Age of Empires IV Anniversary Edition

Introduction

Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition is Relic Entertainment's historical real-time strategy game, published by Xbox Game Studios and released on 28 October 2021 at NZ$59.95. Players build economies, research technologies and command armies across historical civilisations and campaigns, in a direct continuation of the series' base-building, resource-gathering formula. It sits at 86% positive ("Very Positive") across 36,172 English-language Steam reviews. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 5,154 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews.

A pace built for competitive play

The most durable theme in this review's negative sample, appearing every year from 2022 through 2026, is that the game's speed and difficulty are tuned for competitive players in a way that alienates a casual audience the earlier games in the series accommodated. "I love AofE 1, 2, & 3 playing on 'slow' setting but the AofE 4 gameplay is way too hard IMO... at age 71 my brain is way too slow to cope with everything I need to do," reads one review. A 2026 reviewer, describing themselves as a 25-year series veteran, makes the same point after years of play: "They are forcing every player to play like pros do instead of letting them goof around like [in earlier games]." A third sums up the audience mismatch directly: "The game does not want me to play it, it's 100% meant for real time competitive game play and it refuses to let casual players like me enjoy it like I did earlier versions."

A cluster of fresh 2025-2026 issues

Set against that long-running structural complaint, this review found several distinct, more recent problems concentrated in 2025 and 2026. A September 2025 review reports the most serious: "the developers decided to force a mandatory update that added a new form of 'Anti-Cheat' that now blocks my adaptive controller as cheating software" — a real accessibility concern for players relying on assistive hardware. A separate April 2025 review describes lost content: "New games need to stop taking away features we paid for... The 'Chart a Course' game mode was great, but now it is gone." A January 2025 review, from a player with over 1,700 hours logged, describes a false-positive ban: "I was banned for 'map hacking,' even though I didn't cheat — I was simply using the Imperial Spies ability from the Chinese civilization." A November 2025 review reports a DLC tied to a wave of crashes: "the latest DLC introduced severe crashing issues for a broad suite of players... Devs are unresponsive to the issues." This review checked the game's own Steam news feed and confirmed the developer remains actively engaged with the game overall — regular balance patches, a new civilisation DLC in May 2026, and a dedicated Controller UI update in June 2026 — even as these specific 2025-2026 complaints suggest that engagement hasn't resolved every issue players are currently raising.

Verdict

Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition remains a genuinely strong, actively supported real-time strategy game — its core systems draw consistent praise, and its competitive scene and continued DLC output are real signs of health five years after launch. What holds the score down is twofold: a structural pacing complaint that has never really gone away, with reviewers across every year sampled arguing the game favours competitive players over the casual audience earlier entries in the series welcomed, and a specific cluster of fresh 2025-2026 problems — an accessibility-blocking anti-cheat update, a removed paid game mode, a false-positive ban, and DLC-linked crashes. Worth playing for RTS fans comfortable with a faster, more competitive pace — casual and older players specifically should try the single-player modes first.