The latest DLC for Age of Empires 2 is Chronicles: Battle for Greece. I have spent several hundred hours in Age of Empires 2, and the Age of Empires series has been a part of my life for at least 2 decades. My time with Age of Empires 2 is primarily spent playing PVP; Chronicles is a single-player DLC focused on a campaign that covers major events in ancient Greece. I am also a historian and have great expertise in the ancient world in particular. Any piece of historical media attracts my attention, and this was no different.
The History
The DLC campaign takes place during the events of the Ionian revolt, presumably the first Greco-Persian War, and the Peloponnesian War. These are some of the most important events in the history of ancient Greece, and they are highly popular stories with people in the modern age. The city-states of Athens and Sparta are, of course, featured in the DLC. I think it would be more interesting to feature some less known periods of Greek history. Especially considering that there is already a game in this series with ancient Greece in it.
I don’t understand the point of this DLC when Age of Empires 1 has all of these civilizations already. The only reason I can really see is that significantly more people play Age of Empires 2. It’s also confusing to me to make this a single-player-only DLC when they just put Romans into the game for multiplayer use. The time frame for the game is a little arbitrary, sure, but if we’re stretching it for Rome, why not throw in Athens and Sparta as well? Perhaps Achaemenids is annoying because later Persians are already there. Not sure; very confusing.
Content
Age of Empires 2 campaigns are several unique scenarios, totally different from normal skirmish play. These scenarios usually revolve around some sort of real historical event or are historically adjacent. This DLC consists of 21 campaign missions with unique units and voice acting. It also has animated cutscenes, like in Age of Mythology. This is the first DLC to be released in a series of three. I’m not sure if the rest of them will also take place in antiquity; I would assume not. This may happen; perhaps next we will go to Alexander the Great.
Thoughts
I have played many Age of Empires campaigns over the years, and they are usually pretty fun. I have played through the Age of Empires 3 campaign more times than I can remember. I am glad that they are making content for the Age of Empires 2 players who are more interested in single-player than multiplayer. I think this is important because Microsoft has ignored some of the player base of their games by discontinuing the most recent DLC for Age of Empires 3 in favor of more Age of Empires 2 content.
That being said, I just don’t think that this DLC is for me. A lot of the models seem to be ported over from Age of Empires 1. This makes sense since they are the same units, but then what was the point of doing this instead of just promoting Age of Empires 1? The answer to that is obvious, though: not a lot of people enjoy playing Age of Empires 1. It is far jankier and stranger than the 2nd game. Microsoft has now abandoned Age of Empires 1 and 3 for 2 and 4 because the competitive scenes for the latter two are far better.
With all that in mind, the reviews on Steam seem pretty good. I think they could be spending their time doing some different projects or some new stuff. This is probably some type of experiment in how to construct content for the second game going forward because there are already way too many civilizations. I hope it succeeds so that the game continues to receive support.
More must-reads: