It’s not very often that I feel an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, but when I was tasked with checking out the Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition I never expected the fleeting feelings that would ensue. Without dragging you into my past too much but when I was about 10-11 years old my buddies and I would lay out the LAN cables, prepare the snacks, crank up the tunes and create our campaigns in AoE II. Back in the day (yes, I sound like a Grandpa) but there was no ability for online play, so we would get together and have these single games that would last hours. The trash talk that came with it was always an added bonus because back then we weren’t keyboard warriors. We left it all on the battlefield.

For those who may not be familiar with Age of Empires II, it’s a single and multi-player-based strategy game that gives you the opportunity to take on the role of a civilisation from history and battle against up to 3 others to prove who once and for all is the toughest of all time. Through your humble beginnings with a few townspeople, you have to grow by farming, chopping down trees, herding your animals and quickly begin to build your army. As you get your basic civilisation together you have to start thinking about your defences, security and also getting out into the world to discover ancient relics that can help you gain superiority over your competition. The beauty of AoE has always been its brilliant tutorial. It gives you the guidance needed to begin and from there you instantly start thinking about tactics. As you progress you can increase the AI that you battle against, if you so choose, to increase your skills and capabilities required.

When it came to loading up this Definitive Edition which came with the Enhanced Graphics Pack I was instantly transported back but at the same time I was sent to the future! This Enhanced Graphics Pack really makes an incredible difference and has completely remastered the game that I loved. With it’s beautiful 4K graphics the animations and movements of your people was just mind-blowing! Being able to crank up the graphics options and see the difference on a 20-year-old game is just incredible and does make a noticeable difference to how the game looks and plays. I kind of wish that I could load up my old saved videos from 20 odd years ago and really set them side by side to truly see the differences between the two. But I don’t really have to because as soon as that nostalgia kicked in, I noticed straight away the changes and hard work that has been put in. The improvements are noticeable from the first minutes you load in. From seeing individual bricks falling as you destroy a building to the blood dripping out from your enemies before their bodies are committed to the ground, is so smooth. Even down to the overhauled audio and remastered music is beautiful. That adrenaline rush when you hear the music pick up when you drive your murderous horde toward your enemy really gets the blood pumping.

Being the Definitive Edition, this package includes the entire history of AoE II with all the 5 expansions from over the years plus a brand new one created this year called The Last Khans. Without any practice I jumped straight in and started with the Tamerlane campaign and immediately found myself in trouble. However, after a while I was able to get my objective cleared. This campaign has multiple objectives, not only do you have to recover ancient relics, but you also need to attack the other three AI based enemies. You’re given a helping start with a basic army, and your civilisation has already been built for you. So, from here it’s about putting your people to work and then strategizing your movements. Deciding which objective to take first is always the difficult decision but working through the objectives is the fun part. I don’t want to give too much away about this new campaign, but it is definitive tough and will push your decision-making skills. With The Last Khans campaign added this has introduced 4 new civilisations, which brings the total to 35! Having this choice means that you can have hours and hours and hours of gameplay time trying to master each of them.

The amount of work that has gone into creating an AI that truly mimics an actual player is astounding. It’s not always that you want to jump in a play against your buddy or a random player, so it’s nice to be able to just set up a single player campaign and get stuck in. You’re able to taunt the AI which is something that can work to your advantage during a skirmish to confuse or lead astray so you can get that dearly needed advantage. Other improvements that are noticeable with the AI is its ability to multitask. So not only can it be sending it’s army over to weaken your defences, but it’s continuing to build its resources to create that second wave that you weren’t expecting. Honestly, every time I upped the difficulty on the AI it really pushed me to my limit, it sought out the higher ground, built strong fortifications that pushed me into a choke point and a couple of times I needed to back off and re-group.  Of course, you can downgrade it to practice your skills, but as I mentioned earlier it really has be honed in to act like another living breathing player and will test you which I believe is incredibly awesome when you just want to jump in for a casual match or two.

From a multiplayer perspective, the internet connection has definitely improved over the last two decades making it much easier to find matches and other online players. I jumped in to test it out and had a game with some other folks over on American servers and the game worked perfectly. The balance was really smooth, and I never felt at a ping disadvantage when playing. Having the cross play between the Microsoft Store and Steam is also a welcome change to increase the player base and really minimise the matchmaking times if you’re just searching to play against another player. Matchmaking is super smooth, but I still think there is an opportunity for a quicker connection, but that all comes down to server optimisation etc. I believe the only reason it took me a bit of time to connect was purely based on reviewing this early and not having a large player base there to choose from.

After getting stuck into the single player and campaign modes it’s amazing how much work has gone into improving this, and the roadmap doesn’t end there. There are plans to continue adding more content and optimisation in the future so that this game will be around for at least another 20 years. I’m excited for where this is headed, and I will be playing this for years to come. I hope that I can convince my buddies from the old days to get back together and we can relive the amazing matches that we used to have. I already have that overwhelming love for this game rekindled and I hope if you were like me, getting Age Of Empires II: Definitive Edition will give you the same feeling. Finally, I noticed a new Mixer button that has been added to the main menu that transports you straight to the AoE channel so that even when you need a break from the hours of immersive gameplay, you can still watch your favourite streamers at the click of a button, or watch someone new to gain some handy tips and tricks.

Review copy provided by Xbox