When comparing Age of Empires II HD vs Stardew Valley, the Slant community recommends Stardew Valley for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Stardew Valley is ranked 6th while Age of Empires II HD is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose Stardew Valley is:
Stardew Valley is a very simple game where you're free to do anything and everything at your own pace. This includes building your farm, planting and harvesting crops, and exploring the world among many other things. It will feel enjoyable no matter how fast or slow you do it. This coupled with the colorful/pleasing art style and the great soundtrack makes it an extremely pleasing experience.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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 Very fulfilling to play
Stardew Valley is a very simple game where you're free to do anything and everything at your own pace. This includes building your farm, planting and harvesting crops, and exploring the world among many other things. It will feel enjoyable no matter how fast or slow you do it. This coupled with the colorful/pleasing art style and the great soundtrack makes it an extremely pleasing experience.
Pro Great soundtrack
When you work on your farm, go fishing, explore or just walk around the town you'll be accompanied by a really nice soundtrack. It's sometimes upbeat, sometimes soothing, and sometimes even melancholic, with every track matching each location and season perfectly.
There's also a wide variety of instruments used, including a piano, accordion, banjo, synths, and many others. This allows you to listen to the soundtrack for hours without getting tired of it. Sometimes it's very hard to believe Stardew Valley and its soundtrack was produced by just one person.
Pro A great mix of genres
While Stardew Valley is primarily a farming simulator, it also has social interaction elements and combat elements.
The social interaction elements allow you to interact with people around the town. You can befriend them, get quests from them, hang out with them, and even find a significant other to go out with and eventually marry. It can be very addictive to max out your relationship with everyone.
The combat elements are introduced when you unlock the dungeon, allowing you to battle creatures such as slimes, golems, and even mummies. While the combat is pretty simple, having you just swing your weapon, it's very satisfying to whack away at enemies.
If farming ever starts feeling stale you can try either of these to mix it up, allowing you to keep the game fresh for a longer time.
Pro Great freedom in designing your farm
When creating your own farm you aren't just limited to plowing fields for planting crops. You can also dig wells, put down fences, and even build various structures such as barns or stables. This allows you to build a farm that firmly matches your goals and sense of aesthetics.
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 Can get really repetitive
Living on a farm is a lot of work, so you'll have to repeat the same tasks quite often. This includes tilling land, planting seeds, chopping trees, and many other farm related activities. While it's normally pretty fun and relaxing, it can get incredibly tedious during long play sessions, especially if you're just trying to progress.