First released in 2021, Overreign is a mod that converts Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition into a first-person experience. Though it’s been around for a while it launched in quite a buggy state, but creator Spriteblood kept plugging away and now it’s looking much more stable: it came to my attention thanks to a video from YouTuber T90Official, who specialises in AoE2 content, and ably demonstrates just what first-person PvP looks like in a 1999 RTS.
It’s one of those mods that somehow works in exactly the way you imagine, with the 2D spritework proving a surprisingly great fit for the new perspective. It works across the game’s skirmish mode and lets you assume control of a single unit, from which perspective the AoE2 world is unmistakably familiar but also very very odd: as the buildings go up, it’s like watching giant inflatables rise.
“I stopped developing this game in late 2022, everything since then were only some bugfixes and little changes to keep it playable and compatible with the fast-evolving Aoe2 DE,” says Spriteblood. “I am amazed that until today there are still people who find and try this. On average, 2-3 games are played per day, which is very nice for a standalone-mod that launched 5 years ago. Thank you all who played it.”
There appears to be something funky going on with the mod’s pages at moddb, though I was able to download it earlier, and be warned that this thing can be pretty intensive on your hardware. “The mod is great but extremely RAM-heavy,” says Yuri Kot. “In late game (with many units) it eats up my 32GB for breakfast and freezes every couple of minutes.”
PCG’s Morgan Park pointed out that this all reminds him of Age of Doom, a brilliant-slash-bizarre mod that uses the Age of Empires 2 engine to make Doom into a third person isometric RTS shooter. The two certainly make for good companions and, just like Doom, Age of Empires 2 is having quite the afterlife: over a quarter of century since it released, the game is still getting official DLC.
