Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest
released on Sep 17, 2002
An expansion for Empire Earth
Art of Conquest added several new features to the original Empire Earth, including new units, new civilizations (Japan and Korea), civilization powers, and new hero units. Art of Conquest also features three new campaigns: Ancient Rome, World War II, and 24th Century Mars.
Also in series
Reviews View More
Finally, time to start the Empire Earth Quality Deterioration Saga.
AoC, as I said in the original Empire Earth review, barely changes anything. The Space Age was such a superficial addition, actually, I meant replacement for water. Mad Doc's developers were so mad, and so lazy that they couldn't even have both on a single map. Imagine traveling to another planet that had water, which would mean space stations and Docks would both have value on that map, which would actually help the Space Age stand out. Space Age isn't too different from the Digital Age in terms of combat, so it's meaningless in every regard, and cemented itself as wasted potential.
Priest Towers are fun, at least. Despite this, they get progressively weaker over Epochs, being almost completely useless in the Modern Ages. The new units have unfinished sound and weird aesthetics as opposed to the official, real EE1 units.
The worst thing Art of Conquest does, is unlike The Conquerors for the original Age of Empires II, it completely replaces the higher quality Vanilla EE campaigns with its trashy, infinitely lower quality single player content instead of implementing both old and new in the case of AoE2: The Conquerors. This wouldn't have been a problem if the new campaigns were good, which spoiler alert: they weren't. With the exception of some missions from the World War II and Roman campaigns, most of the levels are boring slogfests with pathetic voice acting, weak dialogue, and insufferable length on par with a Fire Emblem 4 chapter, except the difference is FE4 was built around this idea whereas the AoC devs just wanted their campaigns to feel "spectacular." Yeah, I wish. I liked them more as a kid than I do nowadays, but that's the thing - Mad Doc has already proven itself unfit to continue Rick Goodman's legacy.
While the game is generally preserved and isn't too different from EE1, that's because Mad Doc knew they were making an expansion, and not another game, where the darkness in this new developer would reveal itself...
AoC, as I said in the original Empire Earth review, barely changes anything. The Space Age was such a superficial addition, actually, I meant replacement for water. Mad Doc's developers were so mad, and so lazy that they couldn't even have both on a single map. Imagine traveling to another planet that had water, which would mean space stations and Docks would both have value on that map, which would actually help the Space Age stand out. Space Age isn't too different from the Digital Age in terms of combat, so it's meaningless in every regard, and cemented itself as wasted potential.
Priest Towers are fun, at least. Despite this, they get progressively weaker over Epochs, being almost completely useless in the Modern Ages. The new units have unfinished sound and weird aesthetics as opposed to the official, real EE1 units.
The worst thing Art of Conquest does, is unlike The Conquerors for the original Age of Empires II, it completely replaces the higher quality Vanilla EE campaigns with its trashy, infinitely lower quality single player content instead of implementing both old and new in the case of AoE2: The Conquerors. This wouldn't have been a problem if the new campaigns were good, which spoiler alert: they weren't. With the exception of some missions from the World War II and Roman campaigns, most of the levels are boring slogfests with pathetic voice acting, weak dialogue, and insufferable length on par with a Fire Emblem 4 chapter, except the difference is FE4 was built around this idea whereas the AoC devs just wanted their campaigns to feel "spectacular." Yeah, I wish. I liked them more as a kid than I do nowadays, but that's the thing - Mad Doc has already proven itself unfit to continue Rick Goodman's legacy.
While the game is generally preserved and isn't too different from EE1, that's because Mad Doc knew they were making an expansion, and not another game, where the darkness in this new developer would reveal itself...