Intro:
XBOX. Nuf said.
Menus:
The menu is a ripoff from AOE3. I'm sure this saved time but it would have been cool to do a high-def version of the city street we all know from the original. Whatever, this part isn't that big of a deal. We play matches not menus.
Performance:
I have i5 8400 w/ 1080Ti rendering at 4K. The graphics settings make nearly no difference on my benchmark score--this game is heavily CPU bound. The performance could be a serious issue for people who don't have a powerful desktop CPU (laptops tend to be thermally limited, further hurting performance).
Graphics:
The graphics are generally an upgrade. I'm not sure how much a difference this makes though. It's like choosing between a $50 chess set and a $5000 set with hand carved ivory pieces. Yeah the expensive set looks better, but it doesn't matter one bit when you're playing.
I don't know if the new assets will be available in Voobly any time soon or not. They would probably at least need to be converted to meet the limited color / resolution allowed by the non-DE engine.
Sound:
As a musician my ear is sensitive. The sound has been overhauled. It is higher def but a lot of the new sound effects are corny, like they came out of a stock library or a mobile game. I personally hate the new soundtrack, but let's be honest, it would be nearly impossible to match the brilliance of the original. The poor music isn't a big deal since you can always play your own, but the SFX aren't really an upgrade. I'm disappointed with this part.
Controls:
The game now intercepts the mouse and applies its own settings. Doesn't feel linear, but I'm not very knowledgeable about that stuff.
The binary:
AOE as we know it on Voobly has been heavily modified, ostensibly without source code or original documentation. I don't know if all the work was done for free, but it is has been made available to the community for free. The very short version is people willing and able to patch and improve AOE anticipating a digital release many years before HD were told "**** you" by Microsoft so they did it anyway for Voobly and the community now has an awesome, polished, reliable and feature-filled version of the game.
Microsoft on the other hand has apparently done everything possible to avoid hiring the best talent in the community, and has exactly one objective with AOE DE: make as much profit as possible.
Conclusion: community patched binary wins hands-down. Not even a comparison.
Multiplayer:
Matchmaking system is a joke made by uninformed nincompoops. Random uncompetitive maps but pick civ. The fixed settings are probably a good thing insofar as they might make ratings more reliable, but really ELO reliability has never been a problem except for smurfing, which of course this doesn't prevent.
And then the worst of it...servers. There is no reason for servers besides to give Microsoft more control, including screwing all the players when the servers inevitably close down. Let's look at a couple reasons why people might think servers are a good idea, but might not be:
1) Lag
Putting a man in the middle will INCREASE lag unless you have some funky international connections where the server is faster reaching other regions than p2p from the dude's own PC would be. This is probably mostly an issue in places with heavy censorship like China.
Conclusion: servers might be a win for people in some regions, but not for players who already have low-latency direct connections.
2) Cheating
As most of us know it's nearly impossible to cheat in aoe2 by altering the game's contents i.e. giving yourself res. That's because all computers in a match actually run their own separate versions of the game, with the instant they go out of agreement resulting in a desync. Yes, you can easily cheat by READING memory. It's not clear that the DE version does things different here. It's possible it can only send your client only as much info as necessary. If so, that could pose a real problem or total roadblock to getting CaptureAge to work. There is also the near-certainty that with the server as a gatekeeper people will come up with network exploits allowing arbitrary add of res, units, etc to their game. It's really unlikely that MS will keep on top of cheating, so expect the game to be rife with exploits down the road.
Conclusion: If each side no longer needs to run identical copies of the game and stay in sync, the game will be open to a much more destructing and gamebreaking kind of cheating that doesn't even exist so far. If each side still DOES need to run an identical copy of the game, then there is no need for a server at all to prevent cheating, since you will necessarily be able to read memory and reveal all game info with cheat tools (just like with all previous aoe2) and it will still be virtually impossible to modify the game world, just like right now. The server does what? Nothing.
Gameplay:
Gameplay is a lot better than HD when it was released but for tournament purposes I don't think there's much argument that user patch is better. I don't have much to say on this point as other reviews have covered it extensively. It's possible DE can get better, but then so can userpatch.
Tournaments / Streaming:
Right now DE is absolutely horrible for tournaments and streaming. There's no capture age and spectating doesn't work. Microsoft clearly doesn't consider high level play a priority, which is disappointing.
Future Predictions:
HD player base will largely switch to DE. Voobly high level playerbase and tournaments probably will depend more on what the viewers want than any other thing. Bulk of viewers are regular people who barely even play the game, so of course they will prefer DE. What I'm scared of is that DE is barely good enough that pros and streamers will all switch over.
I don't like the game being entirely in Microsoft's hands. If they decide to withdraw support, how long until the game is reverse engineered well enough for people to play their own games without "contacting the mothership?" We already did all this work for the original game and now it has a very good chance of being supplanted by something that looks better, but is not as good. Will people go back to Voobly in 2030 after MS says "forget DE?"
XBOX. Nuf said.
Menus:
The menu is a ripoff from AOE3. I'm sure this saved time but it would have been cool to do a high-def version of the city street we all know from the original. Whatever, this part isn't that big of a deal. We play matches not menus.
Performance:
I have i5 8400 w/ 1080Ti rendering at 4K. The graphics settings make nearly no difference on my benchmark score--this game is heavily CPU bound. The performance could be a serious issue for people who don't have a powerful desktop CPU (laptops tend to be thermally limited, further hurting performance).
Graphics:
The graphics are generally an upgrade. I'm not sure how much a difference this makes though. It's like choosing between a $50 chess set and a $5000 set with hand carved ivory pieces. Yeah the expensive set looks better, but it doesn't matter one bit when you're playing.
I don't know if the new assets will be available in Voobly any time soon or not. They would probably at least need to be converted to meet the limited color / resolution allowed by the non-DE engine.
Sound:
As a musician my ear is sensitive. The sound has been overhauled. It is higher def but a lot of the new sound effects are corny, like they came out of a stock library or a mobile game. I personally hate the new soundtrack, but let's be honest, it would be nearly impossible to match the brilliance of the original. The poor music isn't a big deal since you can always play your own, but the SFX aren't really an upgrade. I'm disappointed with this part.
Controls:
The game now intercepts the mouse and applies its own settings. Doesn't feel linear, but I'm not very knowledgeable about that stuff.
The binary:
AOE as we know it on Voobly has been heavily modified, ostensibly without source code or original documentation. I don't know if all the work was done for free, but it is has been made available to the community for free. The very short version is people willing and able to patch and improve AOE anticipating a digital release many years before HD were told "**** you" by Microsoft so they did it anyway for Voobly and the community now has an awesome, polished, reliable and feature-filled version of the game.
Microsoft on the other hand has apparently done everything possible to avoid hiring the best talent in the community, and has exactly one objective with AOE DE: make as much profit as possible.
Conclusion: community patched binary wins hands-down. Not even a comparison.
Multiplayer:
Matchmaking system is a joke made by uninformed nincompoops. Random uncompetitive maps but pick civ. The fixed settings are probably a good thing insofar as they might make ratings more reliable, but really ELO reliability has never been a problem except for smurfing, which of course this doesn't prevent.
And then the worst of it...servers. There is no reason for servers besides to give Microsoft more control, including screwing all the players when the servers inevitably close down. Let's look at a couple reasons why people might think servers are a good idea, but might not be:
1) Lag
Putting a man in the middle will INCREASE lag unless you have some funky international connections where the server is faster reaching other regions than p2p from the dude's own PC would be. This is probably mostly an issue in places with heavy censorship like China.
Conclusion: servers might be a win for people in some regions, but not for players who already have low-latency direct connections.
2) Cheating
As most of us know it's nearly impossible to cheat in aoe2 by altering the game's contents i.e. giving yourself res. That's because all computers in a match actually run their own separate versions of the game, with the instant they go out of agreement resulting in a desync. Yes, you can easily cheat by READING memory. It's not clear that the DE version does things different here. It's possible it can only send your client only as much info as necessary. If so, that could pose a real problem or total roadblock to getting CaptureAge to work. There is also the near-certainty that with the server as a gatekeeper people will come up with network exploits allowing arbitrary add of res, units, etc to their game. It's really unlikely that MS will keep on top of cheating, so expect the game to be rife with exploits down the road.
Conclusion: If each side no longer needs to run identical copies of the game and stay in sync, the game will be open to a much more destructing and gamebreaking kind of cheating that doesn't even exist so far. If each side still DOES need to run an identical copy of the game, then there is no need for a server at all to prevent cheating, since you will necessarily be able to read memory and reveal all game info with cheat tools (just like with all previous aoe2) and it will still be virtually impossible to modify the game world, just like right now. The server does what? Nothing.
Gameplay:
Gameplay is a lot better than HD when it was released but for tournament purposes I don't think there's much argument that user patch is better. I don't have much to say on this point as other reviews have covered it extensively. It's possible DE can get better, but then so can userpatch.
Tournaments / Streaming:
Right now DE is absolutely horrible for tournaments and streaming. There's no capture age and spectating doesn't work. Microsoft clearly doesn't consider high level play a priority, which is disappointing.
Future Predictions:
HD player base will largely switch to DE. Voobly high level playerbase and tournaments probably will depend more on what the viewers want than any other thing. Bulk of viewers are regular people who barely even play the game, so of course they will prefer DE. What I'm scared of is that DE is barely good enough that pros and streamers will all switch over.
I don't like the game being entirely in Microsoft's hands. If they decide to withdraw support, how long until the game is reverse engineered well enough for people to play their own games without "contacting the mothership?" We already did all this work for the original game and now it has a very good chance of being supplanted by something that looks better, but is not as good. Will people go back to Voobly in 2030 after MS says "forget DE?"