The AI seems to be much better equipped to deal with a human player, which is a bonus when you don't wish to go up against human opponents. The early game is incredibly improtant and a strategy needs to be in place from when you spawn the first villager. You can easily find yourself alone with little aid and hounded by the AI or cozied up behind a reinforced outer perimeter with ballista towers. Just like other strategy games (and Age of Empires titles) you need to micromanage a budding empire while researching new technologies, fortifying defenses and forming pacts or breaking treaties. As noted already, buildings and units have been carefully remastered in higher quality. The graphics are solid, as good as you need them to be in a strategy game. The sound effects are also created based on the original game with villages and priests sprouting their usual gibberish. It's uplifting just like the original soundtrack but introduces new scores, taking full advantage of modern technology - even some older tracks make it into the mix.

The old formula has been brought up-to-date without sacrificing anything. Improvements made the game include the ability to queue up unit creation at buildings, tooltips on pretty much everything to help newcomers out, indicators as to when it's possible to research the next age, It's like sitting inside your car after you have vinyl applied to the outside and a custom interior installed. It isn't quite the same as the Age of Empires II remaster as everything has been taken up a notch instead of simply re-using old stuff, but that's a good thing in my opinion. The same goes for various UI elements, including the minimap and diplomacy screen. The buildings resemble those in the original title and units react similarly when ordering them to carry out tasks. Starting a new game reveals new graphics, sprites and a cleaner UI, but it all looks the same.

Age of empire 1 soundtrack