I was never I fan of Age of Empires series and I have only played the first and second editions of this history in the company of friends. Now I was gifted with AOE 3 which I’ve been playing for about two month now. What a difference from the previous versions. Now you are taken to the America discovery period, something between 1500 and 1850, continuing the medieval era from AOE 2 and the first steps from the stone age of the first release. You will find the same way of playing when you have to explore the map, find resources, build facilities and train units. But you now have new ways to get resources (any kind) that may come from the home land to your colony and also from Indian present in the maps. The more experience your colony gets the more you receive from the main centre. You can play as one of eight civs, chosen among British, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and others. Of course, each civ has its own way to develop and strengths. You now have a much better balanced game with many different strategies and options available.
The audio is good and the graphics are really amazing and we can notice how much improved they are. We have to say that is recommended a good graphic card to take advantage of that and have a pleasant game playing. There is some new stuff in this version like the possibility to make alliance with local Indians and to choose a correct place to build an improvement. Depending of the local the improvement it will perform different regarding to resources and people reaction. There is also the presence of a Hero that never dies that has some special abilities and is good for exploring. A hero can also kill a enemy with a single shot (special ability) and once used it takes a time to regain this ability.
There is no much difference regarding the rest of the units but now you can train groups of units. Soldiers also can make special formations like during an attack to be more tactical. For those who like multiplayer the game is great with all functions to make a good experience playing against other players and not the computer.
The bottom line is that the game is very well balanced in all features and can make the fans pleased and also make new fans for those that never played any of AOE.