They collaborated with Native American and First Nations – in this case the Lakota and Haudenosaunee Nations – in an effort to set right what the original game got wrong. Serious changes have been made in regards to the game’s representation of indigenous civilisations and the depiction of events and people from American history. That said, you’re told about one of the most impressive features of Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition the moment it loads up, and it’s far from granular. That’s the level of granular upgrades you can expect from this. You know this is a well thought out Definitive Edition when you’re given an option of three different, era-specific UIs to choose from as you boot up the game. Fifteen years have passed, and those enhancements are being enhanced themselves, and while it feels like a classic, or even typical example of the genre, there’s something so comfortable about sinking into the welcoming arms of an Age of Empires game. While the fundamental RTS action remains relatively unchanged from the very first game in the series, Age of Empires III saw improvements and enhancements that at the time kept it very much at the top of the RTS genre.

Now, with the Definitive Edition, developers Forgotten Empires and Tantalus Media have pulled all of those elements together, while giving the whole thing a fresh scrub for modern eyes and modern monitors.

The original release was followed by both The WarChiefs and The Asian Dynasties DLC, adding new campaigns to the package. The third game in the series, Age of Empires III, originally appeared some fifteen years ago, taking all of that classic resource clicking to new heights, bringing in a multi-generational campaign, cutting edge graphics, and an array of new civilisations including Native Americans. I have a nasty feeling it’s harder to mine gold than they make it look, though. Hell, if the apocalypse happens – and we shouldn’t discount that – Age of Empires will have taught me all of things a working settlement needs. I didn’t realise it at the time, but everything it was teaching me about both history and real time strategy would serve me well throughout my life, even if it did get in the way of my homework. In our 1997-flavoured family home, and its newly acquired PC (for school work obviously), the original Empires game was king. In the increasingly distant gaming past, the Age of Empires series was the be-all and end-all of PC real time strategy games me.

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