Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North Review

Age of Empires IV has grown into a solid RTS, and it's come a long way since launch. An active development team keeps the game moving with regular updates; the single-player maps are solid, and Crucible mode adds a fresh challenge for anyone who wants something beyond the usual matches.

The online community stays busy too, so you'll almost always find someone to play against, whether you want a casual game or something more competitive. This DLC is the latest addition on top of that. It brings in the Vikings and the Scots, two civs built around raiding and defense, and it adds co-op to Crucible. After spending time with it all, you come away with plenty to talk about.

Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North makes more sense once you know what the base game is aiming for.

It takes the Age of Empires II idea and gives it modern visuals and friendlier handling. In the older game, most civs share one tech tree, but here every civ feels like its own thing to pilot. The English have castles and farm gold, the Mongols pack up their entire base, the French lean on charge micro, the Malians run a passive economy, and the Ottomans have military schools.

The Vikings and the Scots continue that pattern, and because the macro engines differ so much, you can pick whichever civ fits how you like to play. The base game costs around €40, which is fair, but the free version of Age of Empires IV doesn't include everything.

Some content, like historical battles and Crucible modes, is locked behind paid DLC, and those locked items still show up in your menus. An ad also appears in the menu as soon as you launch the game. The bigger catch is that Raiders of the North costs €19.99.

You'll face its civs in online matches, but you can't try them in single-player first, so you meet the Vikings and the Scots without knowing how they work. Letting players test them against an easy AI would make the purchase feel like a choice, not a push. Your civ masteries and tasks also list civs you don't own, which adds extra clutter.

If you were hoping for a story, Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North does not give you one.

The DLC has no single-player campaign and no historical battles, which is a letdown. If you remember, earlier Age of Empires II expansions came with dedicated campaigns, which makes this absence even more noticeable. Even the base Age of Empires IV had campaigns, and a lot of care went into them, down to how they layer historical buildings over modern footage of the real locations.

Each civ also speaks its classical language, which adds to the atmosphere. Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North leaves all of that out, and the sagas are the closest thing to a narrative, though they work more like objectives. The Vikings are the more unusual of the two, and the first thing you notice is that you do not queue villagers. Town centers train them for free, up to a cap, which reminds you of the Ottomans in Age of Empires III.

You start with a limit of 20, and every longhouse you build adds 10 more, so you need to keep placing longhouses at 150 wood each to keep villagers coming. If you are used to queuing villagers, this is stressful at first. You press the hotkey, nothing happens, and the game gives you no message. After about five minutes, you stop noticing.

Longhouses do more than raise the villager cap. Each one takes an attachment once you reach Feudal, and you can choose from four. The farmstead adds two vegetable fields that gather about 50 percent faster than regular farms. The Bee Skeps produce gold on their own. The Pasture & Loom researches armor upgrades slowly over time, and the smithy does the same for melee and ranged damage.

You can have six of each attachment, and with enough of them the civ nearly plays itself. Longhouses also train spearmen, and one tech gives you passive wood from them. After a while, you stop gathering food by hand, because the vegetable fields cover it. Longhouses are not drop-off points, which feels odd, though they are already strong.

The unique units and buildings add more.

The Bóndi is a spearman with extra health and armor, and groups of them gain a shield wall. The berserker hits hard and moves fast, and when its health gets low, it triggers berserkergang, which heals and boosts damage. The Hirdmen carry heavy armor, and the Skúta crossbow deals serious damage but has less health. The shieldmaiden is a ranged unit with high armor, and the Kärr Hall landmark lets you levy up to three of them for 800 food each.

The Völur is a support unit that walks between longhouses and speeds up their production, or you can sacrifice one to make a sacred grove on a relic. A grove produces a berserker every minute for free. Your infantry can also heal by eating from berry bushes, deer, and vegetable fields, which is slow but works.

Landmarks push you in different directions, and so do the sagas. The Valdemar Castle acts as a keep and gives you the Danavirke tech, which swaps your palisades for stronger walls with extra fire armor. The Konghelle Cathedral works like a monastery, raises your population cap by 10, and collects 10 gold for each longhouse every 30 seconds. Vikings cannot build stone walls or infantry rams, so torch damage takes down buildings.

The sagas are side quests that reward you for doing certain things. One asks you to gather food from hunting, and it speeds up villagers and raises carry capacity. Another asks you to heal 1,000 health for extra health and charge range. A third asks you to destroy two tech or economy buildings, which cuts tech costs by 15 percent, and two lumber camps are enough. A horn tells you when one finishes.

The Scots feel different from the start in Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North, because defense is the point.

Tower Houses replace outposts, give you 15 population, and let you train Highland cattle that sit near berry bushes. The cattle eat the berries without draining them, and they give you food over time, which is strange but works. Those berry spots become permanent farms for your cows. Scottish infantry also benefit a lot from stealth forests. They see normally inside them, move faster, and heal there too.

Tower Houses can create more stealth forests, and the Tower of the Skye landmark builds one and raises infantry damage inside it. Keeps burn the area when destroyed. Gallowglasses brace against cavalry, and men-at-arms do the same once you research the Lochaber axes.

Each time you age up, you choose between a Highland landmark and a Lowland one, and the unique techs differ. The Mustering Hall is a unique building, not a landmark, and you get one per game. It builds influence from your military buildings, and each tier gives you muster charges to summon units.

The Duntroon Castle comes with the Seven Sisters cannons, and the Three Loch Lookout adds three muster charges. Wallace's Rally speeds up infantry production. The Highland archer fires faster than an English longbow but with less range, and the taxman carries a gun. The guns all fire at the same moment, which breaks immersion a little.

Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North sends Viking infantry into familiar combat trouble.

Early on, you push with spearmen against halberdiers. Later, the Rus send horse archers around the map, and these are a problem for a civ built on infantry, since you cannot catch them. They kill 16 of your villagers in a single raid, and you feel it right away. Archers are the real answer, so you build crossbows, regular archers, and hand cannoneers, and you wall off what you can.

You can get tún for faster infantry, and Leikr training for more damage and range, but mangonels and bombards show up later, and you start losing ground. In the end, you lose, with 421 units lost against 558 killed on the other side, and the economy falls behind around minute 18.

Some parts of the DLC work well. The auto economy is convenient, the longhouse system offers plenty of choices, and the sagas give you goals beyond fighting. The interface also got a few overdue improvements. You can scroll the tech tree sideways, and smart selection finally works as it should, with Shift for all and Alt for economic units. Still, plenty of rough spots remain.

The UI takes up too much space and doesn't scale.

Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North still lacks auto-scout, and the hotkeys differ just enough from Age of Empires II to confuse you. The market does not show prices before you buy, and the town bell is easy to hit by mistake. Balance is the bigger issue in this DLC.

The Scots and the Vikings feel overpowered, and the free value they provide makes the DLC feel pay-to-win. Scots players get passive food and a strong tower that stops early rushes. A Viking player gets free villagers. Older civs get nothing comparable, and the Holy Roman Empire is the clearest example, with a mediocre Landsknecht and a very late Black Rider as its main unique pieces.

When buying the newest DLC gives you a strong edge and older civs get no matching updates, it is easy to see why that label comes up. The Scots have stronger individual units, and the Vikings overwhelm you with free units and cheap spam.

Crucible is where you spend most of your time with Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North, and the co-op version is the best addition. It is a roguelite mode where you defend a coastal wonder against waves, and you need to survive 45 minutes to earn the gold medal. As the match goes on, you pick boons, points of interest, perks, and civ talents. Some of them are very strong.

One attracts every huntable animal to your town center, and another gives you a trickle of gold in exchange for removing gold mines.

A storm cloud zaps enemies, and a hospital converts some of the units you kill. You cannot build stone walls because the attack waves need open lanes, so you use cheap fortified outposts as a perimeter. The progression in Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North is where the pacing gets slow.

Ascension perks are permanent, cost 5,000 points each, and a 45-minute win only gives you around 300, so you need to raise the difficulty to make the grind reasonable. You start on Hard, then move to Ridiculous, and the Ridiculous level is where it gets tight. Leaderboards are another worry, since they tend to fill up with hackers within a week.

The Crucible is still a step in the right direction, especially with co-op. Playing it with friends feels more relaxed than ranked. Ranked and the online side bring most of the frustration around this update. Matchmaking can put you in Silver I and then throw you against Gold, Platinum, and Diamond players, and some of them have been at Conqueror for years.

You also run into what looks like cheating, with too many resources too early and signs of map hacking, and reports seem to go nowhere. In team games, somebody leaves in the first few minutes about once every four matches. When a teammate quits, their base goes neutral, their units are gone, their market breaks, and no AI replaces them. The DLC's visuals hold up well.

The newer biomes look great, and the tundra summer map stands out, along with the Scottish heathland.

Hills can warp your perspective so much that it looks like a fisheye view, and the interface takes up a lot of screen. Once the Danavirke tech kicks in, the walls get bricks in front of them, and the icons now come in color. Even so, the screen feels crowded, and you may see poor FPS. The sound is where Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North shines, and the new civs keep it at the standard the original game already set.

When you switch civs, the main theme moves into the civ theme without a break. The Scots get bagpipes and flute, and the music gains more instruments as you age up. The sounds give you information too. Distinct horns, voice lines that warn you about charges and raids, and the sound of muskets mean you don't have to keep your eyes on the minimap.

It is some of the best sound design in modern RTS games. Overall, Age of Empires IV: Raiders of the North is a mixed package, but it still has a lot going for it. The Vikings and the Scots are well designed and offer real variety; the Crucible co-op is a lot of fun, and the music is still great.

The missing campaign, the high price for two civs, the balance, the matchmaking, and the cheating all hold it back. If you play for the co-op and the new civs, you get decent value. If you want competitive ranked play or a story, you will find fewer reasons to buy it, and some problems need fixing first.