The new version takes the population limit up to 500, but the game will start moving very slowly and gets filled with lag long before you reach that number. The HD remake did bring a small improvement to the interface and some new visual effects, but you'll only notice them when you compare the old and the new editions side by side.Ī major issue of Age of Empires 2: HD Edition appears when you have lots of units on the screen. The pathfinding continues to remain awkward at best, as some units will go in all sorts of directions except the most obvious one. The scripted campaigns haven't received any optimizations, so you'll often be forced to wait out certain events, including victories, to be triggered even if you completed the necessary objectives.

Speaking of groups, the new version of the game still doesn't allow players to select a bigger number of units, so you'll still have to split your men into smaller legions so that you can more easily order them around. What's more, when playing at higher resolutions, the units seem quite small and you'll barely be able to tell them apart in larger groups.

There are very few customizable graphics options so you're pretty much stuck with the age-old sprite-based animations that dropped out of style ever since 3D took the real-time strategy genre by storm. Sadly, besides being able to play the game at a high resolution, the Age of Empires 2: HD Edition doesn't bring that many new improvements over the original title that came out in the early 2000s. The HD Edition brings together both of these experiences and allows players to freely select between the different campaigns, ranging from the tutorial William Wallace scenario that teaches the core mechanics, to the much more challenging missions that focused on Atilla the Hun, for example. While the core experience, in the form of the Age of Kings, was quite expansive, original developer Ensemble Studios delivered a special expansion called The Conquerors, which added campaigns for new civilizations like Aztecs, Mayans, Spanish, or Huns, as well as new units, technologies and much more. Instead of going the sci-fi route like other franchises, its campaigns and missions borrowed heavily from actual historical events, teaching lots of players about the history of famed nations from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or South America. Age of Empires 2 took the quintessential real-time strategy mechanics and added much more depth to the experience.

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