When comparing EVE Online vs Age of Empires II HD, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires II HD for most people. In the question“What are the best PvP games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 11th while EVE Online is ranked 34th. 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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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 Real freedom
You can do anything. literally anything. You can become a massive entrepreneur and deal with billions of ISK, set up a pirate base in wormhole space, explore anomalies, build massive ships, become CEO of a player-run industrial corporation. There's tons and tons and tons of stuff. This is likely the most sandboxy of MMO sandboxes.
Pro 360' freedom of movement
Up, down, left and right simply stop having a meaning when it comes to space. Making for a true space simulator in that the controls mimic how objects would behave in a real space environment.
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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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).
Cons
Con Spreadsheets in space
At the very core, that's what it is. You'll be looking at tons of stats, calculating % resistances and DPS. It's a paradise for math savants and economics geeks, but not so much if you just want to blow things up quickly.
The graphics are there, but combat takes place at a few kilometers at least, so you won't be ever seeing your ship and the enemys' at the same time (unless as tiny silhouettes). Which only enhances the feeling that combat is a set of dynamic spreadsheets rather than a real visceral thing.
Con On the decline
The player number is about half of what it used to be and continues to decline. The game has been around for 10 years so it's hardly a surprise.
Con Requires lots of time invested
Because of the open market thing even going out on a quick mission may require you to gear up your ship first, which takes ages as you jump across multiple stations to get the two dozen different modules required to outfit your ship.
EVE feels a lot like a second job sometimes.
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.