Age of Empires IV will have intense RTS battles.
Age of Empires IV has intense RTS battles.
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Age of Empires IV review impressions — Real-time strategy comes back to the mainstream

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 7 min

Real-time strategy is back, baby. OK, it never really went away. But it is back for mainstream gamers, who haven’t seen a major release like Age of Empires IV for a while.

Microsoft will be launching the new installment in the Age of Empires franchise on Thursday on the PC. I’ve gotten a good look at the campaign part of the game. I’ll do a full review with multiplayer later, but these are my impressions from playing the introductory Norman single-player campaign. In a nutshell, it’s designed for mainstream gamers.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.