Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten PC

Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten for PC is an official add-on for the remastered edition of a popular installment of renowned strategy series. At first, The Forgotten was a fan modification, but as the time passed, the project was transformed into a premium DLC for Age of Empires II: HD Edition. The expansion was developed by the modders in cooperation with SkyBox Labs Vancouver.

Plot

The Forgotten takes the players to Southern Europe, introducing four new complex medieval campaigns, each dedicated to a different historic house (Alaric, Sforza, Bari, and Dracula). Aside from that, the add-on introduces five new civilizations: Italian, Indian, Slavic, Hungarian, and Inca, each with its own units, buildings, and tech tree.

Mechanics

Age of Empires II HD: Forgotten Empires means new game modes, such as Treaty, which focuses on economic area of the game, or Capture the Relic, in which the players have to take possession of a valuable item, and bring it safely to base. New maps offer games with unprecedented grandeur – for example, one of the new maps, Ludicrous, has a four times bigger area than any of the maps found in the core game.

The authors introduced a number of fixes in game balance (key options can be enabled/disabled in the game menu) and enemy AI, making AI games much more exciting than in the previous editions.

The game’s main selling point is the multiplayer mode. Similarly to the core game, Forgotten Empires is a Steam-based title, making use of achievements, cloud, rankings, and above all, Steam Workshop. This is not all, as the game finally received a working spectator mode, and a Twitch.tv extension, which makes streaming much easier.

Technical Aspects

The expansion follows the trend set by Age of Empires II HD, and is characterized by its high-resolution visuals. New effects or improved textures bring a certain appeal to the game, while the developers introduced an option to display the image on a few monitors at once.

Last updated on 12 November 2013