Empire Earth III UK Demo

The Empire Earth series may not be one of the most popular real-time strategy franchises out there, but it surely got a lot of things right and managed to form a solid fanbase around itself. Unlike other games, it featured large armies and maps that were just as big, which meant that the matches lasted for a long time and the battles were epic, especially toward the end of the tech tree.

Empire Earth III decided to scrap most of its old DNA and just try something different for a change, in an attempt to redefine itself. While this is not a bad idea in some cases, this case is a bit different, because the changes affect the core mechanics of the original series and you may not be able to recognize it once you start playing. Moreover, most of the new concepts fail to be intriguing as well, which in turn makes the entire experience quite difficult to enjoy.

For starters, the main attraction seems to be the world conquest mode, which as the name clearly implies, allows you to play on the real-world map and try to conquer the entire Earth by force. This achieved by fighting for every territory and defeating the enemies that stand in your way. Once you have selected the territory you want to dispute, the game switches to the classic RTS view and you can start building a base from scratch.

The first inconvenience you stumble into is the fact that the maps are now much smaller, which limits the number of units you are able to produce, while also restraining your tactical options by quite a lot. There are very few resource spots you can take advantage off, in the case of raw materials, which have to be mined. Wealth is also necessary to build things, but that can only be gathered by building markets, which are limited to one per territory. Hence, unless you conquer your enemies or forge an alliance, you are pretty much stuck with a pretty slow-moving income source with nothing to do about it.

You can have a bit of fun with the units, on the other hand, since they are varied and each one of them is designed to work best against a certain type of enemy unit. Some interesting tactics can be concocted thanks to this, but the overall result is not really worth it. As an example, you can simply win a game against the A.I. by not building any structures or units, since you can just gather the resources and use them to pay tributes. After a certain threshold is reached, the faction you sent the tribute to is assimilated, which means that you win the map if you do the same with every enemy.

In the end, Empire Earth III is not what the series was all about, but that would be fine if the changes were actually beneficial. Instead, except for the skirmish mode, which is pretty much untouched, the rest of the game lacks any kind of joy whatsoever.