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When Age of Empires III was released on N-Gage, I couldnt wait to check it out. Being a huge fan of the RTS game on PC, I just had to try this version out.
But how well has the Real Time Strategy PC game translated over to N-Gage ? Is it still fun to play ? Are the controls any good ?
You’ll have to read on to know that.
Gameplay and Game Modes :
Age of Empires III (also known as AOE3) is your basic real time strategy based game, and the first of its kind to appear on N-Gage. As I mentioned earlier, it was originally on PC, and developed by the now-defunct Ensemble Studios. The N-Gage version has been mainly developed by GLU, but they havent done a bad job at all.
The Aim of the Game is simple: Build up your kingdom and army, and destroy all your enemies. While this might sound easy, its way more complicated, and a lot more fun in practice.
The first mission also has a small tutorial to help you get started off if you’re completely new to this genre of gaming.
A basic game scenario starts you off with a few villagers and your Home City. You’ll need to use these villagers to harvest wood(from cutting down trees), gold(from mining) and food(from berry plants, farms or wildlife) in order to build up your city. Depending on the amount of resources you gather, you’ll be able to produce more buildings of different uses, more army personnel such as archers, cavalry, etc and lastly, more villagers to get even more resources. You’ll also occasionally be able to upgrade various technology that your home city uses.
As such your colony eventually starts expanding. You’ll need to build more houses for all your army personnel and villagers. There will also be a few other buildings that you can construct, ranging from an army barracks, Outposts (to defend your colony) to things like farms and markets. As you advance your technology and “Age” of your empire, you’ll find more new buildings in your construction options.
The real fun part to all this, is finding the perfect sweet-spot between expanding your colony and technology, and building your army. Spend too much on building your army, and your enemy’s army might be fewer but better equipped with newer weapons and better defense because they bothered to upgrade their tech. At the same time, spend too much on expanding your colony and technology, and you might find your enemy rushing your city with you pretty much defenseless to fight back.
The game plays very much like its PC Counterpart. Suprisingly so. There’s even the “Home City Cards” from the PC version, which give you bonuses such as more villagers, or newer technology, as you play a scenario.
When it comes to game modes, there are two main Game Modes: Campaign and Skirmish.
Campaign mode takes you through the story of Morgan Black and his struggle against the Ottoman empire. It puts you up against several scenarios, all introduced to you by an advisor.
The aim of each scenario is basically the same. Destroy your enemies, or take over their base. There are 15 Missions totally, each gets increasingly difficult as you go through them, but all of them are really fun to play. I did feel like we could have done with more missons though.
Of course, its worth mentioning that you can save the game at any time, as many times as you want, so you wont have to worry about playing a whole mission again, if you remember to save often.
Skirmish mode allows you to create a battle against AI opponents.
You can either have teams (you and an AI ally) or have a free-for-all battle against the AI if you wish. You can have upto 3 plays totally, and 15 maps to choose from.
The maps arnt too large (like they are in the PC version). This might mean battles will usually start earlier because of the small space you’re sharing with your opponents, but this isnt a deal-breaker at all. This version of AOE is for mobile, and not meant to be played for hours on end like the PC version, and the small-ish map size means games are limited to about 30 or so odd minutes, which is still a good thing.
Its worth mentioning, the game also loads pretty fast. Infact the only loading screen that’ll really annoy you even remotely, is the one at startup. Otherwise its pretty good.
Orientation :
The game can be played in both portrait and landscape modes, according to which, the controls are changed for the phone.
Because of the type of game it felt more comfortable to play in landscape mode, though it feels fine in portrait.
But since some phones, like the N82 do not officially support Landscape mode in some N-gage games, it might force you to play in portrait in such cases. (Hence images in this review are all in portrait)
Controls :
The controls for AOE3 have been nicely tweaked for the N-Gage version. You have pretty good control of your units around the map, and moving them around isnt a problem.
You have two different control schemes available, which are actually just 2 modes of moving your cursor around the map. There’s “normal” mode and “diagonal”.
Its also pretty easy to select multiple units (which is crucial in AOE). Double press Gaming button A and the whole range of units gets selected. I wish you were allowed to assign numbers to different groups of your army (like the PC version), for easier access to them, but I guess it would be hard to do so, with the limited amount of keys N-Gage gives you.
Gaming button B is usually to cancel or go back in options.
Graphics :
You’ll have to admit, the Graphics for AOE3 on N-Gage, arnt bad at all. They stick to the tradition AOE style, and look pretty great. The graphics are actually 2D but have a 3D look and feel to it because of the side view perspective, which is exactly the same thing AOE began with back in the day.
From your main screen you can see all your resources, Home city shipments, and any messages from the AI or your advisor.
When you select a troop you’ll also see a range of information. Details such as strength, hitpoints (health), units that hes stronger/weaker against, etc. This amount of detail is quite a lot for a mobile game, and all of it is important for AOE. I have no idea how they managed to squeeze it all in, into just 4MB.
Not too shabby at all.
Music and Sounds :
For whatever reason, the game only lets your choose between music OR sound effects. You cant choose to have that nice dramatic AOE music going on at the same time as your army units fire their cannons or clank their swords.
A strange decision, one that I’m suspected to think is based on N-Gage’s specs as a platform, but its not much of a deal breaker.
Multiplayer and the N-Gage Arena :
I’m glad to say, Multiplayer in AOE on N-Gage plays exactly the same as offline modes. Its really refreshing to see more games coming out on N-Gage with proper Multiplayer support like this.
Just like N-Gage’s Worms World Party, you can go online in either ranked(Filtered) mode or Freestyle mode.
In ranked mode, you go head to head against another player, and if you win, you get a certain amount of points added to your stats. Keep winning and you’ll eventually be number 1 on the Arena rankings for AOE.
In freestyle mode, you can play against opponents without worrying too much about stats.
You can create a game, choosing its map, etc. Or if you prefer, search for any game rooms and join in on someone else’s game before it starts.
The game is really fun online, although an average match can last well into 20 minutes or longer, so make sure you’re on a stable data connection before you begin the game.
Of course there’s your unlockable NGP (N-Gage Points) as usual.
Conclusion :
[rating:4.5]
Its hard to find anything actually wrong with Age of Empires III on N-Gage. It has great multiplayer and single player missions, it’ll keep you occupied for hours (literally) and its a lot of fun to play if you’re a fan of RTS games like I am.
While it is a tiny bit disappointing that you cant have music and sound effects on at the same time, the developers GLU mobile have done a great job porting this over to N-Gage. AOE3 is definitely a game you should check out, and comes highly recommended by us here at ZOMGitsCj.
You can find out more about the game over on its Official Game page or if you need tips or help with the game, head on over to the Official Age Of Empires III N-gage forum.
Clinton is currently based in New Delhi, India and is executive editor for UnleashThePhones. He is responsible for all editorial decisions, and covers all forms of Mobile things.
Cj is addicted to caffeine, social media, and technology. Always up for a good conversation, you can reach him through the contact form, his website, on Google Plus 
or on Facebook or Twitter: Follow @clintonjeff
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