When comparing Age of Empires II HD vs Crashlands, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires II HD for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 22nd while Crashlands is ranked 71st. The most important reason people chose Age of Empires II HD is:
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Awesome ambiance with a great finish
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Pro Runs on very old computers
As this game is quite old, requiring only a 1.2GHZ processor and 1 Gigabyte of RAM, this title will run on older PC's and laptops alike without issue.
Pro Facilitates the user's preferred pace
This game neither gives the impression of being thrown to the wolves nor that of being left stranded on an island. Whether you want to move slowly and steadily through the game or take things at a more heightened pace, Age of Empires 2 will allow for both (given a little planning).
Pro Hours of content just in the main quest alone gives the player plenty to do
For just the medium difficulty setting there is hours upon hours of content, and that's even if you skip all the side quests and just focus on the main story. Plus there are two harder difficulties to try and in the near future a tool will come out which will let you build your own adventures as well as play other people's.
Pro Pleasing graphics that show off a well designed and polished game
The graphics look nice and you can tell time has been put into designing them. While not the most flashy, there is a certain style to the whole game that makes for a very cohesive experience.
Pro Pick up from your last save, no matter the device you are using, thanks to the built in cloud saving
Playable on Android, iOS and PC you're able to transfer the one game between multiple devices (on same or different operating systems) and take it with you anywhere you go. with a Butterscotch ID (the devs self implemented cloud save system).
Pro Excellent progression system where you never feel like you are grinding too much
Progression never feels sluggish or rushed, everything has a good pace to it from the farming of materials and grinding out the various components for the tons of items, to the incredibly unique combat/interaction system, it all blends well into a long gaming experience.
Pro Hundreds items to craft in a deep and varied crafting system that will keep the user busy for hours and hours
There are over 500 items that can be crafted in the game, giving the player quite a lot to experiment with and explore when it comes to crafting items.
Pro Great soundtrack that suits the humor and setting of the game quite well
A great mix of chill and energized music, that fits the setting of the game at all times. A pleasure to listen to on its own as well.
Pro Multiple game modes
Once you've finished the basic mode there's also a challenging and insane mode for replayability.
Pro Good writing
You don't need to read everything to enjoy the game but the writing is very good and really adds to the enjoyment.
Pro Lots of entertaining pop-culture references
Cons
Con A lack of proper User Interface scaling makes a clunky UI worse
While this is a remastered edition of a classic Real-Time Strategy title, the UI was left largely unchanged. Selecting workers still prompts you to click buttons to bring up both economic and military buildings, then choosing whichever building you wish to construct. This is uninteresting design and makes the UI difficult to navigate.
On top of this, the game does not feature UI scaling. Since the game is bound to your current desktop display settings, the UI will adjust itself to match that resolution. This means if you play at 4K resolution the User Interface will be absurdly small, making it near impossible to see what buildings you wish to construct or what units you want to train. This is counter-intuitive design, for this era of modern gaming, and makes properly playing the game more of a hassle than it should ever be.
Con Age of Empires II HD is an unsuccessful remaster due to its outdated graphics
With the only notable upgrade being high resolution options, Age of Empires II HD fails at being a proper remaster. While higher resolutions give the game a slight face lift, the rest of the engine is left largely unchanged. This means the graphics we see in this remaster are nearly the same in its original 1999 release. Due to this, the game is grating to the eye and does not deliver on its high definition promise.
Con Cloud saves not through Google services
An extra account will need to be used in order to take advantage of the cloud saving as it does not work with Googles solution to cloud saves. While this does allow for the cloud saves to work cross platform, people may not want to take the extra step to make a new account with Butterscotch Shenanigans.