Age of Empires Mobile is the worst kind of mobile spinoff

When I first booted up Age of Empires Mobile, it seemed like a faithful, if simplified, mobile adaption for the popular real-time strategy game series. I used my phone’s touchscreen to move units around, engage in combat, or take down structures. I was starting to see how this game could hook me if it were always like this, as I’ve dumped my fair share of time into games like Age of Empires II. Unfortunately, after that opening, Age of Empires Mobile exposes its true form.

Much of my early time inAge of Empires Mobile was spent in gacha menus, idle city building, and auto battles — none of which screamed Age of Empires to me. Nuggets of what’s so enjoyable about Age of Empires can be found in its mobile counterpart, but in practice, it feels like a mobile game adapted to the Age of Empires IP rather than a faithful and considerate Age of Empires adaptation for mobile.

A historical gacha

The core gameplay loop of Age of Empires Mobile is all about obtaining resources so you can continue to build up your citadel and upgrade the historical heroes and troops. For this early build, I was given tons of resources and never had to worry about timers or having insufficient resources to build what I needed. I suspect there will be time and money gates for free-to-play players, though. Obtaining historical figures through gacha pulls works for Age of Empires Mobile, as it gives the game a chance to cover a wide breadth of history without overloading the experience with many factions or campaigns from day one.

While games like Marvel Strike Force have shown me how this system can get predatory, I at least understand its inclusion here. These historical figures serve as the leaders of troops I commanded, but unfortunately, Age of Empires Mobile lacks the depth of its PC counterparts or even fellow real-time strategy games on mobile, such as Warcraft Rumble. There’s a world map where players can walk around and engage