There is just something about the grinding and all this new expensive “mandatory equipment” that makes this game just so unsatisfying.

I play rounds of Age with my friend every once in a while. We usually team up and fight several AI bots. Can we do that here and is it different enough from Age of Empires II to make it a fresh experience for us?

Noobody in their right mind would complain about exclusive games. It’s what differentiate consoles that are otherwise pretty similar in specs and features, as you said.

And not only did people call bullshit on it then, Microsoft stopped doing it.

Microsoft has pulled its own “timed exclusivity” nonsense for Dragon Age: Inquisition as well as other big multi-platform games—also including Call of Duty—over the past decade.