ya already logged in about 12 hours , the gameplay is great more like aoe 2 than aoe 3 :D , there are plenty of quests and 3 civilizations to play as so not bad for a f2p . the cons of not having the civilization dlcs....pops up in the later stages almost everything is limited.

im good at aoe 2 style gameplay so the pay 2 win is not that much needed so far .

oh and ignore the gold farmers..aka spammers in the chat and any pvp requests too.

have not tried co-op yet for the quests

Oh? That's a ratio of items to playing time which I never saw. More like 10hrs to an item, maybe. :P I found items to drop pretty rarely, making the purchasing option seem like a play-to-play. And they are sidegrades, but they're useful sidegrades. They usually aren't straight damage, just different items which can be more effective in certain situations.

May not sound like much, but if you bounce through classes/item set ups as often as I do, having a different item can make some situations that much easier. The base weapons are good in all situations, as opposed to great in one and terrible at everything else. And yea, sometimes a gun will come out which is just that much more powerful. May only last a few days before a patch, but that's a long time to be on the other end. :P

Seemed like DnD Online for a while, but eh. Fun game. Was anyway, haven't played in a while so the ratios could be much better.

Really? Do you go over the limit often then because I notice myself getting drops often enough. Updates can be a bit of a rough time, they have gotten a bit better at it. At the very least they have stopped updating one class at a time. That was really bad, ruined the game for weeks at a time.

Well, actually there is a bright side to it. Once I got this GFWL working again, I can play Bulletstorm (got the uncensored version gifted), Fallout 3 GOTY (dito) and Dirt 2 without those issues.

Happy End. Kinda. If Microsoft still lets me play after converting GFWL into XBox whatever. Hopefully it will be only a name change.

i gave up on the game after 19 hours , at first its easy but as you progress further , the quests are close to impossible without paying for the dlc , specially when the cpu you fight against has all the unlocks vs you not having any .

things that will not let you get further in the game without paying
- you cannot have unique units for your civilization without paying for it (dlc) which means the ai will pwn you at the later ages .

-you cannot equip rare or elite stuff , despite finding it unless you pay for it , which means your units are handicapped vs ai ["The highest three tiers of Equipment are only available to players that have purchased the Premium Civilization Pack or the Pro Civilization"

- you cannot use advisers despite having them without paying , which means you are weak, avoid pvp with players having dlc

Mechanically it was a great game, I was disappointed with the campaign though. In AOM it was okay to make up stuff, it was a fantasy setting, they could have said whatever they wanted! But with so many interesting people and events happening during the colonial period, it is beyond me why they had to make up a bad story and write it even more horribly. The expansions just drove that point harder into the ground.

Indeed, if you don't spend that 14 Euro, it is more like an extended demo.