Pretty good review and I mostly agree.
Having played AoE trilogy, AoM and fair amount of AoE IV Beta, I unfortunately have to say, that this is a mixed bag for me. I think this is basically AoE II 2 with some AoE III and some actually new elements in it, but I think this plays a lot of things too safe, especially the time setting (Medieval era).
I imagined before the gameplay reveal that AoE IV timespan would cover WW1, WW2, Cold War and Modern setting and would play more like Company of Heroes or Wargame, but that probably would’ve conflicted with CoH III release and could be hard to balance.
Anyway, I would give this one 7/10 in its current form. Fixing the bugs (especially pathfinding), releasing a graphics mod (I don’t like the graphics at all) and releasing more unique civs, like Mongolians would get this to 9/10. That’s the max I would give AoE IV since it doesn’t bring that much new stuff to AoE series and to whole RTS genre.
I’m glad this is getting good reviews though, but I’m in no rush to play this. Maybe next year when they have (hopefully) fixed some of the most annoying bugs.