Keep in mind with the Definitive Edition clips they're a bit more crisp before screen capturing / running it through video editor software / uploading it to UA-cam. Some of the zoomed out clips are a bit blurrier here than they looked on my screen while playing.
@@GreenTimeEagle In Brazil, it is called capivara. I have also never heard of "carpincho", the Spanish word, but wikipedia says it is also used in some parts of Southern Brazil, due proximity to the border of Spanish speaking countries.
Yeah, that was what they were upgrading. They definitely pulled it off but I don't really feel like they needed to, but ok cool. Colors are more vivid now, that's for sure.
Not sure how i feel about the ships not breaking apart as much when they get shot, but pretty much everything else here looks great. Obviously the change was never gonna feel as big as Age 1 and 2, since those games didnt use 3d models in the originals and Age 3 did, but i think they've done a great job getting it to look more modern, without messing up the original artstyle/lighting/colours.
I dont agree, overall it looks more like a downgrade, like any DE so far. You cant even play a TG in aoe2 DE without a drop in 33% of all games, or you simply have to play maps you dont want to play or get unfair teams
The way ships get destroyed now makes me feel like they wanted it to be clear that the ship is destroyed. That's what I dislike about AOE2, destruction time takes so long and while it lasts the building is still considered "alive".
@@Cra3ier From the artistic point of view sure, but not when you play a fast paced game, especially on higher level. You want things to be as clear as possible.
To me it looks like the destruction animations on ships and buildings have been sped up, which I'm not sure I'm a fan of. Destroying buildings felt so satisfying in AoE3 because of the destruction animations and sound effects, and tbh I think the original still looks pretty good by today's standards.
I prefer the new sped up animations because I always have difficulty determining exactly when a ship is destroyed. To me this makes it way more obvious which is a nice QoL change when it matters in those close navel battles
My older computer (for some reason) would grind to a halt if a ship piece broke. Only in ships, not buildings. Also, deactivating the feature (i believe the option was 'High-poly models' or something like that) would eliminate this weird performance bug. I had to literally move the screen to a mill or something for it to recover the framerate over about 30 seconds. I'm guessing they downgraded it because they could not fix this problem, whatever it was
Nah, believe me I was close beta tester, when you have it in your hands you will know... It feels like a downgrade in many ways in the graphic section... You would be re-buying the game just for some "DLC's" with some new factions and modes like "Art of war" and such...
i think it has something to do with realism imagine losing your sales, how will the ship move on water? there are no motors or paddles... unless they add a mechanic that makes the ship unable to move until repaired, i see why they did that
I believe it's just temporary. They'll probably add it in the future. AoE 2 also had vanishing arrows when they hit the ground. But later, they fixed it that the arrow is still sticking on the ground when they hit no unit.
they do break apart, it's just that the breakage isn't as visible due to the explosions covering them up, but you'll see that the bits are still missing and flying off etc
I prefer the old graphics a lot more. If they had just optimized the game better (as the original game looks beautiful at max settings) and increased texture resolution I would be much happier.
I bought aoe3 on sale a while back but never played. I’ve been binging over the last week and only now at 30 hours I’m realising it’s not the definitive edition. After playing Warcraft 3 reforged I realised remakes / remasters aren’t needed for games we already loved! Sure, it’s a welcome addition if it’s a game we’ve never played, but for those games that hold nostalgic value, the originals are great. I’ll be refraining from buying DE. AoE 4 next week baby!
As someone who has played Age of Empires 3 since 2009, I feel that the graphics are visually less pixelated than the original, but it is SO MUCH HARDER to tell units apart. The colours all seem to blend together and become a soupy mess than in the original. Overall I don't like them and really hope they improve them in the future. It feels like they designed the graphics with a close-up perspective in mind rather than a top-down perspective.
It's much better for me hahahhaha For some reason when I play AoE III ships and buildings just turn transparent and fade, I had no idea gradual destruction was a thing
I just played a few games in aoe3 with camera set in very far, some maps have higher elevation so there are times it does feel like you are close still
Some occasional gunpowder keg explosions (like the critical hit) would have been a fun surprise, but overall I preferred the previous ships getting picked apart.
Same here. I see that a lot of people in the comments didn't like it, but one of my favorite aspects of the AoE3 look was how bright and sunny everything was. It gives the game a nice, cheerful atmosphere that I really enjoyed. They really dialled that back in the DE to the point that the game looks too dark and gloomy for my taste now (e.g. I much prefer 4:40 vs 4:45).
@@tibor29 this exactly!! DE looks so gloomy and for me it makes it harder to tell which unit is which. I liked AOE3 because it's easy to differentiate units.
The old graphics were more yellow and had more light in them. Also there was a tender fog in the AOR 3 Original that the DE doesn't have. Also in the DE the colors are darker. The blacks part of the draws and shadows are way deeper, so much that it feels not real. The colors of the players are very satudared in the DE so much to the point they feel artificial, but in the Original the colors of the players were a little paler almost like if they blended with the buildings themselves. Also the fact they added 3d grass is a massive downgrade instead of an upgrade, because when you get too far from the floor the grass disappear and when you get closer it appears back, bad animation there. Also the Tabs, Menus, mini map and key codes are harder. to play and less appealing in their presentation. I like more the original menu because it was like a rusty old wood table, instead of the new that is like a Excel MAtrix that feels off in this game really.
It felt like the art direction for this game did little to upgrade the graphics, choosing instead to preserve them. Which is a fair approach... The few points in which they did add novel effects such as in the water and fire, in the later, I actually felt like destruction often carried less "weight". It's like the original game was nicely tuned so that when a ship was hit or something blew it felt big, and really brought through the "ground trembling" effect. Now everything feels lighter, faster, and a bit more arcady. Less cinematic. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily an objectively better experience.
@@zeroomega3781 At least they (the engines) project greater power, as seen through the building's destruction animations, in AoE 1 DE. In AoE 3 DE, buildings and ships fall straight into the ground like they multiplied the gravity by 100 times. They really fucked it up. Starcraft 2 is competitive as ever, and you don't see them disabling destruction physics and animations "for gameplay purposes". And I have yet to hear asians complain that "it ruins the competitive aspect of the game".
When you are fully zoomed out, 1080p and all effects maxed the original Complete Edition (with both add-ons) still looks pretty good to be honest. It's not as much of a jump as I expected, I'd say people who'll profit the most are players with higher screen resolutions and people who play the campaign (cutscenes).
Well the thing is, AOE3 had incredible shaders, I'd say it's safe to say there's no game out there that can compare with Shader Quality from 2005. That's what made it look so great, it made the game atmospheric and bright, vivid. So with DE they have improved on the shaders but there's only so much you can improve on something that's already good, where the game excels is the close-up details, as those are the only places where the new details can be properly seen. Everything is much higher poly and much more detailed, the textures are a higher resolution, the particle FX are all higher quality and now we have actual grass and foliage models rather than a muddied-up texture as seen at 1:50. The reason why the jump here isn't as prominent here as in AOE2 and AOE1 are because those two had no shaders whatsoever, no atmospheric value and the units weren't even polygonal characters, they were pixel-characters. So we went from no shaders and pixel-models to high-detail 3D models with HD Textures and Atmospheric Lighting and FX, that's why the difference was so prominent.
When it's not zoomed in i dont even see the difference. Which means in game i never will. Huge question for me is whether they nerfed iro (whatever they are called now) and if spain's age 3 shipments got buffed to vanilla levels again
Fantastic to see you playing aoe3. Really hope you stay with it even though don't expect as much/many as your aoe3 vids which are very impressive. So in depth
I really dislike how they changed ships. The "explosion" looks all too quick and seeing ships dismantled looks nice and serves as indicator of the units health. This would also have been nice to have wounded soldiers show bandages or limping. And they could have made the buildings catch fire if they torch them. DE looks good, but somewhat less impressive then on the other 2.
You are right, the original game looks better. The colours in the DE version does not blend really well. You can see the Japanese town centre from the original one and the DE version, it just looks cartoony. They should have gone with darker tones in the game which would have made everything look nicer.
@@jakubSwaps yet, visuals can be very important peripheral information, especially for more experienced players. At some point it becomes functional benefit
The fact is that the original AoE3 had great graphic for a RTS of his time and was optimised like hell compared to most games of that same time. During those years, my computer lagged a lot on SC2 demo and AoE3 runned without a lag, and when you look at the space games take on you computer, you see how compact the game is compared to others.
@@comandantethorn9929 Shaders are a part of graphic though? Also, yeah, unit are quite cubic if you look at them close, but you never do so and buildings and ships are quide detailed. Also, 'for a RTS of his time'. Among the RTS of that year, you find Warhammer 40k Dawn of War: Winter Assault, Empire Earth II, Stronghold II and Cosac II: Napoleonic Wars. . Yes, you can say that in Dawn of War that the unit themselves are more detailed, but they are also closer and NEED to be more detailed, even more so because of the targeted customers. But just look at the units of Empire Earth 2: you can find unit whose arms arent even properly attached to the body, and most unit are even more cubic than that. Stronghold 2 doesn't have as mush details ont theirs units. As for Cosac II: Napoleonic Wars, I never played it but looking at the image, I'm not even sure it's 3D models. . Thus, I maintain my affirmation: for a 15 years old game, it HAS great graphic.
I never understood why people play w/ a soundtrack it's the first setting I change when I first install the game. Just not my preference but to each their own! Cheers all and stay safe!
@@CraigH999 I played a huge chunk of my childhood of Age 2 without knowing it had music. Only started using the music during the HD edition, prefer it either ways. The first AoE though, I had music on, it was cheesy but fun mixed with the game's other sound effects.
Hm, they could have fixed the collision detection between ships. It still bothers me that ships can sail right into another. I know water space is sparse, but it looks wrong. Also the design of the frigate and monitor are still too chubby for my liking.
They could fix so many thing they didn't xD.... (IA pathfinding is as stupid as it was then also, you may still found situations where villagers are going all around to get to something that was right next to them)
Removing the heavy "bloom" filter the original had already makes this a big upgrade IMO. Everything looks so much more crisp and visually "readable" now. The ship destruction though... I wish I knew why they changed it this way. I'm guessing the chunks flying out look jarring with the new more detailed graphics, and manually animating it "plank by plank" was too much work, or simulating the physics in enough detail using the AoE3 Havok engine might still be too hardware intensive.
16gb of RAM and 4GB VRAM is gonna be pretty steep for a lot of people. That's more than most FPS require. R6 siege for example only recommends 8gb RAM and 2GB VRAM. Those requirements are a tall order for a game most of us are only somewhat interested in to begin with
Age 3 was always a pretty game to look at back when it released. This is just a bit more polish on it. Thanks for the video Spirit, though I would have liked a cannon killing units comparison.
When I was playing the original version as a kid, I always loved to read about the history of each unit. When you had a unit selected you could click on a button with - and it would show up a page with historical information about each unit. Is it still present in DE?
I gotta say... in that direct comparison shot with the cherry bushes I'd prefer the old one. AoE3 uses a lot of bloom effect, sucessfully covering inadequacies in the model and texture resolutions. AoE3:DE doesn't have that and even though the graphics are better, it still looks nicer with bloom IMO. Of course, the close-up on the units is a no brainer and I was actually shocked to see that the first image you showed was DE already, when I assumed it was the classic... you certainly sum it up nicely by saying that DE now feels like the classic did back in the days. However, you never really zoom in that close in actual gameplay and with the ability to actually zoom out further (omg, we really never were able to zoom out further than THAT???) I would be looking at my units from even farther away than I used to do.
while excited for DE and i did preorder it because aoe3 is my favourite RTS game of all time, i think this comparison video just shows how exceptionally gorgeous aoe3 was and still is rather than showing how much of an improvement the new stuff is tbh
if you pause at 2:19... i personally think the old version looks way better. sure DE might have more detail etc. but the overall picture just looks worse (less clean, less clear and more blurry)
honestly, i've got the opposite opinion - i get it might be annoying to some people, but i kinda like how much bloom AOE3 had. was the bloom a _good_ idea? no. did i like how it looked anyway? Yeah maybe they'll add a toggle for it, or something. that's probably wishful thinking though
@@mozarteanchaos Bruce Shelley, one of the creators of the Age series, once said that one of the things that set Age apart from the other RTS' - both of its time and those that came after - is how in the world of Age the sun is always shining bright without washing way the colours. This gives the games a somewhat cheerful feel. Age 3 was the brightest of the bunch in no small part because of the bloom effects. I may dislike how much bloom there was but I also hope that they leave options to have it.
@@mozarteanchaos It's use of bloom is terrible. Bloom is supposed to be applied selectively, whereas AO3 kinda just sticks it over everything. Bloom looks good if it's limited to things like fire, or the shiniest parts of metal, etc.
the removal of the OG's painterly bloom and light effects is such a killer for me. i get that everyone wants maximum image clarity these days but i much prefer the older, more stylized aesthetic to the newer, sterile one.
True, bloom is crucaial part of the game atmosphere, but i can't find any complains on that besides your comment :( What's also bad is that bloom is in settings, but even if its enabled in options, game still has no bloom.
the worse ship destruction is in line with the demolition ships in Age of Empires 2 in the original they burst apart, which looked amazing in Definitive instead some odd fire shape grows from them, with fire that looks like it was taken from a game with completely different artstyle
Hey you should start making more videos of age of empires 3 like you made for aoe2, like civ reviews and all. I personally prefer aoe3 so it would be nice to have a dedicated channel like yours helping with strategies and information!
My only complain about the new UI is that it doesnt show the type and amount of units you have selected when you selecte an army of different units...it will just show that you have for example 40 mustekteers but if your army has 10 longbowmen, you have no way of knowing it, unless you see them with your eyes!! That could be a problem when you want to select a unit to perform a speciphic action or use an ability and you cant find it in the chaos of the battle.
I would say the graphics look about 10% better at a maximum but require very high specs of a high range 2020 laptop (for a game release 15 years ago) What is going on? No way should those lacklustre improvements in graphics require such high hardware requirements
wdym the graphics are absolutely 100% better, the original literally had the same texture level as warcraft 3, it only had really good shaders that make them look good, look at any specific unit and youll see te real difference
To be fair, he says fairly good. Ram has also lowered in price recently as well as being a necessity for video editing and the like. I'm more surprised the 2080 Super is considered only "fairly good". I'm sitting here trying to render on my 1060 lamo
It's funny people who aren't necessarily into hardware always notice the ram amount first. That's not meant to be a jab, I just see it a lot. RAM is really not that important for games and the 32GB isn't actually very telling about his PC anyway. He's got a really solid system in general either way.
I mean at this point 16 GB of RAM is rapidly becoming the new standard... It is weird though, we're at the point where 4GB Ram laptops are still commonly available but the high end is at 32gb. I guess his CPU is an 8 corer though... I'm an AMD guy so I don't keep track of the Intel/Nvidia side of things
0:56 To clarify this briefly, it's just the difference between 2D Sprites and 3D polygons. Age of Empires 3 do not "does this". It's the same with any other 2D / 3D game. It's just not possible to not zoom out on 2D sprites. Maybe if you put one pixel into 4 or something, or with other rendering techniques like AA. But not native
@@SpiritOfTheLaw Hey cool that you discovered my comment. I hope I could explain it well. It's just that you can display a 3D polygon in any resolution and a 2D sprite cannot. And by the way I like your content very much, I hope you continue to be successful with it
Zooming out was always a pain. In original AoE III I've used mod/.ini mod (can't remember) to increase it 20-40%. Great to see it being here and game- optimized for it. OG certainly wasn't.
Looks like a lot of people agree. I never quite understood having a sharp, crisp image and then willingly blurring it to shit with 16x anti-aliasing at a high cost to fps. Clarity for me was always preferable to cluttering the scene with as many polygons as you can, especially for strategy games.
am i the only one who thinks the units are actually harder to see in DE... idk it feels like there is something about their out line that makes them blend in the ground texture ... maybe its just me yes they look better but on a gameplay stand point it feels weird
Yeah, my guess is also on the ground. The detailed grass especially is very distracting for the eyes. It might be smart to turn down some of the graphic settings, at least when playing online.
But in real life if you blew off a mast that made it very difficult for the ship to move. That isn't true in the game, right? Losing the mast is just cosmetic.
4:28 Very glad they reworked that cathedral in Lisbon from the Italian Gothic style similar to something you would find in Florence, to a proper Iberian Late-Romanesque, similar to the actual Lisbon Cathedral c8.alamy.com/comp/RKGB9R/lisbon-front-view-of-santa-maria-maior-cathedral-of-lisbon-portugal-nobody-RKGB9R.jpg Also, glad they got rid of the weird opressive yellow colour and went for a brighter paler approach. Lisbon is a very bright white city, not a very yellow/golden looking one.
AoE 3 DE just has green everywhere, it's hard on the eyes. The vannila has much better colour combination. Light green grass mixed in with yellow dry grass, that was so beautiful. At 2:25, you can see it. And btw, no one's gonna zoom in that much. The only thing good was the new train and unit models.
In AoE 3 there is a setting to change the camera distanfe making it so that you can see 3x more I think that the some portraits of the u its look worst compared to the original, for example being Hoop throwers, in the original they look like they have a gray mask with red eyes, making them look menacing af
Looking at 1:56 It took me looking at the top left to see which one was the new game, they look so close, and in the case of the cherry blossom trees, the old graphics just look better for them.
Graphics are great but the new sound effects are hit or miss. The mining sound in particular is really bad. Some bright spark on the sound design team thought that a pickaxe hitting solid rock sounds like the world's tiniest tinkling glass bell.
The huge graphics requirements are a big issue for me. I'm playing on a 970 and can enjoy AOE 2 DE just fine but this game looks like it won't run well
Extreme Earth yes it’s in-game matchmaking with a queue and everything. All within the game on steam. No Voobly or whatever. Lots of players. It’s great. There is also a server browser.
That's awesome that the devs/designers addressed the 2 biggest problems with the original: Zoomed too far in and too much of screen covered by huge UI.
I would not mind having super zoom out like in Supreme Commander. You do not play at that zoom level. But you do use it to navigate around the battlefield in that game. It is very nice. And it comes natural just to zoom in to watch the pretty units to.
I never managed to get into AoE3 apart from enjoying the campaign a decent amount as a kid. Would love to see more coverage of it, might even end up getting into it that way. :)
I find high res more difficult to see who owns what units and unit type so play on lower res to enhance the distinction. This also really really applies on watching replays. Edit added bonus of snappier ie more responsive system.
As an Age of serie fan, I am gonna buy it, but, unfortunately, I don't like those graphics (contrary to the AoE 2 DE). It looks darker, I don't like the loss of physics on buildings, as well as the new way ships are sinking... The only thing I like about it is the add of Sweden.
Im liking and commenting on all your aoe3 related videos purely because you do amazing videos and i love aoe3 and im hoping you will cover some aoe3 maths and strats while the de is booming.
AOE3 compensated a lot with bloom, it's good that they cut that out. but that's what makes optimized performance now sometimes look 'not as impressive' untill you realize it was bloom all along that made AOE3 look that way.
The only graphical downside is the ship destruction, such a shame. Don't get me wrong, the new effects look good as well but not as good or satisfying as the old one.
Keep in mind with the Definitive Edition clips they're a bit more crisp before screen capturing / running it through video editor software / uploading it to UA-cam. Some of the zoomed out clips are a bit blurrier here than they looked on my screen while playing.
very sad that you don't have 1tb ram or 1 petabyte of pcie 5.0 nvme storage and rtx 3090 with nvlink
really sad that you don't have 50k dollar gaming pc
So the in game video is more crips ?
@@kyle259 because that's its base clock?
fairly good...... focking fight me m8 :p
There's a distressing lack of capybara comparisons.
Ikr, considering how long we wait for 4K capybara.
Or as we cultured people call them
Carpincho
@@thessop9439 my Brazilian girlfriend didn't know this word. Is it from Spanish speaking Latin countries?
@@Lucius4992 Thanks
@@GreenTimeEagle In Brazil, it is called capivara. I have also never heard of "carpincho", the Spanish word, but wikipedia says it is also used in some parts of Southern Brazil, due proximity to the border of Spanish speaking countries.
Me: WOW, this is so beautiful!
*Switches to the DE shot
Me: Oh, that was the original
Lol yeah
AoE3 was a genuinely great looking game for it's time. Especially the water.
Yeah, that was what they were upgrading. They definitely pulled it off but I don't really feel like they needed to, but ok cool. Colors are more vivid now, that's for sure.
1:56 there original look SO Much better than DE
@@GarfieldRex If you have a fetish for overdone bloom, sure.
Not sure how i feel about the ships not breaking apart as much when they get shot, but pretty much everything else here looks great. Obviously the change was never gonna feel as big as Age 1 and 2, since those games didnt use 3d models in the originals and Age 3 did, but i think they've done a great job getting it to look more modern, without messing up the original artstyle/lighting/colours.
I dont agree, overall it looks more like a downgrade, like any DE so far. You cant even play a TG in aoe2 DE without a drop in 33% of all games, or you simply have to play maps you dont want to play or get unfair teams
@@WhiteSharks-wz6kn that's totally not what OP was talking about
The way ships get destroyed now makes me feel like they wanted it to be clear that the ship is destroyed. That's what I dislike about AOE2, destruction time takes so long and while it lasts the building is still considered "alive".
@@kesiazezebajki1982 I loved the slow building destruction in Aoe2DE. It's GOLD!!
@@Cra3ier From the artistic point of view sure, but not when you play a fast paced game, especially on higher level. You want things to be as clear as possible.
To me it looks like the destruction animations on ships and buildings have been sped up, which I'm not sure I'm a fan of. Destroying buildings felt so satisfying in AoE3 because of the destruction animations and sound effects, and tbh I think the original still looks pretty good by today's standards.
I prefer the new sped up animations because I always have difficulty determining exactly when a ship is destroyed. To me this makes it way more obvious which is a nice QoL change when it matters in those close navel battles
@@wolvbeast1849 its a change of 1 second
Ship explosions dont look quite right in DE, the masts just sink into the water straight up, as if the devs forgot to apply physics to them
I think it's probably a performance thing.
Iron shot exploding as it hits masts and hull also looks very stupid
The particle effects are all a downgrade
100% Downgrade
Looks downgraded yep, this confirms it.
Less chunks of ships should get damaged and i think this would be the same to buildings
My older computer (for some reason) would grind to a halt if a ship piece broke. Only in ships, not buildings. Also, deactivating the feature (i believe the option was 'High-poly models' or something like that) would eliminate this weird performance bug.
I had to literally move the screen to a mill or something for it to recover the framerate over about 30 seconds.
I'm guessing they downgraded it because they could not fix this problem, whatever it was
Honestly, aoe 3 de is what I feels when I play aoe 3 when it got released.
Which is what?
@@ishanp3196 Solid. Not bad nor out standing.
Amen to that
Nah, believe me I was close beta tester, when you have it in your hands you will know...
It feels like a downgrade in many ways in the
graphic section...
You would be re-buying the game just for some "DLC's" with some new factions and modes like "Art of war" and such...
@@MagoGuitarrista Agreed now that I have it. They need to smooth out the graphics and performance. It’s kind of trash right now.
Ship destruction is a big step backwards, and I can't understand why they'd do that. Looks pretty bad really. Rest is nice tho.
The effect of the explosion should have just been used for fire ships
Its for clarity during multiplayer.
i think it has something to do with realism
imagine losing your sales, how will the ship move on water? there are no motors or paddles...
unless they add a mechanic that makes the ship unable to move until repaired, i see why they did that
I believe it's just temporary. They'll probably add it in the future. AoE 2 also had vanishing arrows when they hit the ground. But later, they fixed it that the arrow is still sticking on the ground when they hit no unit.
they do break apart, it's just that the breakage isn't as visible due to the explosions covering them up, but you'll see that the bits are still missing and flying off etc
I prefer the old graphics a lot more. If they had just optimized the game better (as the original game looks beautiful at max settings) and increased texture resolution I would be much happier.
the old graphics is way more modern than this de shit
if some one make custom textures the graphics of the old will rock
yea it looks like they've just added a ton of bloom which just makes everything muddy and simplified the graphic effects on stuff
I bought aoe3 on sale a while back but never played.
I’ve been binging over the last week and only now at 30 hours I’m realising it’s not the definitive edition.
After playing Warcraft 3 reforged I realised remakes / remasters aren’t needed for games we already loved! Sure, it’s a welcome addition if it’s a game we’ve never played, but for those games that hold nostalgic value, the originals are great.
I’ll be refraining from buying DE. AoE 4 next week baby!
As someone who has played Age of Empires 3 since 2009, I feel that the graphics are visually less pixelated than the original, but it is SO MUCH HARDER to tell units apart. The colours all seem to blend together and become a soupy mess than in the original. Overall I don't like them and really hope they improve them in the future.
It feels like they designed the graphics with a close-up perspective in mind rather than a top-down perspective.
I think the TAA is at fault here
@@Knorrkator You're correct. Eaglemut recently released a mod that disables TAA and the game looks much better.
@@mitoe0 pls where
The ships not dismantling before sinking is just lame. It looks WAY BETTER in the original.
It's a graphics setting
@@flaviosobbin8274 no it isnt
It's much better for me hahahhaha
For some reason when I play AoE III ships and buildings just turn transparent and fade, I had no idea gradual destruction was a thing
@@ruthswann88 That was caused by a setting. :)
@@ruthswann88 wow i feel bad for you. At least now you can *see something* with this edition
If Lil bombards dont make my enemies fly 20 metres i'm refunding
LMAO I THOUGHT THE SAME THING do they???
i think its the case
I refunded the game after my first match. The definitive edition is underwhelming
@@EngelOCE pathetic....
Ooh I really like those tree textures. Do a video about tree hp.
I'll be honest, I would watch anything sotl puts out.
Wow everyone asks about tree hp. Sounds so important
It’s what the fans want
I’m with @Raspootin, tree hp vid.
Villager: your free trial of living has expired, prepare to be chopped.
You weren't fully zoomed out in the original, gotta change the camera setting to very far.
I just played a few games in aoe3 with camera set in very far, some maps have higher elevation so there are times it does feel like you are close still
@@jayztar25 Yeah, like that snowy-map where the players start each on a mountain ridge, and there is a valley between them.
@@manupainkiller siberia
Some occasional gunpowder keg explosions (like the critical hit) would have been a fun surprise, but overall I preferred the previous ships getting picked apart.
The new ship destruction animations are garbage. What a waste!
Idk but I kinda like or because I came from the aoe1 the Roman expansion
To be honest, there are a lot of aspects to the older graphics that I prefer. Not sure how I feel about this overall.
Same here. I see that a lot of people in the comments didn't like it, but one of my favorite aspects of the AoE3 look was how bright and sunny everything was. It gives the game a nice, cheerful atmosphere that I really enjoyed. They really dialled that back in the DE to the point that the game looks too dark and gloomy for my taste now (e.g. I much prefer 4:40 vs 4:45).
@@tibor29 this exactly!! DE looks so gloomy and for me it makes it harder to tell which unit is which. I liked AOE3 because it's easy to differentiate units.
@@tibor29 it's a different place...
The old graphics were more yellow and had more light in them. Also there was a tender fog in the AOR 3 Original that the DE doesn't have. Also in the DE the colors are darker. The blacks part of the draws and shadows are way deeper, so much that it feels not real. The colors of the players are very satudared in the DE so much to the point they feel artificial, but in the Original the colors of the players were a little paler almost like if they blended with the buildings themselves. Also the fact they added 3d grass is a massive downgrade instead of an upgrade, because when you get too far from the floor the grass disappear and when you get closer it appears back, bad animation there. Also the Tabs, Menus, mini map and key codes are harder. to play and less appealing in their presentation. I like more the original menu because it was like a rusty old wood table, instead of the new that is like a Excel MAtrix that feels off in this game really.
Ah early 2000's, where bloom was all the rage and every surface was like a mirror.
Man if AOM could also get such treatment and I would finally reach peace.
nirvana
yup thats right.
Bro they are making a remaster for it
It felt like the art direction for this game did little to upgrade the graphics, choosing instead to preserve them. Which is a fair approach...
The few points in which they did add novel effects such as in the water and fire, in the later, I actually felt like destruction often carried less "weight". It's like the original game was nicely tuned so that when a ship was hit or something blew it felt big, and really brought through the "ground trembling" effect. Now everything feels lighter, faster, and a bit more arcady. Less cinematic. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily an objectively better experience.
Same thing with aoe 1 de. Siege engines in that game feel weaker as well
@@zeroomega3781 At least they (the engines) project greater power, as seen through the building's destruction animations, in AoE 1 DE.
In AoE 3 DE, buildings and ships fall straight into the ground like they multiplied the gravity by 100 times. They really fucked it up.
Starcraft 2 is competitive as ever, and you don't see them disabling destruction physics and animations "for gameplay purposes". And I have yet to hear asians complain that "it ruins the competitive aspect of the game".
@@manupainkiller I still don't get why they replace the bolt that explodes on impact from a ballista with a... small crater. Feel so underwhelming.
When you are fully zoomed out, 1080p and all effects maxed the original Complete Edition (with both add-ons) still looks pretty good to be honest. It's not as much of a jump as I expected, I'd say people who'll profit the most are players with higher screen resolutions and people who play the campaign (cutscenes).
Yep, it's definitely meant for people playing in 4k.
Well the thing is, AOE3 had incredible shaders, I'd say it's safe to say there's no game out there that can compare with Shader Quality from 2005.
That's what made it look so great, it made the game atmospheric and bright, vivid. So with DE they have improved on the shaders but there's only so much you can improve on something that's already good, where the game excels is the close-up details, as those are the only places where the new details can be properly seen.
Everything is much higher poly and much more detailed, the textures are a higher resolution, the particle FX are all higher quality and now we have actual grass and foliage models rather than a muddied-up texture as seen at 1:50. The reason why the jump here isn't as prominent here as in AOE2 and AOE1 are because those two had no shaders whatsoever, no atmospheric value and the units weren't even polygonal characters, they were pixel-characters. So we went from no shaders and pixel-models to high-detail 3D models with HD Textures and Atmospheric Lighting and FX, that's why the difference was so prominent.
Yeah as an avid campaign player I'm happy
I love the AOE 3 campaigns so much :p
yeah, I'm not missing much in terms of campaigns (unless they plan on actually adding proper ones via expansion)
Who else prefers the artistic direction of the original AoE3?
When it's not zoomed in i dont even see the difference. Which means in game i never will.
Huge question for me is whether they nerfed iro (whatever they are called now) and if spain's age 3 shipments got buffed to vanilla levels again
This happened to me and aoe2, i feel like the charm has been reduced
yeah, I dont like the cartoony art directions most games are going for nowadays but I can respect it
Fantastic to see you playing aoe3. Really hope you stay with it even though don't expect as much/many as your aoe3 vids which are very impressive. So in depth
Im more excited about Age of Mythology Definitive Edition
when?
@@Amphok idk maybe in 2021
The ship destruction animation is really watered-down version from AoE 3.
I really dislike how they changed ships.
The "explosion" looks all too quick and seeing ships dismantled looks nice and serves as indicator of the units health.
This would also have been nice to have wounded soldiers show bandages or limping.
And they could have made the buildings catch fire if they torch them.
DE looks good, but somewhat less impressive then on the other 2.
Is it just me or the original game looks and feels better in most of the things than Definitive Edition? (Mainly physics and animations)
You are right, the original game looks better. The colours in the DE version does not blend really well. You can see the Japanese town centre from the original one and the DE version, it just looks cartoony. They should have gone with darker tones in the game which would have made everything look nicer.
A lot of the new sound effects are garbage too
@@mehmetylmaz758 cartoony?? Aoe always was cartoony lol
The DE looks blurry in an odd way when zoomed out
@@gentlesirpancakebottoms6692 It might be the TAA implementation. I think there's a mod on the mod page that lets you toggle it on and off.
Always felt AoE III was still modern enough... did we really need this? Especially before Age of Mythology DE?
The ship sinking isn't just a downgrade it's a straight up nerf
Yeah, I really didn't like the change. WTF?
That's not what nerfing means. It's a downgrade.
@@jakubSwaps you don't get it
@@leofwulf268 Aha, using non applicable words is definitely humour
@@jakubSwaps yet, visuals can be very important peripheral information, especially for more experienced players. At some point it becomes functional benefit
Did the fix the scenario editor this is important for me :(
This is basically the first video to do this.
Thanks Spirit :)
The fact is that the original AoE3 had great graphic for a RTS of his time and was optimised like hell compared to most games of that same time.
During those years, my computer lagged a lot on SC2 demo and AoE3 runned without a lag, and when you look at the space games take on you computer, you see how compact the game is compared to others.
thats because it didnt really have "great graphics" it has great shaders, it has the graphics of warcraft 3 really xd
@@comandantethorn9929 Shaders are a part of graphic though?
Also, yeah, unit are quite cubic if you look at them close, but you never do so and buildings and ships are quide detailed.
Also, 'for a RTS of his time'. Among the RTS of that year, you find Warhammer 40k Dawn of War: Winter Assault, Empire Earth II, Stronghold II and Cosac II: Napoleonic Wars.
.
Yes, you can say that in Dawn of War that the unit themselves are more detailed, but they are also closer and NEED to be more detailed, even more so because of the targeted customers.
But just look at the units of Empire Earth 2: you can find unit whose arms arent even properly attached to the body, and most unit are even more cubic than that.
Stronghold 2 doesn't have as mush details ont theirs units.
As for Cosac II: Napoleonic Wars, I never played it but looking at the image, I'm not even sure it's 3D models.
.
Thus, I maintain my affirmation: for a 15 years old game, it HAS great graphic.
This is great, I appreciate the age3 content!
Spirit... I really gotta talk to you about playing AOE3 with no soundtrack... that's a sin.
I never understood why people play w/ a soundtrack it's the first setting I change when I first install the game. Just not my preference but to each their own! Cheers all and stay safe!
@@CraigH999 I played a huge chunk of my childhood of Age 2 without knowing it had music. Only started using the music during the HD edition, prefer it either ways.
The first AoE though, I had music on, it was cheesy but fun mixed with the game's other sound effects.
the OST is kinda repetitive
I just find the ship wrecking the only downgraded aspect in the DE. Everything else is really amazing and beautiful!
Hm, they could have fixed the collision detection between ships. It still bothers me that ships can sail right into another. I know water space is sparse, but it looks wrong. Also the design of the frigate and monitor are still too chubby for my liking.
They could fix so many thing they didn't xD....
(IA pathfinding is as stupid as it was then also, you may still found situations where villagers are going all around to get to something that was right next to them)
Removing the heavy "bloom" filter the original had already makes this a big upgrade IMO. Everything looks so much more crisp and visually "readable" now.
The ship destruction though... I wish I knew why they changed it this way.
I'm guessing the chunks flying out look jarring with the new more detailed graphics, and manually animating it "plank by plank" was too much work, or simulating the physics in enough detail using the AoE3 Havok engine might still be too hardware intensive.
100% they didnt do it for performance issues
@@galliman123 it did lag a little in the original when you had big naval fights so it makes a little sense
Oh wow. Exploding the boat, really? That's just a cheap way of not working on a sinking feature. I very much dislike that one.
16gb of RAM and 4GB VRAM is gonna be pretty steep for a lot of people. That's more than most FPS require. R6 siege for example only recommends 8gb RAM and 2GB VRAM. Those requirements are a tall order for a game most of us are only somewhat interested in to begin with
I appreciate that AOE3 DE let's you customize the UI to classic, DE, or even AOE2's style! ^^
Age 3 was always a pretty game to look at back when it released. This is just a bit more polish on it. Thanks for the video Spirit, though I would have liked a cannon killing units comparison.
When I was playing the original version as a kid, I always loved to read about the history of each unit. When you had a unit selected you could click on a button with - and it would show up a page with historical information about each unit. Is it still present in DE?
wasn't that only in age of mythology ?
Either way it was really cool.
@@longethdayv770 Nope. It was in AoE III as well, but it makes sense since it both runs on the same or almost the same engine.
I hope so but the original HUD had that but the minimized HUD from the option menu that many play now doesnt have that so idk
Yes, its still in the game :)
Yes, there's an encyclopedia in-game.
I prefer the original graphics. People complaining about the bloom don't seem to realise it can just be turned off in settings.
I gotta say... in that direct comparison shot with the cherry bushes I'd prefer the old one.
AoE3 uses a lot of bloom effect, sucessfully covering inadequacies in the model and texture resolutions. AoE3:DE doesn't have that and even though the graphics are better, it still looks nicer with bloom IMO. Of course, the close-up on the units is a no brainer and I was actually shocked to see that the first image you showed was DE already, when I assumed it was the classic... you certainly sum it up nicely by saying that DE now feels like the classic did back in the days.
However, you never really zoom in that close in actual gameplay and with the ability to actually zoom out further (omg, we really never were able to zoom out further than THAT???) I would be looking at my units from even farther away than I used to do.
while excited for DE and i did preorder it because aoe3 is my favourite RTS game of all time, i think this comparison video just shows how exceptionally gorgeous aoe3 was and still is rather than showing how much of an improvement the new stuff is tbh
Can't believe I'm seeing so much content on AoE3 from you
@Spirit Of The Law Keep the Aoe3 DE video coming I'm loving them !!!
Aoe 3 original is so god damn good for 2005 games, and i spend mostly on water map to play a pirate like ship battle
can't wait to play the game! it's about time to see AOE3 DE without yt compresion over it.
thx for making this video btw :p very informative
if you pause at 2:19... i personally think the old version looks way better. sure DE might have more detail etc. but the overall picture just looks worse (less clean, less clear and more blurry)
I'm just glad that they made away with the bloom. Age 3 suffered from everything being way too bright.
disable bloom.
honestly, i've got the opposite opinion - i get it might be annoying to some people, but i kinda like how much bloom AOE3 had. was the bloom a _good_ idea? no. did i like how it looked anyway? Yeah
maybe they'll add a toggle for it, or something. that's probably wishful thinking though
You.. Could just disable the bloom.. That was an option in AoE3, so how did it suffer?
@@mozarteanchaos Bruce Shelley, one of the creators of the Age series, once said that one of the things that set Age apart from the other RTS' - both of its time and those that came after - is how in the world of Age the sun is always shining bright without washing way the colours. This gives the games a somewhat cheerful feel.
Age 3 was the brightest of the bunch in no small part because of the bloom effects. I may dislike how much bloom there was but I also hope that they leave options to have it.
@@mozarteanchaos It's use of bloom is terrible. Bloom is supposed to be applied selectively, whereas AO3 kinda just sticks it over everything. Bloom looks good if it's limited to things like fire, or the shiniest parts of metal, etc.
Wow I thought they looked the same when you posted your prior video. I still think it looks pretty identical.
the removal of the OG's painterly bloom and light effects is such a killer for me. i get that everyone wants maximum image clarity these days but i much prefer the older, more stylized aesthetic to the newer, sterile one.
Bloom makes me vomit
True, bloom is crucaial part of the game atmosphere, but i can't find any complains on that besides your comment :(
What's also bad is that bloom is in settings, but even if its enabled in options, game still has no bloom.
the worse ship destruction is in line with the demolition ships in Age of Empires 2
in the original they burst apart, which looked amazing
in Definitive instead some odd fire shape grows from them, with fire that looks like it was taken from a game with completely different artstyle
Hey you should start making more videos of age of empires 3 like you made for aoe2, like civ reviews and all. I personally prefer aoe3 so it would be nice to have a dedicated channel like yours helping with strategies and information!
My only complain about the new UI is that it doesnt show the type and amount of units you have selected when you selecte an army of different units...it will just show that you have for example 40 mustekteers but if your army has 10 longbowmen, you have no way of knowing it, unless you see them with your eyes!! That could be a problem when you want to select a unit to perform a speciphic action or use an ability and you cant find it in the chaos of the battle.
I would say the graphics look about 10% better at a maximum but require very high specs of a high range 2020 laptop (for a game release 15 years ago)
What is going on? No way should those lacklustre improvements in graphics require such high hardware requirements
wdym the graphics are absolutely 100% better, the original literally had the same texture level as warcraft 3, it only had really good shaders that make them look good, look at any specific unit and youll see te real difference
Huge thanks for showing all the interface options! I'll miss the old ship destruction though
Gotta say Spirit of the Law, im loving these AOE3 videos!!!
"I have somewhat of a decent computer"
*32 GB RAM*
Yeah
To be fair, he says fairly good. Ram has also lowered in price recently as well as being a necessity for video editing and the like.
I'm more surprised the 2080 Super is considered only "fairly good". I'm sitting here trying to render on my 1060 lamo
It's funny people who aren't necessarily into hardware always notice the ram amount first. That's not meant to be a jab, I just see it a lot.
RAM is really not that important for games and the 32GB isn't actually very telling about his PC anyway. He's got a really solid system in general either way.
Cries in 8 gb ram old laptop
@@seribelz 8 gb ram is enough for even moderate gaming. Graphics card is the main bottleneck in that.
I mean at this point 16 GB of RAM is rapidly becoming the new standard...
It is weird though, we're at the point where 4GB Ram laptops are still commonly available but the high end is at 32gb.
I guess his CPU is an 8 corer though... I'm an AMD guy so I don't keep track of the Intel/Nvidia side of things
It is sad that they cut out the degrading boat feature. Degradation was one of the main feature if the game
They NEED to do an Age of Mythology Definitive Edition before 2021 ends. I NEED IT!!!
0:56 To clarify this briefly, it's just the difference between 2D Sprites and 3D polygons. Age of Empires 3 do not "does this". It's the same with any other 2D / 3D game.
It's just not possible to not zoom out on 2D sprites. Maybe if you put one pixel into 4 or something, or with other rendering techniques like AA. But not native
Makes sense. Appreciate the explanation 👍
@@SpiritOfTheLaw Hey cool that you discovered my comment. I hope I could explain it well. It's just that you can display a 3D polygon in any resolution and a 2D sprite cannot. And by the way I like your content very much, I hope you continue to be successful with it
Most Random aoe2 fact ever:
Petard points at his barrel and says: "Trust me, this shit is bomb"
Have a nice day fellas
I defnitely like the partly destruction of ships more than the new explosion animation..
Zooming out was always a pain. In original AoE III I've used mod/.ini mod (can't remember) to increase it 20-40%. Great to see it being here and game- optimized for it. OG certainly wasn't.
I don't care how unorthodox people think I am, but the old graphics will always look better to me.
Looks like a lot of people agree. I never quite understood having a sharp, crisp image and then willingly blurring it to shit with 16x anti-aliasing at a high cost to fps. Clarity for me was always preferable to cluttering the scene with as many polygons as you can, especially for strategy games.
@@excuseyou1526 precisely, well put!
am i the only one who thinks the units are actually harder to see in DE... idk it feels like there is something about their out line that makes them blend in the ground texture ... maybe its just me
yes they look better but on a gameplay stand point it feels weird
Its true. They seem rather blurry. The orginal ones are actually sharper-looking. But hey, high def makes that a thing.
@@oom-3262 i think its because of the ground texture that is much more detailed or something like that
Yeah, my guess is also on the ground. The detailed grass especially is very distracting for the eyes. It might be smart to turn down some of the graphic settings, at least when playing online.
I'm glad you're coming aoe3 DE! I like both so I'm glad to see my fav aoe2 person talking about aoe3
Personally prefer the old version. High poly-counts don't impress me. Also, the lighting in DE is more sickly and depressing.
True. I don't like the dark and sharp 'HDR' look of the DE. I would've wanted a bit more vibrancy like the original Age of Empires 3.
people : new animation is garbage etc, etc
me : my god, the new DE Train is just beautiful
I still prefer the classic AoEIII, especially on the ships destruction
I feel like the masts not being blown off in DE is a sorely missed detail, especially when that was an actual tactic in naval combat of the time.
But in real life if you blew off a mast that made it very difficult for the ship to move. That isn't true in the game, right? Losing the mast is just cosmetic.
@@greywolf7577
Yes. However even if it's cosmetic it makes it that small bit more immersive.
4:28
Very glad they reworked that cathedral in Lisbon from the Italian Gothic style similar to something you would find in Florence, to a proper Iberian Late-Romanesque, similar to the actual Lisbon Cathedral
c8.alamy.com/comp/RKGB9R/lisbon-front-view-of-santa-maria-maior-cathedral-of-lisbon-portugal-nobody-RKGB9R.jpg
Also, glad they got rid of the weird opressive yellow colour and went for a brighter paler approach.
Lisbon is a very bright white city, not a very yellow/golden looking one.
Now I'm instantly reminded of the "Mexico in Hollywood movies" meme
aoe3 de in low graphics looks worse than the original in high graphics and at the same time runs with lower fps
I still don't get why they didn't do Mythology first
Will you do unit interaction analysis videos for AOE3 DE?
AoE 3 DE just has green everywhere, it's hard on the eyes. The vannila has much better colour combination. Light green grass mixed in with yellow dry grass, that was so beautiful. At 2:25, you can see it.
And btw, no one's gonna zoom in that much.
The only thing good was the new train and unit models.
In AoE 3 there is a setting to change the camera distanfe making it so that you can see 3x more
I think that the some portraits of the u its look worst compared to the original, for example being Hoop throwers, in the original they look like they have a gray mask with red eyes, making them look menacing af
Realy disapointed with the ships not getting shot appart.
But everything else looks great.
Do units still fly away when they get hit by a canonball and it takes their health to 0hp?
the old graphics aren't as bad as I remember. ...maybe I only played it on a low quality computer 15 years ago.
Looking at 1:56 It took me looking at the top left to see which one was the new game, they look so close, and in the case of the cherry blossom trees, the old graphics just look better for them.
Graphics are great but the new sound effects are hit or miss. The mining sound in particular is really bad. Some bright spark on the sound design team thought that a pickaxe hitting solid rock sounds like the world's tiniest tinkling glass bell.
Michael Bay would be happy about exploding ships like that.
The huge graphics requirements are a big issue for me. I'm playing on a 970 and can enjoy AOE 2 DE just fine but this game looks like it won't run well
Are those reqs for 1080p?
Can you play AOE2DE Online, are there servers working?
Extreme Earth yes it’s in-game matchmaking with a queue and everything.
All within the game on steam.
No Voobly or whatever. Lots of players.
It’s great.
There is also a server browser.
AOE 3 graphics was way ahead of its time.
That's awesome that the devs/designers addressed the 2 biggest problems with the original: Zoomed too far in and too much of screen covered by huge UI.
I would not mind having super zoom out like in Supreme Commander. You do not play at that zoom level. But you do use it to navigate around the battlefield in that game. It is very nice. And it comes natural just to zoom in to watch the pretty units to.
I love your commentry
I never managed to get into AoE3 apart from enjoying the campaign a decent amount as a kid. Would love to see more coverage of it, might even end up getting into it that way. :)
I find high res more difficult to see who owns what units and unit type so play on lower res to enhance the distinction.
This also really really applies on watching replays.
Edit added bonus of snappier ie more responsive system.
That's it now I *really really really *need age of Mythology DE 😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
AOE2 widow are so boring with this..
Why would they remove ships breaking apart... That was a great thing.
As an Age of serie fan, I am gonna buy it, but, unfortunately, I don't like those graphics (contrary to the AoE 2 DE). It looks darker, I don't like the loss of physics on buildings, as well as the new way ships are sinking... The only thing I like about it is the add of Sweden.
Im liking and commenting on all your aoe3 related videos purely because you do amazing videos and i love aoe3 and im hoping you will cover some aoe3 maths and strats while the de is booming.
Thanks for AOE 3 content! Oh please ... Oh please.. do mathematical analysis on civs like you do for AOE 2 .
AOE3 compensated a lot with bloom, it's good that they cut that out. but that's what makes optimized performance now sometimes look 'not as impressive' untill you realize it was bloom all along that made AOE3 look that way.
The only graphical downside is the ship destruction, such a shame.
Don't get me wrong, the new effects look good as well but not as good or satisfying as the old one.
4:05 they did better than Blizzard in that department.