Beauty is really something that distinguished even the early Anno titles (Anno 1602 and Anno 1503) from other similar games like "The Settlers" or even "Age of Empires". I remember that playing these games was just so nice... lush green landscapes, beautiful cities full of half-timbered and renaissance houses, palaces, ships in full sail on a blue ocean. It was also the first time I really came into contact with classical music as a kid.
The 'feel' of a game can't be understated. I get the same vibes from KCD 2, where just walking through the environment is in itself a joy.
The thing I didn't like about Age of Empires compared to Settlers was that warfare is the main point of the game; I wish AoE had a plain city / society building mode. Actually it probably does via mods or custom maps, or there's other games that tick the AoE and city builder boxes. Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.
> Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.
Yes. This is the main reason why I always preferred Settlers and the Anno titles to AoE, EE or similar games. You could build things. AoE was mainly about destroying things. "Warfare" in the original Settlers I was just 2 cute knights hitting each other on the head with a sword until one of them was flat as a pancake.
> I get the same vibes from KCD 2
Add Gothic II, which was also very pretty (it still is, although it came out nearly 25 years ago).
Not sure if this is nostalgia: What I don't get with modern games, at least on the most likely device I could be using for gaming - the iPad - is how ugly they are.
Even AoE and Settlers (both preferably in the second edition) look soooo much better to me than most of the games I can find, they look just strange, both the remakes from "brand name" studios and a lot of the smaller games like you'd find on Apple Arcade.
The thing I didn't like about Age of Empires compared to Settlers was that warfare is the main point of the game; I wish AoE had a plain city / society building mode. Actually it probably does via mods or custom maps, or there's other games that tick the AoE and city builder boxes. Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.