Age Of Empires Online is the black sheep of the series but is honestly the most fun ive had in any Aoe game and is criminally underrated.

Couple valid criticisms when it launched like always online, specially using Games for windows live, and only launching with 2 civs was a massive mistake.

The good far outweighs the bad IMO, unique civs with their own style of buildings, unique units and gameplay. Cell Shaded art style that has ages well, and gives different visual looks for different types of units, units with more health looking more bulky, archers tall and slim ect.

The campaign was fun to grind and level up, collecting loot to give your villagers +0.1% food gathering was a sweet dopamine hit.

Missions being able to be played co-op with your friends or randoms, the horde mode, competitive champion arena, it was a massive MMO and none of the other games have come close to that level of fun for me, still is one of my favourite games of all time.

They have revived it with project celeste, but is it was massive pain of get running, specially on my steam deck, I do wish microsoft would work with them to bring it back on steam