When comparing Planetary Annihilation 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 singleplayer games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 22nd while Planetary Annihilation is ranked 139th. 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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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 Spiritual successor to Supreme Commander
Created to be a spiritual successor to Supreme Commander, those that are familiar with the title will be pleased to see a continuation of the franchise in some way.
Pro Battles take place on multiple planets
Players fight it out in large battles that take place on multiple planets, making for a very large scale RTS.
Pro Picture-in-picture mode allows for better monitoring
A picture-in-picture mode permits players to keep tabs on any area or planet that they are currently not viewing in the main screen. While it may cause complications in trying to keep track, it does open up an easy way to quickly viewing what is going on elsewhere in the game.
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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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 Overly complex - 3d chess
Too many layers, tries to be too much. Just needed to re-build FAF in a new engine.
Con Requires high specs
Users need to have good PCs to run this game. Those who do not have high-end graphics' cards, a lot of RAM, and good CPUs will experience problems during play, such as low frame rates.
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.