Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition
Worth it · Strategy · 2021
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $39.99.
- Length
- 28.1h
- Value
- $1.42/hr
- Reviews
- 86% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, Intel HD 520 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 11, 50 GB of storage. Windows only.
Celebrating its first year of delighting millions of global players, the award-winning and best-selling strategy franchise continues with Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition, putting you at the center of even more epic historical battles that shaped the world.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $13.99. That was September 2025. It has been discounted 32 times in the 5 years tracked here, typically at 50 percent off, with about 7 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 13 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 2 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 98 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 90 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition ($34.99, scores 90) beats it on value, while it beats Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition ($34.99, scores 70).
Steam's global achievement data says about 6 percent of players ever finish it. On a 28.1-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 7 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written May 2026 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 64 percent of the 2,674 reviews written there were positive, against 86 percent overall, and those are 4 percent of everything written about it.
28.1 hours to finish it, 168 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 6.0 times the campaign.
Still 7.1K concurrent players, 5 years in.
The drop-off
94% start to 6% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 28.1-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
7,084 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Perfect example of a developer innovating without ruining the formula that made the original great. Any criticism i have of the game (and i do have one or two) are nitpicks. 5 stars.
Really enjoying this one so far. It keeps the classic Age of Empires feeling but makes everything look and play much smoother. Building up your economy, expanding your base and slowly putting together an army is still incredibly satisfying. There's a lot to learn, but it never feels overwhelming. Definitely a solid strategy game and one I can see myself putting a lot more hours into.
Truly a great RTS experience. So much fun to role play the different civs and have what if scenarios if they had fought. Audio quality is extremely good and immersive especially with the voice lines that change with the ages. Cant wait for more civs and to keep playing for years. 10/10
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition scores 73/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1466860/age-of-empires-iv-anniversary-editionThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 12, price as of Sep 23.
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