This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Evan Lahti.

Much like razor blades, expansion packs help clear away the scruffy, wooly tedium that builds up as a game grows old. They’re also overpriced, generally – but ideally provide newly-sharpened features that snap snugly into the original engine, helping things feel clean and new again. With its initial release coming a year ago, fans of the series may be sprouting Santa-sized whiskers at this point, but Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs is Ensemble Studios’ well-sharpened solution to this beard-of-boredom, and the blade in question is the addition of three native nations as playable armies, along with 15 new campaign missions. But does the supplement make its way across your hard drive without leaving any nicks?

The real-time strategy genre being known for its replayability, even finer gems like Age of Empires become naturally dull with time and repetition. Knowing this, it’d be difficult for Ensemble to find ways to sour the deep experience that fills Age of Empires III. Instead, we examine an expansion by its value, and whether or not it truly expands upon the original features that drew us in in the first place. Luckily for fans of the series, the answer is a solid “yes.”

In the original, Ensemble packed eight civilizations into its product for players – the Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Russians, British, Germans, and Ottomans. Though each had its unique set of fortes and foibles you’d expect in an RTS, for a game that was largely set in the “New World” of pre- and post-colonial America, the absence of a fully playable Native American tribe in the game left some fans feeling that the factions were a little Euro-centric. Indian clans were scattered throughout AOE III as NPCs, and did play a significant role in the game’s story, but Ensemble made sure to answer to its fanbase’s smoke signals for a more varied cast of armies in The WarChiefs.

The Iroquois, Sioux, and Aztec comprise the additional civilizations, and each offer players a genuine contrast to its cross-Atlantic counterparts. The Iroquois, the most versatile of the trio, bear some resemblance to existing militaries, as they borrow a bit from European technology. They’re the only race that comes loaded with artillery, and the Iroquois pack additional siege units as well, including battering rams and mantlets to complement their light cannons. Players that rely on speed will look to the Sioux. Masterful horse-trainers, the Sioux focus almost entirely on cavalry; offering axe, bow, and rifle-bearing riders, and can also produce powerful dog soldiers. The Aztecs are also known for their quickness, but do it on foot – the eagle runner knight effectively substitutes for cavalry, and other units, like the stealth-able jaguar prowl knight, make the Aztec a stout foe. The Europeans won’t feel left out, though, as they receive elite units ranging from ninjas, gatling guns, petards, ironclad warships, and spies to counter a few of the strengths that the Native Americans offer.

Aside from some capable infantry, the other strong suit that Indian armies call upon is a useful little structure known as a fire pit. Like a farm or plantation, settlers can be allocated to the fire pit, but instead of gathering food or coin for you, they’ll provide bonuses on-the-fly as they dance in unison – banging drums and fox-trotting around the flame. As more settlers are directed towards the pit by your able mouse cursor, they’ll cumulatively increase your maximum population, pump out medicine men to heal your units, boost your attack, or improve your experience trickle rate, depending on which bonus you select. The fire pit allows your army to be more flexible and change as its needs change – it isn’t quite as practical early on, but once resource-gathering becomes less of a priority, amassing parties of dancers can be surprisingly effective as the end-game nears.

But sometimes dancing gets tiresome: settlers get anxious and want to join the fight themselves. If you’ve ever considered moving your farmers from the fields to the frontlines, you can employ the major gameplay element that Ensemble added in WarChiefs: the ability to initiate a revolution. The revolution acts like another advancement, but takes the place of aging-up one’s civilization to the Imperial Age. Designed as a last-ditch, risk-it-all option, declaring a revolution converts any and all settlers you have into militia, and allows you to call in mighty units like the gatling gun through your home shipments. On the flipside, a revolution disables your ability to produce new units or structures, meaning that you’re nearly limited to what you have on the screen to defeat your foes. Either way, it opens up new tactics to players, and will suit generals that prefer an aggressive style of play.

While new units and the revolution supplement the features at hand, WarChiefs’ campaign mode represents the heart of the experience. A loosely-connected, pseudo-historic series of events tours us through the battles of Bunker Hill, Yorktown, Saratoga, Valley Forge, and others, and while the story does keep things interesting, rightly so, it’s the missions themselves that shine. War Chiefs appropriately assumes that players enter the game with a few battles under their belt, and the missions start getting tricky as early as the third, where you’re ordered to hold a hill and two coastal cannons while protecting against oncoming enemy squads.

What stands out about the missions is how Ensemble finds new ways to re-imagine and re-tool objectives, or at least how the player goes about accomplishing them. Some levels will have you juggling multiple skirmishes at once, managing your forces in different areas. Some will encourage you to take your time in amassing an attack division. Others require small-scale tactics, like Yorktown, where you’ll lead George Washington on a particularly thrilling stealth mission across the Delaware to disable the enemy. Each is unique and appealing in its own right, without feeling tiresome, too linear or too easy.

One of the early missions from Act II is a good example of Ensemble’s ability to keep things varied and non-repetitive. Initially you’re tasked to guard a group of settlers as they chop wood to build a fort. Armed with only a handful of militia, you rely on resources from your trading posts as wagons travel past. After enough trees have fallen and you’ve fended off wave after wave of attackers, your commander directs you to move in on the Sioux village and eliminate your opponents. A short dialogue occurs, and main character Chayton Black objects, saying “I won’t kill women and children.” Unimpressed by your insolence, your former commander is now your enemy, and the once-pesky Sioux (who were after your settlers just seconds ago), now become allies under your command. It’s moments like these, ones that twist the story and gameplay in unison, that keep the campaign dynamic and force players to re-think their objectives on-the-fly.

Presentation-wise as well, Ensemble carries the same quality from the original. The score that runs through WarChiefs is especially enjoyable: cinematic, epic melodies don’t contribute to the game’s repetitive nature. The voice acting falls somewhere between respectable and basic, though it never fails to get the job done during ingame-rendered cutscenes.

Age of Empires III doesn’t hinder itself by putting more emphasis on mobility rather than base-building; on commanding units instead of managing structures, but newcomers to the series will find just two defensive emplacements (the tower and the fort, which is extremely expensive, and large enough to be a base itself) to choose from. During development, Ensemble spoke openly about how it didn’t want to encourage players to turtle (some members of the team were even opposed to including walls as a structure), but at the same time, the game lacks a fulfilling feeling of crafting defenses around one’s base. We like that most multiplayer matches on WarChiefs don’t drag and dwell and become battles of attrition, but the expansion was an excellent opportunity for Ensemble to create more defensive options for players.

AI responsiveness also continues to be an infrequently frustrating issue in WarChiefs. In several campaign missions we played, enemy patrols waltzed right through our lines and into our base, ignored like a younger sibling. Likewise, there are some cases where you’ll need to guide your infantry like infants, especially when moving them through complex maps – while you may be aware of the best route to take to get from point A to B, your units aren’t the best navigators, apparently.

Expansion packs are generally hit-or-miss in terms of the features they supply versus the price tag they’re pegged with. In this way, Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs hits its target pretty accurately – representing a healthy addition to what’s already there. With good reason, Ensemble is a company that seeks to provide a specific kind of experience in its titles, and though some gamers may miss additional content like added defensive structures in WarChiefs that could have been added, overall the game remains balanced, and is improved by the addition of three new factions, the ability to declare a revolution, and other minor improvements. For details on Age of Empires III, click here.

More structures would have been nice, but otherwise the expansion truly expands.

Still stunning – buildings break apart fluidly, and the Native armies are well-represented.

An epic score sprinkled with a symphony of cannon- and musket-fire. Impressive for an RTS.

Each battle feels richly unique and different.

New units for the Europeans help refresh what’s already there, but it's mostly more of the same