Game Review: Empire Earth - Art Of Conquest

[CodeOptimist]

Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest Expansion

This review is going to be a little different. There will be no Breakdown, as I only looked at the demo version of this game.

Art of Conquest is the expansion pack to Empire Earth. To put it bluntly, it is terrible, even for an expansion pack. The demo was even worse since it was more like a beta preview than an actual demo version, with many unfixed bugs and unfinished modules.

Lessons Learned

I suppose a very good point here is to make sure every public-release version of a game is fixed up enough to please the general public. As a programmer, I didn't really mind the "unfinished" or "beta" state of the demo version, since I understood the time involved in fixing bugs and finishing up art assets, and I knew (well, hoped) they would fix it up when the game officially went "Gold".

But, your average "Joe Gamer" will most likely judge a whole game based on an alpha or beta version, and that is terribly bad for a game's reputation.

The other lesson learned from this game is to make an expansion pack worth buying. Art of Conquest added a new "Epoch", a few new units/buildings, and a new campaign or two. In my opinion, this should have been a patch, not an expansion! (Feel free to disagree with me, however)

Next Up: Age of Mythology Demo

[Ulysses S Griffin]

yes, Mac Doc and Sierra failed miserably to create a successful expansion pack to a really great game, the "special buildings" and "abilities" truely screwed up the balance of the game, Sierra didnt even seem to care about how development was going. the only thing that seems to even be an improvement of the game is the multiplayer interface

making the games beta version "demo" downlodble for everyone to play was also a terrible idea. they shold have waited a little longer for the expansion to be released without any setbacks before a demo was to be released

[lordofthenazgul]

This expansion wasn't worth the money I paid for it. There are hardly any new units and buildings, and only one campaign was fairly good out of the three. Mad Doc and Sierra should have done a better job.

[Ulysses S Griffin]

yes, the expansion was really half-assed imo