When comparing Age of Empires II HD vs Tokyo 42, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires II HD for most people. In the question“What are the best Isometric games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 2nd while Tokyo 42 is ranked 3rd. 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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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 Great fun if you're looking for simple stealth or action
The game allows for stealth-oriented and action-oriented gameplay. Game mechanics for both are very easy to understand and, if you're not looking for a lot of depth, there's a fair amount of enjoyment to be had.
Stealth gameplay is line-of-sight based. You have to avoid being seen by the enemy. You can do that by hiding behind objects, discovering different routes to your destination or by memorizing enemy patrol paterns and choreographing your movements accordingly. If you do get seen by the enemy, however, all nearby enemies will attack you.
Action gameplay is about trying to shoot enemies while avoiding their projectiles. You'll have to kite enemies, make good use of cover and know how to navigate the environment quickly.
Pro Interesting, colorful art style
Tokyo 42 is set in a beautifully stylized future Tokyo. The city is very clean looking thanks to it's minimalistic design, it's very vivid thanks to it's use of bright colors and it's presented from an isometric perspective that's unusually distant from the player's character, creating a sense of scale that's different from most other isometric games.
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 repetitive
At around 4 hours in you'll have seen and experienced most of what the game has to offer. Neither the gunplay, nor the stealth gameplay evolves past that point. And since both gameplay types are rather shallow, it's easy to find the game getting a bit monotonous after a while.