• long running

[PC, SUBS] Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition - Included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate/Game Pass for PC

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Age of Empires II Def. Edition now available with a Microsoft Xbox Game Pass (Ultimate) subscription. Check out current deals for Game Pass using the product tag

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition celebrates the 20th anniversary of one of the most popular strategy games ever with stunning 4K Ultra HD graphics, a new and fully remastered soundtrack, and a brand-new expansion, “The Last Khans” with 3 new campaigns and 4 new civilizations.

Explore all the original campaigns like never before as well as the best-selling expansions, spanning over 200 hours of gameplay and 1,000 years of human history. Head online to challenge other players with 35 different civilizations in your quest for world domination throughout the ages.

Choose your path to greatness with this definitive remaster to one of the most beloved strategy games of all time.

NOTE: If you want the full 4K experience you will also need to install the Enhanced Graphics Pack at 26.3 GB - this is available as free on the PC Xbox app.


Users who wish to block "Additions to Subscription Services" can do so by adding SUBS to their front page customisation. * Xbox Game Pass, Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus are considered additions to subscription services.

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Comments

  • 36 gigs

    • +1

      It is showing as 16.9 GB for me.

      Download is slow, possibly because it released today.

      Edit: There is a separate free Enhanced Graphics Pack that shows as 26.3 GB.

      • +2

        Thanks for the post. The enhanced pack is recommended for everyone playing above 1080p, which is increasingly many of us. Microsoft store download speeds are always slower than Steam, but I downloaded it in under 5 minutes on a gigabit connection, so it may very well be your provider unfortunately. I feel like this will become a recurring comment in the next 10-20 years as we're all still stuck with the NBN.

        • +2

          Sigh. You must be lucky to be living in a country that provides AFFORDABLE broadband speeds, let alone gig speeds. Pipe dream here.

          • +3

            @diaz: Actually I'm in AU right now, and appreciate I'm a lucky one. Other places we've had were on FTTP, HFC, non-NBN wireless so have got to experience all of them. But as you mention, the family house in SG has gigabit, the place in Japan has gigabit, the apartment in NL & SE both had HFC/CATV connections >100 Mbit. I've never paid as much as I had to for the old 1.5Mbit ADSL(1) with Internode. Long term it's one of a few reasons for me not to stay here.

        • +12

          we're all still stuck with the NBN

          To be clear, NBN is not the problem.

          In fact NBN had to be created because the private sector would not upgrade Australia's internet despite their massive profits eg Telstra.

          Internet retailers are simply pointless middleman that raise prices on top of NBN's cost.

          Every additional retailer means another set of wasteful duplication of CEO pay, shareholder profit and everything else that is required to run a business - and this splits the customer base up further leaving fewer people paying for these pointless costs.

          • +1

            @Diji1: Yes agreed, I said NBN casually to refer to the general situation. It has occured from multiple market and political failings with no clear solution outside further significant investment at this stage. Long term it does feel somewhat hopeless, and not promising for this country. At least we do have a relatively competitive and very high perfroming mobile infrastructure. People still complain, but it's surprising how bad many countries have it.

          • +4

            @Diji1: If you think internet retailers are pointless middle man then you simply do not understand what they do.

            NBN is and always has been a last mile wholesaler. They do not connect you to the internet.

            No wholesaler does.

            The internet service provider connects the last mile to transit, peering and overseas connections.

            NBN cannot do that.

            EDIT: I see you've posted this on anything relating to the NBN. I highly recommend you look up what they do. Imagine what links NBN would use to overseas if they were an actual internet service provider.

          • +2

            @Diji1: I feel the same about private health insurance, superannuation providers, and electricity resellers; "wasteful duplication of CEO pay, shareholder profit and everything else that is required to run a business". In the US the health insurance bureaucracies are worse and suck up an enormous amount of money that would be better spent on frontline care.

            That said, most NBN resellers are only making a small profit from NBN plans; ~90% of what we pay goes to the government (NBN Co). ADSL (and dial up before that) was more profitable for ISPs.

        • Microsoft store download speeds are always slower than Steam, but I downloaded it in under 5 minutes on a gigabit connection

          That isn't the problem, I've got a 100 Mbps connection (non-NBN) but most of the time it is downloading at 0 kbps, and then bursts to 9 MBps for a few seconds.

          Eventually, it returns an error, and I restart it.

          26% downloaded so far. If it maintained the 9 MBps for a few minutes it'd be done.

          • +1

            @Xenocaust: It's difficult to pin the cause, but I would agree that Microsoft's CDN is certainly less reliable than others. On the Xbox for example games randomly download from 50-600 Mbps, it's just a crapshoot. On Steam I'll get 950 ish 100% of the time. Everything is 1 or 10GbE here. I had a friend in SEQ that had it so bad I downloaded a 100GB+ game on the Xbox and mailed it to him on a SSD just so we could play it before next year. FWP I know. Hope you get to play it tonight.

            • @Filename: It is bizarre.

              I'm working from home on Azure based applications, and there's been no problems there today.

              I presume the Microsoft PC game distribution uses Azure, but it could be a single region only.

            • @Filename: However, it's worth noting that Steam uses a pseudo peer to peer network between its servers and ISP's hosting its content downloading. Streaming services like Netflix also use this method to minimise bandwidth usage outside ISP's and to offer faster, more reliable speeds to users inside an ISP which is mirroring data.

              I'm not sure if Microsoft is applying a similar method across their servers.

              • @BillyG687: Netflix gave all shit isps a box to place inside their Network. Which is why optus ranks so high on the Netflix speed rankings. Netflix said this was a huge mistake.

  • Does this have matchmaking or is it like the HD version where U have to manually join

    • There is ranked matchmaking

      • Sweet is there dedicated servers? Don't Wana connect to someone and lag…

        • Check out t90official on YouTube for a feel of the competitive scene, as usual top players are generally overseas…

        • Yes

        • Your random capitalisation and lack of complete words is giving me an eye twitch.

    • +2

      From https://www.windowscentral.com/age-empires-ii-definitive-edi…

      On that note, multiplayer has also seen some changes. The old peer-to-peer servers are gone in favor of dedicated servers spread out across global regions. I played with an ally from the UK and experienced no noticeable lag. That might change with an eight-player game from different regions, but overall there should be far better stability in online games. There are now leaderboards and ladders baked in, and a matchmaking feature makes it easy to find an opponent in the same rating range. There's no limit to how many spectators can jump into a game to watch, and they have new tools to get the best viewing experience possible. AoEII:DE is available on Steam and from the Microsoft Store, but both versions will be able to cross-play.

      I'm currently downloading it so cannot verify at the moment.

      But cross play between Steam and Microsoft Store is nice.

  • +13

    I live for deals like these!!!

    • +7

      I went to this post purely to see if you commented.

      Bless you.

      • To be honest, I feel I've let you down… the comment was pretty tame all things considered haha

        • +1

          If you feel like a do-over, I saw a review today that said "Age of Empire 2: Second Definitive Edition Electric Wololo".

          I was deeply amused. When I explained to my wife it translated from nerd poorly.

          • @SgtGrumbles:

            I saw a review today that said "Age of Empire 2: Second Definitive Edition Electric Wololo"

            Please provide us with a link to this review.

    • +2

      30
      30
      30
      30

      11

      11

      30

  • +9

    Best. Game. Ever!

    • +8

      I'll beat you back to Age of Empires!

      • +6

        Wololo

  • So out of PC gaming but want to replay this, will it run on a cheap laptop with integrated graphics?

    Cheers

    • yeh on lowest settings which then you might as well play the HD version

      • Isn't there a lot of QoL improvements in this one making it better than HD?

        • HD remake isn't optimised for multicore CPUs - so it slows right down with large populations.

    • +2

      This is from the Steam page

      https://store.steampowered.com/app/813780/Age_of_Empires_II_…

      MINIMUM:
      Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
      OS: Windows 10 64bit
      Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64x2 5600+
      Memory: 4 GB RAM
      Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420 or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 6850 or Intel® HD Graphics 3000 or better with 2 GB VRAM
      DirectX: Version 11
      Network: Broadband Internet connection
      Storage: 30 GB available space

      Intel HD 3000 came out in 2011 so maybe.

  • Wow thia is great, was probably gonna buy it later on on sale but now I get to play on launch

  • +1

    Also available -
    Age of Wonders: Planetfall (Console, coming soon to PC)
    Hearts of Iron 4: Cadet Edition (PC)
    LEGO: The Ninjago Movie Videogame (Console)
    RAGE 2 (Console, coming soon to PC)
    Remnant: From the Ashes (Console)
    The Talos Principle (Console and PC)
    Tracks: The Train Set Game (Console and PC)

    • Rage 2 is already up, downloaded this morning :D

  • +1

    Wululu !

    • +7

      Wololo*

      • +1

        I thought it was NGUNANUUUU

    • 30*

  • +3

    Gold please

  • +1

    Rogan?

  • HOMEWORLD 3 IS COMING! along with a separate android HomeWorld game :)

    Microsoft is still working n Age of empires 5 or whatever they end up calling the new 2020 RTS Age of empires game :)

    2020 should be a good year for RTS fans

    • +1

      Dont forget Iron Harvert

  • +1

    You don't get to keep the game once the pass expires right?

  • Will it runs on win7 ?

    • Windows 10 Only

    • +2

      Imagine holding on to Windows 7 when 10 update is free. Windows 7 support ends in January btw.

      • Used to be free, need to pay now. At least for me, I have windows 8.1, used to be free

        • +3

          Nope, can still easily get it free. A bit of googling will give you the answer :-)

  • +1

    Aren't they sick and tired of milking the legendary games, releasing them every few years with unnecessary features?

    • +3

      sick of money? since when

    • they also released a small gameplay trailer for AoE4 if it helps

      • -1

        i saw it. it looks terrible with childish and bright graphics. looks like a mediocre mobile game.

  • +1

    I love AOE but didn’t have xbox pass… anyway can get it for free

  • +1

    Cheese steak jimmy's please

  • -1

    Why is it that none of these hugely popular RTS games has ever been ported to Mac?
    Age of Empires I,II,II
    Empire Earth I, II
    Age of Mythology,
    Warcraft III

    Note I am not talking about Turn-Based i.e. Civilization
    Or am I wrong? Have any great RTS games been ported to run on Mac?

    • +12

      Gaming on Mac lmao

      • What's the joke? It's not like we buy Macs to game on.
        We happen to have Macs and we're interested in which games run on them

        • +1

          The joke is you bought a Mac for any reason.

    • I don't know what computer you've been using for the last 20 years but AOE 1, 2, Rise of Nations, Age of Mythology, and WC3 were all ported to Mac.

      • I'm looking in Steam and all of them are Windows only. Where can you get a Mac version of AOE 2 ??

        • +1

          AOE 2 HD works nearly perfectly with wine. I use play on mac so you don't have to deal with all the annoying config stuff: https://www.playonmac.com/en/

    • Warcraft 3 runs on Mac, and has since launch I believe

    • Company of Heroes 1 and 2 are available for Mac.

      • +3

        Company of Heroes 2 is free on Steam tomorrow

    • Warcraft 3 was on Mac was it not? Just not available to purchase anymore because they want to do another money grab with War3:Reforged

      Anyway, I have no problem playing using wineskin or bootcamp

  • +2

    If you're like me and must have a copy to keep forever then it's just around $17AUD if you already have AOE2 HD and go to purchase the rest of the bundle.

    • cheers mate

  • +6

    For the AoE fans out there that might have missed it there is a new trailer for Age of Empires IV
    https://youtu.be/rAbI0fewc7w

    • +1

      Looks like AoE II again. again.

  • Here’s the announcement trailer, covers a bunch more titles.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwxOgitOXfc

  • I paid $1 to signup to this service and then it says $5 each month after. Does anybody know if I can cancel the service and still play the game?

    • +1

      Nope. It’s like Netflix you need to remain subscribed. But there are heaps of games on Game Pass, and more being added so hopefully you find enough value to stay subscribed.

    • +1

      You can play until your subscription is over. If you subscribe today and immediately unsubscribe then you can play for 30 days.

    • Sign up to the Xbox game pass for 3 months for a dollar. Includes pc as well.

  • Classic

  • +2

    I was a beta tester and lemme say that this is a great game. 100% worth the purchase especially if your not new to the game. This game was my childhood and i can't wait for AOE IV! Defs buying the highest edition pack to show my support even more to AOE :)

  • +1

    Anyone else have probs with the enhanced graphics pack being greyed out? Downloaded it and it says it's installed but it's greyed out in the ingame options. I have a 5700xt graphics card so def wouldn't have probs

    • Likewise, can't seem to enable it even though I've successfully downloaded the optional pack. I know with the Steam version you must enable it but I don't think there is an equivalent for Microsoft Store like us in this case. Therefore mine is also greyed out.

  • Posting something that's part of a paid subscription doesn't seem like a deal to me. It's Tantamount to posting Avengers End Game free on Stan.

  • Can someone please explain how game pass works? Do you only get the same while you pay the subscription?

    • +1

      Yes.

      • Thanks. I was supposed to say "game" but I'm glad you understood what I meant

        Also do you keep the game forever or could it be removed from game pass in the future?

        • +1

          Game pass is in beta now, so nothing is locked in stone. However games are constantly being added and some are being removed as time goes by.

          Basically think of it as a Netflix for games because that's essentially what it is. Great value gaming, but you don't "own" them and you always get more but could get some old ones removed at any time.

  • +1

    I thought I was good at this game. 10 losses in a row in 1v1 has shattered that false belief / memory.

  • DE?! I thought HD was supposed to be this…..should be called Age of Empires QFHD Edition….

  • -8

    Dont even have price on title and post received over 100 upvotes?Tell me what is the bargain

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