With your father, the Emperor, dead and your empire fallen, you must set out to rebuild what has been destroyed. Beginning with a small handful of loyal troops, Age of Empires Mobile from developer TiMi tasks players with restoring their proud empire through tempered progress and the aid of heroes from throughout history.
The breadth and scope of mobile game offerings have been expanding over the last few years. From digital card games to epic open-world adventures and versions of PC classics made from the ground up for the devices, what it means to be a mobile game has grown. Coming off a recent grand strategy outing, I was intrigued by the opportunity to see what Age of Empires Mobile might bring to the ever-changing mobile market and how it would adapt the grand scale of 4x strategy to the small screen. Rather than something new and surprising, I found something reminiscent of an earlier mobile era.
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The core base-building mechanic will be familiar to any long-time mobile gamer. Players construct buildings using materials that are harvested from the world. Both harvesting and construction take time to complete. These wait periods can go from minutes to hours for some larger projects. Wait times can be skipped if players have a special resource or are willing to buy it.
Age of Empires Mobile makes sure not to leave players lost in its game, as the player progresses the interface will smoothly walk them through what objectives they need to complete next. Simply clicking on a drop-down menu entry on the left-hand side of the screen will jump the player to wherever they need to go next in the game. While the system does a great job of pointing out what players must do next, it never explains why. Most reasons are discernable enough with a quick screen scan, but it would be nice if some elements were more clearly spelled out.
As the player levels up their empire, the game updates their structures with new looks, showing them advance through the ages. These periodic cinematic moments give a nice feeling of accomplishment when milestones are reached.
Once a player’s empire reaches a certain point, other players can show up to attack them. I never personally experienced this circumstance so I can’t say how devastating an attack can be, but the player is offered temporary shields they can use to safe guard their empire from unfriendly opponents.
Along with the click-and-wait empire construction, Age of Empires Mobile also strives to deliver some tactical combat for would-be emperors to cut their teeth on. While there are a couple of different styles of engagement players can expect, none of them are overly deep or challenging. Units exist within a standard strengths wheel where each of the four types is strong against one of the others while also weak to one. However, it should be noted that a unit a few levels over an opponent can just power through an unfavorable matchup. While one may think that winning battles will level up troops, that is not the case. In the time-tested mobile tradition, special resources must be spent to level up troops within the game—another thing to be earned or bought.
The other combat element is the legendary figures that can be assigned to lead each unit. Famous personalities from history can be claimed through a gacha/loot box system. These leaders come with special abilities and talents that can be unlocked through the expenditure of special resources. Much like leveling your empire, gaining a new hero comes with a fun cinematic sequence.
I was impressed with the detail in character designs that go into the numerous personalities that can be summoned. Once the battle begins, things play out automatically, with the player having no active input in the battle. Every battle I played through never lasted more than a minute, and outcomes were easily predicted.
The third element of Age of Empires Mobile’s offering is its alliances. Players can join an alliance to gain aid from others and participate in larger events that will task them with lending their military might to defeat rival alliances. These events offered the biggest rewards, so players wanting to get the most from the game will probably want to join a guild once they unlock the option.
After all that, you may wonder how generous Age of Empires Mobile is with all these resources necessary to keep an empire running. The build I played used a setup with unlimited resources to facilitate quick progress through the game. So exactly how long players will have to wait to progress through the game the old-fashioned way is something hard for me to comment on. But from when I had to access my large stores of backup items, I guess that players will have some solid wait times as they gather the resources necessary to advance their empires once they get a little way in.
When I consider the experience I’ve had playing Age of Empires Mobile, I can only think of one kind of player getting a lot out of it. Fans of the franchise who don’t have time to invest the numerous hours the core games demand may find some enjoyment in doing some quick clicks throughout the day when they can spare a minute. If you can be patient, you may find some small thrills in watching your empire grow as you get some que up an upgrade on lunch breaks or during quiet evenings. For anyone else though, this experience will probably be a pass if it releases as it is now.
Age of Empires Mobile is slated to come to mobile devices on October 31st.
