It is very much a great middle ground between Age Of Empires II and III, taken the best of both and blended them together to make a while that is both familiar and new at the same time.

TL;DR - If you're a fan of the series and a little unsure about it, get it on sale. Its worthwhile giving it a shot. Who knows what you'll find?

Hail the return of the king... square maps. The circular ones in AoE III were a big change and, while they needed to try something new to keep it fresh, it didn't feel right, and with the addition of the home shipment system, I think it was a bit of future shock. Too much change too fast. It didn't feel like Age Of Empires. One thing I LOOOOVE with this one is being able to choose biomes for the skirmish maps, the map presentation is very, very pretty, and all the biomes are beautifully represented.

The UI takes a bit to get used to as, while the information is all there, you just need to adjust a little. Its not a bad thing, its not miles away from the well established one from the entries before, its just slightly different. One little addition I really appreciate is that when you click on a unit and put the cursor over the unit name, it gives you the readout on it's strength and weaknesses, just under that you'll find all the stats like attack damage, armour, and range.

Aging up is done by building landmarks, kinda like wonders from the previous entries, and there are two to choose from each time. Like the French have the Artillery School that creates stronger versions of the siege units built in it, or many of them have a landmark building that is a large keep (see: castle from AoE II) such as England's Berkshire Castle.

There's an AoE III style emphasis on civilisation bonuses too. Unique units as always, economic bonuses, and unique buildings like the Ottomans can create a limted amount of Military Schools from the first age which automatically generate military units, or the Delhi Sultanate (Indians) can garrison Imams units inside a building and it creates bonuses for the buildings around them.

One of my biggest bug bears with AoE II is that monks are OP (especizally the Aztecs) but in this one they've nerfed the monks in a beautifully simple way: the monks can't convert from a long distance, they need to get within (effectively) shouting distance, and they can only convert while holding a relic.

Now, the downsides.
- The sigil (player banner) creator is piss poor. The elements in it are fine and all but there are limited colour options for each element... and they're all some sort of pastel or muted colour... and none of them work together. Nothing strong. Nothing that seemingly commands attention and authority. If you were to fight under these banners yourself... you'd not be inspired. Come on now.

- The game as a whole seems to lean a little toward multiplayer. Obviously many people WILL play online but some people like to just chill and play solo, the map selections are a little too few for my liking as well.

- The civilisations are a little too few (means they can give more as paid DLC. Yay.) and while its nice to have two or three versions of some (like there is both the English, and their subsidiary, House of Lancaster, as another varient) there really needs to be more variety. There's no Spanish or Portuguese, and their buildings would be beautiful!

- The unit stance options (or lack thereof) is really quite annoying. The units need to be stationary before you can hold ground, but after you move them you need to hit hold ground again. There is no defensive stance option. It seems a little under refined, like the sort of thing you'd see in AoE 1 when it was first released, instead of a more intelligent system like in AoE II.
I generally emphasise building attack with my siege engines and have my armies in close cupport, but considering I can't put them in a defensive stance with my ranged units holding ground, it means hold my units back manually... its a pain in the butt.

All in all though, its worth a shot. Get in on sale if you're unsure. I was unsure but it currently has it's claws in me and they're buried deep!

It’s ok, I played over a 1000 hours and I still suck.

AoE 4 is a rather nicely made game, and a good entry in the series. I find the movie segments to open up each part of the campaign is brilliant - the combination of live-action shots of locations superimposed upon by animations detailing the historical event the campaign's mission is focused on is a good way to open up with, if a little lengthy.
Overall, I find the landmark function with aging up a nice element to work with, and the variety of units is a decent balance. Campaign missions have a good pace, and compared to AoE 2, I find this a good thing to ease yourself through it, as the difficulty levels are balanced well to ensure players have fun. Definitely worth the price I paid for it.