Don't mind me, just posting a building level champion

>>714219435
as someone who also really loves sc and wc3:
for one, defensive playstiles are actually a thing in aoe2. You can build walls and towers and castles, and a bit of defensive troops, boom your economy and strike out with an unreleting force later, and also siege your opponent's own defenses.

there is also map variety. All sorts of maps are viable even competitively, with all sorts of water/elevation/forest/resources etc distributions. The maps are also randomly generated, meaning there is actual exploration of the map and adapting to different terrain for defense/offense

there are a bunch of cool little mechanics like units (and buildings) on highground dealing a lot more damage and recieving less from lowground, so you often fight for highground, or have to take it into consideration when placing castles. You can also dodge arrow shots, also aiming/dodging mangonel shots can be pretty intense without being cancerous like disruptors are in sc2

there are also 50 civs in the game, while individually not as unique as the 3/4 blizz factions, together they offer overall more options. Every civ has at least one unique unit, which usually has some unique role too and isn't just a slightly stronger version of another unit.

also out of sc1(remaster) and wc3 and AoE2(DE), I think AoE2 looks the best (if you don't murder the game's visuals with mods for some minuscule extra clarity like how many high level players/casters do)