AoE3 was quite beautiful in its time, the unit counter system is easy, case in point: the boats are easily taken out with artillery and the artillery is easily taken out with cavalry. Defenses are crucial in the early match and of course a straight charge is suicidal if you don't set it up. This is a skirmish level game.
1. Age Of Empire 2 was a breakthrough for it's time and the height of 2D graphics in RTS. No matter what screenshot you take, it will look pretty. It will never look aged.
2. AoE 3 was made on a 3D engine for the WoW factor, and played it to it's fullest extant by featuring apex graphical quality, for 2005. It aged like milk. On most angles it will look plain. It's bloomy, blurry, to the point where it hurt my eyes the first times as I was not used to modern idiotism.
This is what the game looks like, on an average screen.
This is Age of Empire 2
I'm trying to give you average screens here.
That's purely on the graphical side. Nothing really catches the eye. I can remember, and I will remember the appearance of every units in AoE2, especially the memorable ones like Teutonic Knight, the Paladin, the Mameluke... The way the game presents it's assets makes them both unique, like playing with symbols. AoE 3 fails utterly at that.
The music, I can't remember a single tune from it, I don't think anyone really can.
The aberration that was the home city, which I believe they almost exclusively designed for promotional uses : make pretty screenshot, give the customer the image of bustling metropolis they'll manage in the game. But instead they're glorified screensavers that ruin the balance completely and turns an rts into an MMO. This is absurd.
The counter system, could get bloated for some units, with nonsensical distinctions. But I'm not speaking about that. The entire unit stat system, complemented by the UI, is clumsy. Just look at that
This is a bloat. You have to switch between screens just to see the unit stats. How could they think this was a smart rts UI.
Compare with AoE2 again.
Artillery in AoE2 was something you had to look for, depending on how you controlled it it could achieve completely different goals. You could also counter it in a multitude of ways, even with archers, and dodge it. The entire game, thanks to it's engine, encouraged thinking outside of the box and geometrical tricks. It's coherent square grid and fixed angle are to credit. AoE3 threw all that into the garbage with a generic 3D engine and twisted geometry, just look at the mini map, can't even display a normal square anymore. Resource management was simplified, forests lost their impact.
I have a whole lot of gifs somewhere, featuring a lot of pretty smart feats by players. I remember Cysion used to list some of the more weird stuff before he sold himself to microsoft.
The campaigns.
. Designed with the dudebros in mind.
vs AoE 2
Understand these two games were meant for different crowd.
Age of Empire 2 was released 1 year after Starcraft. And it is still wildly remembered, played, and loved. It's got the biggest cult following out of all 3. Considered a classic rts and so on. AoE3 was released in a void of RTS, and didn't even catch on competitively. It's dead today. Why is it?