I never played the original Age of Empires. However, I did play Age of Empires II, both The Age of Kings and The Conquerors expansion. AOE2 is one of my all-time favorite real-time strategy games. I even played Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, which used the same game engine as AOE2. I received Age of Empires III for my birthday last year and finally got around to playing it.

AOE3 had one large campaign similar to Age of Mythology, rather than the multiple historical campaigns of AOE2.The single player campaign started in the late sixteenth century and finished in the nineteenth century. Much of it took place in the western hemisphere. It told a fictional story of the Black family and its fight against the Circle of Ossus over several generations. The story had three Acts entitled Blood, Ice, and Steel. The three protagonists were Morgan Black, John Black, and Amelia Black, respectively. One new game concept introduced in AOE3 was the home city. There, you choose cards to add to your deck. The cards provide various units and enhancement, which ship from your home city to town centers or forts. It reminded me of Rise of Nations, which also had the touches of a board game.

The graphics were much improved over AOE2, which was fitting for a game six years newer. Surprisingly, it felt quite a bit easier than AOE2 on the normal difficulty level. Overall, I found the game very enjoyable, as I knew I would. AOE3 has two expansions: The War Chiefs and The Asian Dynasties. I am interested in buying them to continue the fine AOE3 series.

After a full month of play, I finished Geneforge 3 yesterday. I’ve really enjoyed this series, having played three out of five entries. I played a shaper in Geneforge and I played an agent in Geneforge 2. This time, I played a guardian, the third character class choice. As expected, my guardian Dakro (another default name) was a beast in melee. Instead of creating lots of creatures or casting lots of spells, Dakro focused on melee attacks, missile attacks, and healing. Tactically, playing a guardian was a different experience. I pretty much avoided spellcasting with the exception of healing and low level blessing magic. I didn’t put a lot of skill points into my shaping magic, either. Therefore, I didn’t have much help and went through much of the game solo. When I really needed some assistance, I created some fyoras to fight with me.

The setting for Geneforge 3 was the Ashen Isles. As before, you start off as an apprentice shaper. Your character survives an attack against the shaping school on Greenwood Isle and the plot is set in motion. By the end of the game, you have visited all five of the islands in the chain. Overall, Geneforge 3 played pretty similarly to Geneforge 2. Once again, it ended with a cliffhanger, which nicely sets up Geneforge 4: Rebellion. For now, I will take a break from the Geneforge series to play some other games. I’m very interested to see how the series finishes, however, so I will return to it before too long.