Empires Apart

Honestly, this game is a little bit of fun, but the graphics are... odd to say the least, the factions are okay, but there are lots of little things that combine to become a large problem. Units seem to move a bit slowly across the map, its not always clear what each does, and after you tell a Villager to build several things, you have to manually click the X in order to de-select the build menu instead of being able to hit the X like any other RTS game. Also for some reason when you have a Priest pick up a Relic, you have to wait till he gets it, then issue another order to him so he walks it back to the Temple, which means you basically have to babysit the Priests. All of this combines to poor optimization. All things considered the only thing I think this game is good for, especially now after I've heard the Devs have abandoned the game, is for those who are achievement hunters. Otherwise there are tons of better RTS games that do the same thing, but with much better and more pleasing aesthetics and graphics. It is unfortunate.

i used to play this game alot but i tried to start the game and it wont even start and crashes as soon as i do.... makes me sad to think i play 6 hours of it and now i cant even start it!!!

The game is bluntly boring and unplayed. Development stopped years ago and while they couldve made something out of it they decided against it. worth a few hours of dumb fun but apart from that there is nothing here that Age of empires or other RTS games dont offer but packaged much better.

pardon this game is now f2p... i paid for this game.
this is not a good way to your consumers of your game.

red flags:
* Loot Crates
* ptp -> f2p
* store
* Mobile game practices
* Going full EA

Hello there! As a brief introduction, I'm a HUGE fan of RTS. I've played a lot of them during my lifetime (Age of Empires, Starcraft, Empire Earth, Command and Conquer, Homeworld, etc.) - I can write paragraphs of lots of info and opinions here and there, but I'll attempt to structure somehow via pros and cons (and "neutral"). Oh, and I'm also just a casual RTS player, I don't do much multiplayer on any of those and just like to chill and do AI stomping (I've done a bit of competitive in the past, but it got way too stressful for me lol)

PROS:
+ Solid gameplay: Not gonna lie, most of it is from Age of Empires 2, but there are new things that are introduced here though (such as the more simplified upgrade into tiers and hero units). And yes, I'm aware that some people see this as unoriginal and "copying", but you know what they say, you don't fix something that ain't broke. They're taking Age of Empires 2 core stuff and improving upon it. We don't have to reinvent the wheel each time. The civilizations and core gameplay of each of them are similar, but they have enough individual characteristics, that they don't feel like you're playing the same game over and over (what with different heroes to choose from, civilization passives/active abilities, and difference in gameplay and techtrees)

+ Visuals: Okay, I know that in terms of pure gaming experience, visuals isn't absolutely essential in terms of gameplay and mechanics, but it IS an important factor. While the aesthetics of it being polygon-y is surely a matter of taste (I like it to be honest), it's cool to be able to enjoy a good strategy game while enjoying the scene. I like how the civilizations are presented visually, while not entirely new, they definitely feel very different from each other.

+ Music: I'm not like a musical guru or anything like that, but man the music in this game is awesome. From the menu music all the way to the music in the game itself (general or civ-based themes are so good to listen to while you do your own thing! :D)

CONS:
- Incomplete Game: Now I haven't followed everything that the devs are doing or whatnot, and when I purchased this game, it didn't indicate that it is "Early Access" or anything - but regardless of the reasoning (intentional or not, time constraints or not), the game feels incomplete. First of all, there's no campaign. Secondly, even the repetitive content in the game doesn't seem to give you an awful load of options (not a lot of maps to choose from, etc.). But it seems that the devs are quite active and might release some huge updates or even DLCs, but as of now... you have the core game that RTS player wants (which is good), but not a lot of other stuff (which, most other players want, RTS fans or just casuals - which is bad).

- Replayability: Competitive games and RTS can be inherently replayable depending on your interest in it, since it's the kind of game you want to get better at and keep on playing and playing, but... as I've said before, there's no campaign and it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot else to do, so that in turn makes the game less interesting (what holds you back to this game?), thus the replayability suffers.

- Pricetag: Now okay, pricing and "what's worth to you" is mostly subjective and depends on the person buying. But we live in a day and age where there are games out there of amazing quality that costs much less (or even free sometimes). And while that might seem an unfair thing to say, it is relevant here, because the pricetag seems to be way too steep for what the game currently offers (as of this review).

NEUTRAL:
- Copy-paste Game: As I've mentioned above, it's no secret that this game is VERY similar to Age of Empires 2. While I've stated that for me it's a good thing, it might not be to some. Honestly I don't mind that they took something amazing and improved upon it (both mechanically and visually) - but to some people it might not be worth a whole new game. I've put it here again as neutral, just because it really depends on you if this is something important to you or not.

CONCLUSION:
I am still putting this game as recommended, because if you're a fan of RTS and have some money to spare or a casual, this might be a good game to look into if you like the RTS genre. Why do I say this? Well, as I've said above, it is VERY similar to Age of Empires 2 yes, but it's an "updated" one, so visually it's better and the mechanics are also better (my opinion - this isn't fact, lower the pitchforks).
BUT, the pricetag and the lack of content (other than the core RTS skirmish mode) is off-putting - I sincerely hope that they somehow lower the pricetag and/or release contents on this game rather soon - otherwise people might start jumping off ship. Which would be unfortunate, because this game has the potential to be something amazing.

This may sound like a Positive review, but bear with me.

Empires Apart attempts to relight the fire of the RTS genre. It has everything you know and love, rescource management, military formations and Zerg rushes.
This game is great for the new wave of RTS fans, for those that could not start with AOE2 due to its age. If you are like myself and have been around to play them, it feels like a reskin of that very game.
If this game was early access, I would forgive the level of ambition this shows. If the game gets regular updates and a few more factions i would happily change my opinion.

This sadly does not bring anything new to the RTS like it was suggested at Alpha, it is a pretty game. But feels like a very casual game.

TL;DR
Do you like Age of Empires? Do you like Empire Earth?
Then play those.

Good: for the newbie
Bad: for the veteran
Ugly: this game is not

-----------------------------------
Thanks for reading

I like how you took good parts from AoE. Problem is game throws errors 20min in game. Unplayable. Therefore I do not recommend. Waiting for fixes

Honestly I can't reccomend this game to anyone. They hit all of my nostalgia buttons with the civilizations and how they play, but the game is just completely unplayable with how poor its performance is. I have given it several months before I wrote this review because I wanted the game to improve and do well, but even after several performance patches the game is still so laggy that its unplayable.

Credit is given where credit is due. It looks like quite a bit of effort it put into the game, but when you put effort into something you have to make sure its even worth your while. You can have 300 unit pop caps with over 5 people when you give your servers no ram to run off of. Played this game with my friends and we build up, make massive armies, and the second we engage the server crashes. Another thing is why are the chinese so bad. If they have gunpowder give them genuinely good guns. Why are boats even in the game? they are completely useless in combat. Could be a good game but its like a michealangelo just did half of a statue and said fuck this im done i cant be bothered

Quick verstion:

Fast paced AoE like RTS with more competitive playability.
Not quite finished but devs are active and i have my hopes up.


New Review of the Free to Play version:

First of all im almost satisfied that i dont get totally fucked for buying this game in the first place, even tho i got plents of the DLC civs (already existing before), i am missing one, which i dont like that much since i still have a feeling i paid enough already, but its OK.

The gameplay so far is pretty nice, the costumisations they added also make it a little more fun, all this stuff they put in all new games was added, but its not changing the gameplay.

Gameplay is really fun and they made a few tweaks to aoe2 i like, even tho pathfinding and movement bugs are still far too common but im in good believe this will be fixed at some point.

To multiplayer:
Since there arent really enough players yet you will get ranked against people of a different skill level a lot, tho the speed of the gameplay makes up for it bc you dont build for 10 minutes until you realise that your opponent isnt even building gathering camps.
So unfair games are fast over and dealt with, which is much less frustrating for both players.

Not so sure about the balancing yet, but still its aight so far since i know the elo of people defeating me in the 2k+ (diamond) range which is the same thing in AoE2, but slower and more painful. Here he just arrived after 2-3 Mins and if your not prepared its over fast.

So atm im putting my hope and gametime in the game and try to spread it among my friends.
Will also stay in touch with the devs so final bugs can be fixed.

Hoping for a well made competitive fast paced AoE2 like RTS with more players in the future a lot!





Old:
Good Game, slightly overpriced.

The Devs still working hard on the project and its getting a really good game slowly, though the bad reviews and high price make it really hard for it to get popular, which is a real problem for a multiplayer based game.

Maybe after first big sale, there will be enough players and enough is fixed the game may start rolin or otherwise i see a soon to be dead game here.

I liked the game at first but I am more of a single player guy and wish there was a campaign and better AI but apart from that it's ok if your looking for a multiplayer exsperience yes but exspect long wait times but if your more focused on single player get Aoe2 instead

A highly fun, fast paced RTS game.

As a person with over 2000 hours in AoE2 over various platforms, Empires Apart really catches that same feeling I get playing AoE2.

It has a beautiful soundtrack, the 6 civs are each unique and offer different styles of play, the challenges for single player are interesting and above all the multiplayer is competitive and compelling.

The low poly art style might be highly divisive, but personally I enjoy it. As a competitive player visual clarity is super important and the buildings are great in this aspect, not to mention the UI is very clean and having the majority of the screen free is a very nice result. While the units are a little more difficult to distiunguish immediately - that's probably just me not playing the game enough yet to learn them!

There is currently no campaign, although the devs have said they would add one in future. Skirmish mode is nice, there have been patches improving the AI - it's already pretty good - and I hope it will improve further. The developers are incredibly active, more than I have ever seen for any other game, so I have high hopes for the future.

I'd rate this game as it is currently 08/04/2018:
8.5/10 for multiplayer
6/10 for single player (will greatly go up with a campaign)

I would highly recommend this game for those who enjoy multiplayer in RTS style games.

I didnt played much sadly, but that bit was a lot of fun.

But i cant recommend it, since there are massive performance issues with AMD CPUs (a few people reported performance issues with Intel aswell). The moment a game starts, the FPS drop to like 8-12. 3v3 and 4v4 Matches are unplayable. In 2v2 it starts well and has FPS drops after the first few minutes in game to the point where its unplayable.
Many other Users reported similiar performance issues aswell. The Devs are currently working to fix it, but as of right now, its not. I refunded it before its to late and doesnt get fixed (you never know).

When it works properly it's a very good if basic RTS, but it rarely works for me. Every map play either end up with fatal errors and crashes or I get 9 fps on every graphics settings. The way I feel, this is just a early access game without the label.

This is a game that takes the Age of Empires gameplay we know and love and builds on it in small but fun and thoughtful ways. It's incredibly refreshing to see an RTS made that isn't trying to recapture the MOBA audience, and it's even more heartening to see the clear love for old-school RTS gameplay the developers are working from. In the early days after launch there have been issues - some serious performance problems on large maps and some occasional pathfinding goofs - but I'm already really enjoying the game as I'm able to play it, and the developers seem active and are working towards improving it; they've already released a few small patches that fixed one or two issues I was seeing.

There are tons of small conveniences in the UI that feel like they were designed by people who played and thought about AoE2 - markets and farms are handled much more elegantly, there's a button for grabbing your wounded units, there are better visualizations of control groups and idle villagers... a lot of small changes have been made to the familiar formula with the goal of improving quality of life, and for the most part it's been great!

The biggest difference between this and an old Age game is how unique each of the civilizations are. I've mostly been playing as Aztecs and Chinese so far, and each civ has unique mechanics and tech trees and units that make them feel like properly different experiences. I love the Aztec prisoner-taking mechanic in particular - there's a special fun to raiding your enemy, turning their units into prisoners, then converting the prisoners into free villagers or sacrificing them for resources. The way Mongols build and deconstruct and move their buildings around is actually really clever, and fun to play around with.

The art style is also fun and charming in its own way, even though there are a few uneven elements to it, and the sounds and music and voices are surprisingly well-done and nicely tailored to each civilization, considering this is very much a small, low-budget project.

No, I don't love every design choice - I think walls could stand to be more imaginative, I'm lukewarm on the day/night cycle, and a few of the units look a bit too similar to one another at a glance. But this is a valiant effort that has resulted in a fun game, and I want to see development continued and maybe even expanded upon. It could be something truly special, especially if it sees enough success for the devs to keep working on it for months or years to come.

That's why I'm rather unusually reviewing the game before I've really had my fill of it - traditional RTS games are an endangered species, and since I've really enjoyed my first few games (I was definitely worried it would be too janky before I actually played it), I wanted to throw a good review out there early to encourage people to try it and to encourage the devs to keep working on it. Once I've played all of the civs and modes more extensively, and once it's been patched a bit, I'll try to remember to update this review with some more precise thoughts.

This game is one of the most interesting and beautiful ideas I have seen in a long time. The potential for this title is amazing and I hope that the developers are able to bring it to where it needs to be.

But in all likely hood it will never get there.

Many People have complained about the single player, but the games focus says it is competitive multiplayer, so I will be discussing on that and tell you why I can’t recommend this amazing game.

Its relatively simple, there are 3 problems that will prevent this game from getting off the ground.

1) First it released in a very poor state (not in early access) which turned many people off from the game and stalled the player base, if you play a 2v2 and it gets to late game the game will crash. Which is a real shame as the 2v2 and higher has real potential if they turned it into something that was not just a simple as a LOL like team selection at the start that has no real effect.

But let’s say they do change it to something more interesting and unique mode that separates it from the other RTS games you then run into the second problem

2) There is one competitive mode which is 1v1, so all the higher player modes don’t mean anything because if you want to be ranked there is as I said only 1v1. But as of this moment there are at a peak around 200 players for this game, which means not only is the base extremely small which will create large que times, but there are many players which I have faced that clearly have played the beta for some time which leads to HUGE disparities in game understanding and you will lose A LOT when you are trying to understand the game.

Now for me I am fine with facing stronger opponents if makes for an interesting challenge. The majority of players however will be completely turned off by that and with an extreme lack of AI and almost no hosted custom games you really don’t have many options.

This brings us to the final problem

3) For a game based on history it is only appropriate to point out that past games that begin this poorly are normally abandoned. The reason is simply, this is a gaming company and no matter how passionate their developers are, if their player base is small and they can’t get it grow they will be losing money on a product. And like any other business you can’t function if you don’t get income from your products or you don’t have the reserves to fund a failing project in a hope that one day it takes off. With Age of Empires 4 and other RTS games coming not to mention games like North Guard and They are Billions that are currently out, very functional, and have a very different approach to the RTS style, it is difficult to see any other outcome than the forced abandonment of this game.

I hope I am wrong, that I can look back in weeks, months or even a year, take down my review and preach to all to go out and buy this game. But with a need for bug fixes and increase single player content , better AI, a purposefully 2v2 and higher mode, bigger player base, Inability to host private games, in game mechanical fixes with pathing, balancing, game stability, and a need for the game to make a name for its self in a different way outside of "a competitive RTS", based on past games I can’t see a way for this game to recover and become the game I wish it could be.

Really unimpressed with this game.

I'm a huge fan of RTS games, Age of Empires and Age of Mythology especially. While Empires Apart definitely borrows heavily from these games, it feels like a bare-bones recreation rather than something trying to build off the genre's past success.

I might be able to look past the game's poor performance, odd UI, baffling controls/hotkeys, lackluster AI, and overall lack of polish if there was something special underneath. But all that's there is a bland game which looks to appeal to RTS newcomers in the laziest way possible. There is also no meaningful single-player content, despite the game not being mechanically deep enough nor contain a sufficient amount of content to rely solely on multi-player skirmishes to carry it.

Empires Apart tries to do almost nothing new to set itself apart, and doesn't streamline the RTS genre in a satisfying enough way to be novel. I cannot in any way recommend you pick up this game, and I'm not sure if any amount of patching or future updates can fix the problems I have with it.

Not a flawless game but a lot of fun to watch or play. No performance issues for me and for the asking price, a pretty good deal. Any fans of Age of Empires, history or RTS' should give it a try if a sale comes around

Would have recommended if it had the "Early access" tag.
It doesn't.

The game simply isn't finished.
- AI is really poor.
- pathing is cluncky
- resources are scarce and easily run out (especially on island maps.)
- town center f.e. can't give command to spawning villagers to gather meat from sheep/deer.
- commands to other resources often don't work properly either as the units get stuck on the way
- maps are very basic and uninteresting.
- the game itself is ... basicly AOE (obviously) but once you get ingame.
And you see the buildings / upgrades / resource costs / styles and interactions.
you'll realise how much this is a copy/paste of aoe with barely any new or "modern" spin to it.
in fact it either lacks things wich even "AOE the rise of rome" had or does a worse job at it.
- optimisation ? have to run it on medium and close my "Black Desert Online" to prevent lag.
for comparison: i ran farcry 5 on max settings yesterday while running black desert in the background without an issue
- and yes after closing everything but the game. putting it on medium settings... it just crashed on me several times.

Sigh. don't feel like making the list longer than it is.
I've been trying to get into the beta for this game a long time.
Been eagerly waiting for the release.
But this.
Is sad :c

I will edit this review once they've added some patches*
So far this was my first impression.

What a massive, massive let down this game is.
Being a huge fan of the classic RTS games for many a year, I had watched the development of this game over the last 6 or so months with interest, hoping it would pick up where the likes of AOE left off, perhaps with a modern take on the tried and trusted formats, no such luck.
Well, unless by modern, you expect the increasingly cynical approach game developers are taking these days, by releasing half finished, poorly optimised content, with the promise of further updates to provide the content that should be there at launch, this game would appear to excel in that respect.
I requested a refund after around 1 hour of play time. Having purchased around 200 games on Steam, this is only the 2nd time I've done so, here's why.
I was immediately struck by the realisation that this is nowhere near a full/finished game.
Having played through the worryingly short tutorial, and in the apparent absence of any kind of single player campaign option (really and RTS without a campaign!?) I decided I'd start off with the survival mode.
I was astonished to find that this mode contained 1 map .... with the promise of more maps to be added later, apparently.
The map itself was beyond basic, a barren square with a few resources dotted around, and a town centre in the middle as a starting point. The idea of course, being to defend it against increasingly difficult waves of enemies, something I became bored of long before the end of the 15 minutes it took the AI to overwhelm my increasingly half hearted attempts at defence.
I decided next, to give the challenge scenarios a bash, hoping that it would form the basis of some kind of campaign to play through, no such luck, just very basic scenarios of units squaring off against one another ... 2 archers vs a more powerful infantry unit, etc,etc ... again I became very bored, very quickly and gave up after a few of these challenges.
So then, nothing else for it, with little interest in playing multiplayer, at least until I'd managed to get a few practice games under my belt, I gave the skirmish a go.
Again, an absolute dearth of options here. The basic, choose AI opponent, choose difficulty, and if you like, set teams, and with only 7 maps, little scope for variety.
Having set up a skirmish against 2 AI opponents on a large island map, I clicked on start ... and the game promplty crashed, kicking me back out to desktop.
Another failed attmpt at launching a skirmish, was more than enough to put my already rapidly waning interest in this game to bed.
Perhaps someone with a little more perseverance, would have messed around with their settings enough to get the skirmish mode working, however having already tired of this mess of a game, I seen little point in wasting more of my time trying to get this poorly optimized, half hearted, half finished game, to run.
Becoming increasingly sick of being conned out of my money by developers who can't be bothered to finish their games before releasing them, I decided I wanted a refund, and I also decided to take the time to write this review (again something I very rarely do) in the hope that it would save someone else the disappointment of playing this game.
Do yourself a favour, go back to AOE, dust of your copy of C&C, or content yourself with another go around on Sins of a Solar Empire, in the hope that at some point, someone, somewhere, will do this classic genre some justice again.

The best RTS game in a LONG time.

There are problems obviously, with balance and a few bugs, but they will be fixed in time and over all the multiplayer experiance is super enjoyable and pretty smooth.

Considering that this is a game made by 3 develoupers for the most part I believe it is an incredible success! Some AI behvaiours and a few odd decisions aside the game is super complex and really enjoyable.

Pro tip tho, turn motion blur off, many people have been saying that scrolling is laggy and it's a misconception due to motion blur so turn it off and you'll have no problems!

GLHF!