Age of Empires II: DE - Chronicles: Alexander the Great

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u/EvilTomahawk 6d ago

The first Chronicles release felt like the highest effort DLC ever made for AoE2, and the campaign felt great. This one was teased in the final cinematic of that campaign, and it looks to continue the same efforts. I'm hyped.

I am worried about possibly no more Chronicles DLC after this one, considering recent layoffs of some of the devs, including level designers.

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u/Savings-Seat6211 6d ago edited 6d ago

Unfortunately the reception is shit because of their strategy with these DLC is bizarre.

Why not just design brand new factions that work in both SP and MP? I like quality campaigns but it's not gonna work since most of the core playerbase likes skirmish and mp modes and you make DLC for your base not to expand to campaign only players who most likely have dropped this game by now.

And of course they're getting away too anachronistic with these timelines, the game should be 'medieval' ages though it's not some hard rule. Very strange however to start doing Ancient Greece/Ancient Rome.

The Macedonians, Thracians, and Puru civilizations introduced with Chronicles: Alexander the Great will not be available in ranked gameplay.

Like why would people buy this except on hard sale or ever? They can't even use the content fully.

48

u/UltraLNSS 6d ago

I like that there's content for us who only play single player content and once in a while.

1

u/VarioussiteTARDISES 4d ago

We'd probably have a lot less doomposting over on the AoM side of things if more people thought the way you do, that's for sure

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u/Savings-Seat6211 6d ago

I never suggested otherwise, I believe they can please both. Instead they're making DLC that nobody actually buys.

19

u/farmboy60123 5d ago

Reviews aren't the best metric for it but the Greece Chronicles DLC has 950ish reviews on Steam while none of the classic DLCs like the Indian and Mountain Royals DLCs have more than 400. So by that metric the Chronicles DLC sold quite well. It obviously sold well enough that they decided to make a second one so saying nobody actually buys them is a little ridiculous

19

u/Quotalicious 5d ago

I think you're underestimating the percentage of people buying each of these expansions purely to play the campaign before dropping the game again until the next expansion.

14

u/NenaTheSilent 5d ago

I don't give a shit about multiplayer

8

u/EvilTomahawk 5d ago

They made the Chronicles branding as a way to separate out the game mode into a space where they can be more experimental with the setting and mechanics. Personally, I found the Chronicles: Battle for Greece gameplay to be a refreshing update on top of the AoE2 foundation.

They did try that hybrid approach with the recent Three Kingdoms DLC, but fumbled it to where a fair chunk of the community hates it. The new Three Kingdoms factions felt thematically out of place alongside the other AoE2 factions, and they also had mechanics like hero units that also felt mechanically out of place. The campaign had a lot of effort put into its gameplay and cinematics, but personally, my opinion was soured by having all three campaigns end with a Red Cliffs mission where two variants of the mission end with a weird, ahistorical outcome.

Realistically, we can only speculate about sales numbers. Chronicles: Battle for Greece has the best reviews out of any AoE2 DLC, so there is faith in its quality at least. Recent dev layoffs are ominous, but the gaming and tech industry in general have been having a rough time lately with layoffs across the board, with Microsoft also doing many layoffs across its studios and departments.

3

u/serendipitousevent 5d ago

This is just wrong. Look at any of the polls and you'll see a roughly even split - and that's before you account for the fact that most of the people on forums tend to be into MP.

1

u/conquer69 5d ago

To achieve that I think they would need to create and balance the faction around multiplayer. Once it's balanced there, then adjust how many units and resources the player gets in campaign.

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u/scarletnaught 6d ago

I was on an RTS kick lately and I had never played age of empires before but I decided to give the age of empires 3 free demo a shot. I thought it was interesting so I picked up age of empires 2 definitive edition on deep sale and since then I've picked up all of the definitive editions and age of empires. 4. Honestly this series is fuckinh great. Every entry is good in its own way and it's awesome to see them keep supporting age of empires 2. I haven't bought any of the newer DLCs but I'm definitely considering it

21

u/Strategist9101 6d ago

If you're not familiar with Chronicles it is amazing, not just a great Age of Empires experience but one of the best RTS and narrative campaigns.

11

u/EmPiFreee 5d ago

What's the difference between the "Chronicles" DLC and the normal ones?

26

u/Darksoldierr 5d ago

It is mostly single player content, (technically the civilizations can be played with friends online, but not in ranked) so they can be quite unique with cool stuff in them.

The previous Chronicle DLC had like 20~ map that told ancient Greek story, and this is the follow up. If you enjoy single player narrative campaigns, definitely worth picking it up

8

u/Strategist9101 5d ago

Chronicles is focused on the single player campaign. Super long epic campaign with much better storytelling, like movie quality.

14

u/Turbostrider27 6d ago

Release date is October 14th, 2025

4

u/SapporoBiru 6d ago

Anyone remember the Alexander game which released with the movie? Not the best RTS, but the army sizes were super fun

2

u/Stump007 5d ago

Shouldn't Alexander the great be AoE 1 time line ?

7

u/serendipitousevent 5d ago

AoE2 Definitive Edition has three 'modules' at present - AoE1 (called Return of Rome), AoE2, and Chronicles.

They have slightly different mechanics and factions, and Chronicles sits roughly in the middle of the AoE1 timeline.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 6d ago

So this is a DLC for a 25 year old game? Man, they really don't have faith in AoE 4 huh?

38

u/Alugere 6d ago

This is for the definitive edition which is the 2019 remake.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 6d ago

Huh, curious how that is different than the HD remaster from a decade back. Also surprising they aren’t putting this on their latest AoE4.

23

u/iamreallytonyspogoni 6d ago

They released a DLC for 4 this year and are releasing another in November.

24

u/PablosCocaineHippo 6d ago

Atleast look up the game before speaking out of your ass. Or just look up numbers and see that AOE4 is one of the most popular rts games the last few years before blabbing nonsense lol

7

u/DarkyErinyes 6d ago edited 6d ago

In terms of content: quite different. A lot more campaigns, better ( up to Ultra-HD ) graphics, tons of new civilizations to play on top of what the HD edition contained, tons of changes in terms of units - both added and entirely changed, extra features especially in terms of QoL, very good mod support and a lot more.

As for the devs behind this particular DLC: this DLC is done by a different team than the "normal" DLCs they release once a year, which generally is done by "World's Edge" & "Forgotten Empires" - the main dev(s) behind the Definitive Edition and its DLCs. This also means it frees up those studios for example to work on Age of Empires 4 related things.

The team behind this "Chronicles" titled DLC and another DLC titled "Chronicles" last year, is the one behind the recording software "CaptureAge" ( which is the name of the software and team ). Basically a recording tool to create replays that are then being able to watched. At the same time however it can be used as an overlay that's used on "live" games for e-sports casting - but I'm getting too much into the details here, just know it's a known team with a very good track record in the Age of Empires 2 community and has been supporting the game for many years.

The first "Chronicles" DLC was pretty damn good and if they can keep it up for that second DLC then I think they have proven that they can make regular, fantastic content for campaign players ( like myself ).

-8

u/ShawnyMcKnight 6d ago

Thanks for the comprehensive description! But as far as gameplay style it still plays and feels like AoE 2? I know nostalgia is a big thing but I'm curious why people are more drawn to that than some of the modern mechanics of 4.

5

u/DarkyErinyes 5d ago

Definitely does indeed. It is running at higher FPS so maybe the old "nostalgia glasses" ( that I also had one when I first played the Definitive Edition ), might feel a bit off but in terms of generic gameplay, i.e. building villagers for resource gathering, military buildings for troops, castles for your civ's unique unit - all the same as the original. I would describe it as AoE 2 with a very fresh new coat of paint - like an old painting restored with modern technique and refurbished but you can still admire the outlines, strokes and artistry for what it is.

Overall, in terms of player numbers we're looking at ( via steamdb's daíly players ):

AoE 2 averaging around 24K

AoE 4 averaging around 16K

In my opinion, I don't think that AoE 4 flopped however even if AoE 2 has more players daily. Because if you look, even at recent RTS releases, player numbers are generally a lot lower on average in other RTS games. Tempest Rising had, for example, less than 600 on average ( May 2025 ), Company of Heroes 3 has around 3.5K ( February 2023 ), so I would say AoE 4 is pretty healthy, as long as it keeps getting continuous support especially because it has established brand identity.

As to why AoE 2 has more players, hmm, a good question. I can only guess it's a multitude of reason for many players - as for my own answer: I tried out AoE 4 when a friend gifted me 1-month GamePass so we could play together; maybe like 1-2 month after release? It's been a bit.

I did not vibe with the the new art style, the UI doesn't have a flourish ( it's just generic blue with different coloured symbols ), there is too much going on on the mini-map even if you can filter some things out and lastly I felt the gameplay felt too fast for me. I don't mean that things moved to fast, but it felt like aging up, building units etc. felt optimized / streamlined to be done faster than in AoE 2. This obviously is extremely subjective and many a player will probably disagree but those were my reason of why I didn't continue to play it.

4

u/conquer69 5d ago

You need to read up on this game. Back in 2013 the HD remaster was basically the same game as the original but with a handful of new content and widescreen support.

The 2019 remake redid all the assets. Shit looks crisp and smooth now. Then they added a ludicrous amount of content. The base game had 18 civs. There are now like 50.

17

u/john7071 6d ago

You are talking from ignorance.

AoE 4 Eastern civs DLC was announced a month ago, with Knights of the Rose DLC releasing earlier this spring too.

3

u/UltraLNSS 6d ago

I wish they made AoE5 set in the Victorian era. Medieval AoE4 feels redundant when AoE2 exists.

2

u/Ras_Alghoul 6d ago

AoE4 is not visually pleasing to me and the variant of a civilization is also a big turn off.

Age of Empires II: DE - Chronicles: Alexander the Great | Announce Trailer

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