Empire Earth III

December 2,2007 -

The Empire Earth series has always been known to be one of the deepest and most involving RTS series out there. In fact, it was often considered too much for the casual RTS fan. People always found the smattering of civilization types and historical periods to be way too much to handle and would have liked it if it were a little more streamlined. Well, Empire Earth III is finally out, and while it does simplify the series in a huge way, it takes a gigantic step backwards in terms of gameplay, presentation, and overall quality. Without a doubt, the move to being easier, less convoluted, and less involving was a move that should have been avoided at all costs.

There is one welcome change to the way you play out the campaign, however. Instead of choosing from a ridiculously large number of different civilizations that don’t feel all that different, they change it to three world regions; the west, middle-east, and east, and they look and play how you would expect them to. These types are limited to the campaign only. Online and in skirmish modes you have a couple other options, such as Russia, North Korea, the U.S. and others that you’d expect in a game like this.

The simplification of these civ-types would have been fine had they all played out differently and offered enough to make you really figure out what one you prefer playing as. The biggest problem with them is that they all seem to play fairly similar. The west and the east in particular have almost all the same unit styles, buildings, and abilities. The middle-east is a little bit different, but really hardly distinguished by comparison to the difference in classes between different civ-types in other RTS games. The gameplay itself is largely unchanged for what you need to do during a match. Gather resources, build your base, rush your army, etc; these things are key to surviving in a battle in any RTS game. Except every civ-type has a notable strength or weakness that is so easy to exploit—at least when playing against the stupid A.I.—that it makes the game laughable at times.

If you’ve played Empire Earth before then you kind of know what’s going on. You command your civilization through the ages from early tech all the way until space or sci-fi advancement. It’s simple enough and was a nice little gameplay mechanic that kept people interested in the series, but with Empire Earth III it just feels barren and pointless. The world-domination mode allows you to conquer the globe at your own discretion. Rather than go through a series of missions or ordeals that make it so you ultimately reach your goal, but with a story, you find yourself simply conquering area after area with no real goal other than to do just that. Now that would seem fine, if the gameplay was engaging and the A.I. was challenging enough outside of the exploits, but it gets very tiresome and ultimately feels just flat-out boring. The reason this happens is because you basically do the same thing over and over. The objectives occasionally throw a wrench in the mundane and try to get you to do new things, like ally with someone or do a special task, but ultimately you’re going to be building army after army and base after base fighting the same fight again and again.

The authenticity of your opponents is terrible in the world-domination mode, which we need to stress is the large majority of the game. If you start your conquest in the middle-east you’ll initially start building and seeing middle-eastern things in that area, but immediately after the authenticity is swept under the rug and you’ll start seeing Asians in Spain, Indians in Germany, etc. It’s absolutely ridiculous. One good thing, though, about the world-domination mode is how the enemies do put up pretty good bases for you to attack. Now mind you, the armies they build are weak and never match the effort put into the bases, but at least your first few matches will be entertaining since you’ll be attacking full-fledged base structures.

The five eras used in Empire Earth III are ancient, medieval, colonial, modern, and future. This will provide a lot of silly mixing of units from different eras and, once again, kills the authenticity and historical relevance could or may have had otherwise. This did happen in previous Empire Earth games, so it’s not specifically limited to the third installment, but it’s still worth noting nonetheless. The next big issue with the game is actually a huge problem: the multiplayer and how it’s basically horrible. The system requirements to run the game are ridiculously high, and any PC gamer knows a game that looks like Empire Earth should not, in any way, be a system hog. The actual gameplay in Empire Earth III is more or less the same in the other two, but the bugs and frequent crashes make it almost unplayable. Why would you want to play a game that crashes on you and takes so long to boot back up because of an unoptimized engine? You wouldn’t.

As you may have guessed from that, Empire Earth III has a long way to go with patches and updates that will make the technical aspect of the game at least cohesive enough to be suitable. The graphics are cartoonish, which is not a style issue, but really makes you wonder how it could possibly be such a strain on any decent and newer machine these days. The units, buildings, and landscapes look fine enough, but it’s really nothing to write home about. Then again, when is an RTS really anything to get excited about graphically (Unless it’s the Total War series!)? The sound effects are fine, too. The only really big problem on the technical side, outside of the optimization issues, is the ridiculous quips units will say when you tell them to do something. If you order them to do a task or move somewhere they’ll make some childish joke that is supposed to be funny but is really just flat-out annoying. Don’t be surprised to find yourself turning off the audio because of that during the game.

Empire Earth III isn’t an abomination to RTS gaming, but it certainly doesn’t begin to approach recommendable. There are so many issues that make it such a massive disappointment that it’s a real wonder how it even got released in its current form. It’s not often that a game franchise with such a good reputation came come out with an installment that approaches quality levels of games like Hannah Montana for the Nintendo DS. Really, how does this happen? With a few patches and updates, Empire Earth III will surely get better, but it won’t be enough. The next installment, if it gets green lighted after this one, better ramp it up significantly. Or else expect this historical RTS to become extinct.

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