i have a bone to pick with a lot of people regarding AoE2. specifically, the older campaigns are seen as better by some (especially the Conquerors ones), when in reality they are way more bare bones than more recent additions to the game. how does that tie into this review specifically?

well, this expac pushes AoE2 past its pre-conceived limits. you can sort of see it in scenarios added past the original games (AoK and Conquerors) that people who worked on it subsequently made something fun, if not better than the original, but try to push the scope of campaigns and solo content forward. and i think this expansion pack adds a lot of needed diversity to the game for solo play in that regards - more specialized scenarios for solo play, that will tend to push you to play better to beat them.

in regards to difficulty, i don't think this is all that different from a lot of the current existing campaigns on "hard" - scenarios can get very brutal, and i think these battles serve as a decent extension of that.

with all that said, definitely the easiest to skip of the bunch, as it does not add new civs to play with for people, so feel free to completely ignore this one, even if i'd recommend it personally. would scenarios and campaigns for civs that do not have one be better? sure. but i'm never going to spit on officially supported solo content for AoE2.

for actual criticism : a lack of polish in terms of presentation (narrator being the same for all scenarios, re-used slides from past campaigns) kind of hurts the package, but doesn't detract from the experience.

i have a bone to pick with a lot of people regarding AoE2. specifically, the older campaigns are seen as better by some (especially the Conquerors ones), when in reality they are way more bare bones than more recent additions to the game. how does that tie into this review specifically? well, this expac pushes AoE2 past its pre-conceived limits. you can sort of see it in scenarios added past the original games (AoK and Conquerors) that people who worked on it subsequently made something fun, if not better than the original, but try to push the scope of campaigns and solo content forward. and i think this expansion pack adds a lot of needed diversity to the game for solo play in that regards - more specialized scenarios for solo play, that will tend to push you to play better to beat them. in regards to difficulty, i don't think this is all that different from a lot of the current existing campaigns on "hard" - scenarios can get very brutal, and i think these battles serve as a decent extension of that. with all that said, definitely the easiest to skip of the bunch, as it does not add new civs to play with for people, so feel free to completely ignore this one, even if i'd recommend it personally. would scenarios and campaigns for civs that do not have one be better? sure. but i'm never going to spit on officially supported solo content for AoE2. for actual criticism : a lack of polish in terms of presentation (narrator being the same for all scenarios, re-used slides from past campaigns) kind of hurts the package, but doesn't detract from the experience.