When comparing Age of Empires II HD vs Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, 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 Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is ranked 88th. 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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time.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 Good graphics and colorful visuals
Pro Fun campaigns for all three factions
There are three factions that the player can choose to play as (Allies, the Soviet Union, and the Empire of the Rising Sun), each with their own story which makes for plenty of gameplay and a different experience each.
Pro Has a co-op campaign
The main campaign was designed with co-op in mind which means you and a friend can play through the main story together.
Pro Long-lasting skirmish single player
Pro I still play this game due to the fun side game.
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 Game is FPS locked
Framerate locked to the engine at 30 FPS.
Con Occasional pathfinding issues complicate unit placement
Due to slight issues with pathfinding, player units can become stuck at certain parts of the map, causing frustrating situations when those units are needed to be in a particular placement but were unable to do so.
Con AI opponents possess few strategies allowing it to be easily manipulated
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3's AI reuses a limited selection of strategies, which therein allows the player to identify what actions the AI will most likely be performing next. With this knowledge of what the enemy AI will be doing, skirmish matches and campaign missions will be easily beaten, providing little to no challenge for experienced players.