy bugs pile on. units clip into trade sockets or buildings. Pathing breaks through trees. AI sometimes uses melee mode at range (and it works...somehow) - ranked is a cluster of cheesey strats, smurfs, bug abusers, and toxic people who until recently I think not a single person ever got banned. Outside of funsies you'll start to get upset as the issues of balancing 22 assymetric civs shows - limited functionality. No way to message offline friends. ui is outdated as fuck. Scenario editor is like the same from 2006. -Single player content while fun has not been expanded upon much since the OG version. -Weird choices. the standard map pool is the ranked pool and competitve maps are their weird maps not competitive ranked pool. Many cards and effects are not at all intuitive. The ugly The publisher of this series gave up years ago and it shows. 0 promotion, 0 support, 0 community engagement since 2022 then in Jan 2025, they told us our 1 year being developed dlc was not only cancelled, not only not really been worked on, but all support sans servers is done. Fucking scumbag move if there ever was. The game will never be polished. Should you buy? No wait until modders fix the game and even then might as well pirate it cause publishers clearly dont give a fuck about this game no more. That said should you just want to play with friends or have some cheap g2a version, enjoy. I will be playing other games till then

Ended up being just another cash grab. Announced DLC about a year ago just to cancel it. Won't be surprised if in 5 years we get the AOE3 definitive edition remastered with the canceled DLC and charging 40 bucks for it.

Game itself is super fine. Many civs, many maps, tons of descriptions that I like to read. BUT.... seriously, canceling DLC after that huge annoucment? 1. "Will be in last part of 2024" - nice :D 2. "sorry to inform you but we need to transfer release to begginig of 2025" - ok, it happens, I'll wait. 3. "Sorry we are canceling it - there you have link to mods".... no comment. After that weak as fuck appology I will not recomend it, even when I got over 280h. Weak as hell.

Amazing game left in the hands of an incompetent company that not only neglects it, but appears to actively hate it. Think twice about giving World's Edge any of your money, they've proven they can't deliver on their promises and will only squander your money away on mismanagement.

Bunch of liars. Give us Denmark and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

This first section is about the game's devs and their failure and incompetent mismanagement. The game itself deserves to be played and is amazing even with its flaws and the issues from DE. But World's Edge not only failed to deliver on promises to create a DLC which they announced, but also strung along the fans for a year by saying it was simply delayed before cancelling it along with cancelling any future content updates. Do not give World's Edge money, do not buy AoE 3, do not buy AoE 2 or 4, do not buy AoM. One of the best RTS games, no contest. Good faction variety while still providing lots of different ones to choose from, maps which determine things outside of terrain like trade routes, local natives, or available mercenaries, some of the best visuals in the genre especially with ragdoll and building destruction physics, and set in a time period which isn't covered very often. The Home City shipment system is polarizing but really just boils down to another mechanic to learn, like learning what each civ is good or bad with. After you do learn it though it opens up a ton of strategic options, even with just using basic resource or unit cards to let you skip out on dedicating time to those normally. The campaigns are pretty bad story wise, being pretty much an Assassin's Creed style "secret history" type model instead of using any of the really interesting historical events instead. The Asian campaigns do fix this with Japan and India at least. The Definitive Edition changes were generally for the worse, Native Americans were removed as enemies and replaced with generic bandits which causes one campaign's story to make absolutely no sense, the Native Fire Pit was replaced with a Community Plaza which is simply wrong because Native Americans have recorded traditions of dancing around Fire Pits, and the Colonial Age was renamed to the Commerce Age which if anything is more Eurocentric than Colonial.

The devs lied about a new DLC for months and then decided to kill this game. Not worth buying for new players.

Devs have lied and abandoned the game, ruining an awesome RTS. Pick it up on-sale and know that it won't be receiving any further content which is a shame because it's actually good. It's just run by a bunch of idiots...