Others say...

"Dumbed Down"
I have played each empire earth version always impressed at the strides made with each successive version...until this one. It looks like EE III was redesigned to better cater to players interested in a first person shooter (FPS) game instead of an RTS. The variations of the different cultures and their technology evolutions were completely thrown out in favor of 3 basic cultures: western, eastern and middle eastern. The more advanced technological stages were diluted and "cartoonified" into something resembling a weak PS3 game. The bottom line is that it looks like if you are interested in a rich gaming experience with plenty of variation and some realism thrown in, go this Age of Empires III. It is everything this game isn't.

"A great destruction to a great series..."
If all good things must come to an end, then this game is exactly that end.

What happened here MadDoc? What in god's name did you think you were going to accomplish by doing what you did here? You purposely dumbed down the game to try to appeal to a greater audience, to gain a larger market share, and, you failed. You turned your back away from the customers - because you got greedy.

In particular, MadDoc failed to realize that:
1) The market for gamers who play the EE series are history fans and RTS fans of whom have intelligence and enjoy depth and strategy. EEIII targets the market of the likes for Warcraft III, and guess what, remaking the same game is never a good idea, not to mention changing the game by changing the original target audience of intellectuals to a target audience to that of morons is just going to burn you. I'm almost certain that a number of people at MadDoc tried telling the head business jerks that this game idea was a dead end, and I bet the business people didn't even care to listen. These people developed the business-man-syndrome, this nose-in-the-air attitude that they know everything, rightfully certain of their inner thoughts as being truth among men, arrogantly and egotistically pushing themselves to unforeseeable financial failure, all on account of greed by simply not knowing their audience nor market.
2) The reduction in the number of epochs, the number of unique civilizations, the number of collectible minerals, the number of units, etc. is their major fault here. MadDoc dumbed down gameplay simply by removing gameplay, and their lead game designer should be fired as a result of this atrocity. We players weren't asking for unique assets for each unique civilization, but rather just more storyline behind them. We players weren't asking for a simplification of the epochs, but rather just more precision in historical accurate gameplay. We players weren't asking for a dumbed down version of EEII so our grandparents or nephew could play - we were asking for a game WE wanted to play; one with strategy, cunning, and most importantly GAMEPLAY! MadDoc removed the most vital part, can you not see the error?
3) MadDoc decided to add the world map, almost like a Risk-like layer ontop. This *is* what players asked for, but they did *not* ask for the above two. MadDoc, very literally, could have not even of touched EEII, but rather just add this world map part, and released it and it would have been 10x better than what it is now.

If you enjoy mindless Warcraft III like games, EEIII fits that bill nicely. I would save your money for something else. This game and its series is now under control of non-intelligent weasels who care nothing about players, but have let their greed consume themselves.

"Good game for casual gamers, but disappointing for hardcore EE fans."
Let me just preface by saying I owned both EEI and II and enjoyed them very much. I thought EEIII was going to be great, but it doesn't meet my expectations and it disappoints me. The game is a good one, it just is quite a deviation from EE I and II and I'm not sure it's worth $50.

There are only 5 epochs with an incredibly simplified tech tree/unit upgrade system. The world domination mode is neat and can give replayability, but single battle mode has predetermined maps to work from so that can be a hassle if you don't want to go through the time-consuming world domination mode. The resources are also much simplified(knowledge, raw materials, and wealth) which I feel tends to drop the skill needed for good gameplay. There are also much fewer units available to build. Coupled with the fact there are only 5 epochs, you could probably say there are fewer than 75 total units you can build(even with the fact that each of the three factions have entirely different available units).

I personally don't care about how pretty a game looks; if it's good, I'll play it no matter what. The graphics are pretty sharp and destruction of buildings is neat, however, I will say that EE III has a more cartoonish version of units and requires enormous computing/graphics power to run well. I've got a 3.6 GHz P4 processor with a Radeon X1850XT(512MB/256bit) graphics card and it just does the job on the lowest video settings possible.

Take home message: If you're a hardcore fan of the EE series, this game probably isn't what you had in mind so beware. If you're more of a casual gamer, then this is probably a really good fit for you. In the end, no matter who you are, I still wouldn't recommend paying $50 for this game. $30 would be much more economical.

"Worth Buying"
If you are a fan of the Empire Earth games and own EEI and EEII such as myself, then you'll love Empire Earth III. It's somewhat different in the graphics department and you don't advance as quickly as in the first two games, but this is ok. I always felt I was advancing too quickly and not getting to play certain eras for as long as I would like. The game play and enjoyment are still there and I think I might even like EEIII better than its' predecessors. It is definitely worth buying and I highly recommend it to fans of the game who want to upgrade to a newer version or to first timers who want to experience a great game.

"Extremely Disappointed"
I am extremely disappointed with Empire Earth 3.
Having played both EE 1 and 2, I had high expectations for EE3, especially considering how vastly better EE2 was than EE1. However, I have been let down for these two main reasons:
1. EE is now too simple. EE1 and EE2 had such complexity and depth of strategy and customization; the developers didn't treat the gamers as idiots. You had to actually think to play the game. Now, the techs are reduced, the epochs are not only short in advancing from one to another, but lack complexity in each epoch to make someone want to stay in a particular epoch for too long.
2. EE3 has performance issues. Granted, my computer isn't a dedicated gaming rig, but with a 8800GT 512mb video card, a Q6600 quad core and 3 gigs of ram, one would expect the graphics to run at least somewhat smoothly. However, at the lowest graphical settings and with nothing else running in the background, EE3 still manages to run slow during skirmishes, and unplayable in Earth-view during the world domination game. This is with the 1.1 patch.

On the upside, some of the graphics are admittedly nicely done, and overall the game is still playable for short periods of time, if you ignore the performance issues. This is definitely a game you'd want to borrow from a friend to try first before buying, EVEN if you've played the first 2.