The most complete version of the classic RTS. Review of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition for PlayStation 5

The legendary real-time strategy from Microsoft / Ensemble Studios has finally been released on PlayStation 5 and it is truly an epic release, because in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition the player is waiting for a huge amount of content. But it was not without its drawbacks.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition was released on PC back in November 2019, in January 2023 the game was released on Xbox and only now it has reached PlayStation 5, but in what form. The subtitle Definitive Edition is absolutely deserved here, because the premium edition contains absolutely all the additions that were released for the original and HD versions of Age of Empires II, as well as nine DLCs created exclusively for the Definitive Edition. Actually, I would advise you to pay attention to the premium edition of the game, taking into account its cost - in the PlayStation Store it currently costs 1499 hryvnias, the rationality of purchasing the regular version looks questionable.

Moreover, the standard edition does not include a completely new campaign, The Three Kingdoms, based on a classic 14th-century Chinese novel that tells the story of the collapse of the state into three empires: Wei, Shu, and Wu. It is interesting because it not only adds new civilizations to the game, as was usually the case, but also makes significant changes to the gameplay. If most of the campaigns in the Definitive Edition are classic RTS, then "Three Kingdoms" is closer to more modern heroic strategies, with unique abilities of key characters, player choices that affect subsequent events, and a better-developed plot.

The amount of what Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition offers is mind-boggling – over 30 historical campaigns, over 200 scenarios, 45 unique civilizations, and that’s just the main mode, as the game also includes Return of Rome, a sort of game-within-a-game, and in fact a kind of remake of the first part. This mode gives access to four classic campaigns and three new ones, allows you to play as factions from Age of Empires I and use the Romans in the main AoE II mode. Thus, the total number of civilizations increases to an impressive 62, and it’s still a bit difficult for me to comprehend this, because, sorry, in some racing games the fleet is smaller.

But with all this heap of content there is one unpleasant nuance – you can literally get lost in the main menu, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition gives you the opportunity to play as anyone, in any sequence, so the number of menus and submenus is going up. What will you have – the main mode, Return of Rome, Chronicles: Battle for Greece? Main? Single-player, cooperative campaigns, multiplayer, mods? Single-player? Okay, quick play or campaigns? European campaigns, historical battles, Victors and Vanquishers, Three Kingdoms, The Art of War, maybe another cooperative? And, pay attention, the bumpers allow you to move between maps, we still have campaigns there. By the way, I learned about the latter much later than I am ready to admit.

When I finally got to the game itself, I found that my concerns about porting such a large-scale strategy to a console were justified, albeit partially. William Wallace's campaign, which serves as a lengthy tutorial here, teaches the player both the basics of the gameplay and, in fact, the specifics of controlling with a controller, and this is where some nuances appear.

There are not many questions about the interface in general, but they are there. Although it was obviously enlarged for playing on a TV, it remained quite convenient, but not ideal. Sometimes it is too informative, the number of messages displayed on the screen is excessive, which can lead to missing really important information. For example, to understand why certain functions sometimes appear, sometimes disappear, I had to google it and it turned out that the game actually has two interface options and the functionality is different in them. Did the game notify about this? I tend to think so, but I'm not sure. Also, the description of some units does not fit in the information window, and therefore the text in it scrolls cyclically, and at a faster speed than necessary. As a result, getting acquainted with the features of unknown units is a task with an asterisk and not very pleasant.

Everything related to building bases, quickly switching between them, upgrades and generally "managing the farm" is done perfectly, after a few scenarios I got used to it and performed these tasks with ease. Radial menus for selecting buildings and research, quick commands via the D-pad, all of this works great, especially when you don't expect an instant reaction to something that requires immediate intervention.

I would especially like to note the ability to quickly manage resource extraction in the simplified version of the Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition interface. In just two clicks, you can assign one of the available templates to your villagers and forget about resource management for a while. Of the minuses, this version of the interface does not have the ability to combine military units into groups with quick access. In general. Here you can hold down left on the crosshair and the game will automatically form a group of some 60 units, which you can give commands to. The keyword is some. Is it possible to easily change the composition of this group? No. Is it possible to send this group to perform a task and form another one in the same way? No again.

To do this, you need to switch to the advanced interface, in which there are no priority presets for villagers, but there is an opportunity to form groups of units, as well as a function whose importance cannot be overestimated - the chain of commands. Again, with a few button presses you can give a peasant the task of building a series of buildings, after which they start collecting a certain resource, or send an army to a certain point, order it to attack the enemy, after which they proceed to patrol a certain area. Playing without using chains of commands is, of course, possible, but it is a bit difficult, especially considering the problems with unit microcontrol.

Even after 30 hours in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, I still found it inconvenient to quickly select both individual types of troops through the radial menu and one specific unit from a group because the game "helps" to move the cursor and as a result it simply sticks to the nearest unit with the largest hitbox. Until I developed the habit of controlling at least groups of units with correctly selected formations and behavior models, it was completely sad, because I had to fight according to the principle of "we are advancing somewhere there, it's a pity that in the process a third of the army decided to pursue a random enemy and heroically died from the fire of enemy towers."

Add to this the rather slow scrolling of the map using the stick and we understand that there can be no question of any prompt response to changes in the situation on the playing field. Of course, it's all a matter of habit and if I had spent a few months in the game, as I did in the original, things would have gone much better, but so far I can't say that I've gotten used to the controls enough to move on to higher difficulty levels or, even more so, go into a multiplayer game. But if you're brave enough, then in addition to co-op for up to 4 players in campaigns and against AI, cross-platform play with PC and Xbox users is also waiting for you.

Of course, I didn't have time to try out all the available campaigns and civilizations, it would take hundreds of hours without exaggeration, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is huge, and it's worth noting that although the difference between civilizations is present, they are not full-fledged separate factions, they are more like variations of one framework. Someone has stronger cavalry, someone relies on infantry and fortifications, some have unique (not only from a visual point of view) units, others have fast army recruitment, a strong fleet or agriculture. However, these variations, as well as technological features, are enough to make playing as the conditional Vikings noticeably different from playing as the Aztecs, so each new campaign is not similar to the previous one.

I would also like to mention the uneven difficulty between different missions. Some tasks may be too easy, while the difficulty of others is off the charts, and not always justified. Suddenly overly aggressive AI, limited resources, which the player is not yet aware of, on the contrary, unlimited resources from the computer opponent, the need to attack in several directions, while trying to simultaneously repel waves of enemy units that the latter spams without interruption - these are some of the problems that you have to face.

Sometimes it's worth doing a test game to understand which of the enemies is developing and decide who to "take out" first. It turns out a kind of puzzle with many unknowns where the win depends not so much on the player's skills as on whether he knows the enemy's behavior pattern in this particular mission. All this not only complicates the passage of missions, but also drags them out - you can spend more than three hours on a mission, understand its specifics on the second attempt and win in half an hour.

From a technical point of view, everything is fine with the game - the updated textures and animations in 4K look natural and harmonious, without the dissonance typical of many remasters, when modern graphics contrast sharply with the old design and stand out from the general style. It seems as if the game has always looked this way, and this indicates that the artists did everything right. I personally did not encounter any bugs or crashes.

The developers claim that the music and voice acting have also been remastered, but I've been playing the original game for too long to notice the difference. The same can be said about the use of Dual Sense features. It is stated that haptic feedback notifies about key events, such as the completion of research, the destruction of a building, or has separate types of vibrations for different types of siege machines, but if it weren't for these statements, I would hardly have felt its presence at all. But what is noticeable is the improved algorithms for finding ways to move units, which old strategies always had problems with.

Overall, despite some drawbacks, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition turned out to be a pleasant surprise, you can get lost in this game for a very long time, and in general, against the background of the general shortage of new RTSs, the trend of releasing good remasters of classic, time-tested games cannot but please.