mpire Earth’s gameplay has aped the more-successful Age of Empires series for years, and this latest title is no different at its core. Players advance through the major epochs of human history in this real-time strategy also-ran, progressing from spears and bows to mechs and nukes. It’s a cool framework, but Empire Earth III lacks the kind of polish and pizzazz necessary to stand out in the saturated RTS genre.

The most noteworthy change in Empire Earth III is the meta-campaign that has players gradually conquering the world on a turn-based map of the world. As you’d expect, when armies move into hostile or contested territory, the game zooms down to an RTS battle (where you’re locked at the technology tier you have on the overmap). Unfortunately, the gameplay on the world map isn’t deep enough to be truly engaging. With little more to do than move your handful of armies and balance your production between commerce, imperialism, military, and research, it’s easy to lose interest playing against the boneheaded AI.

A dynamic mission system spices things up somewhat, but not enough to make EE III stand out. From time to time, on either the world map or in the middle of an RTS battle, opportunities for these missions will pop up. Rescuing a native princess from a rival tribe, for instance, could gain you the loyalty of her people. Completing these side-goals is beneficial enough to be worthwhile, and injects some much-needed variety into the game’s vanilla strategy. Even so, the nuts and bolts of the gameplay just don’t measure up.

Empire Earth III’s handful of units per tech tier, problematic unit AI and pathfinding, and lackluster factional differences between the West, East, and Middle East types do little to give RTS players anything they haven’t seen before. As cool as the underlying concepts and the meta-campaign are, playing the game itself is fraught with irritations in commanding your armies, and the depth players expect out of a full-priced RTS is lacking. These same problems keep multiplayer from being anything special. Pass on this unless you’ve exhausted the entertainment value of the last few years’ worth of great RTS titles.