| Ages Of Empires 2 is not and RPG and is not made by Squaresoft. It is a real-time strategy game about the ages when the world was up for grabs. It is made by Ensemble Studios and produced by Microsoft Games. It offers a 13 civilizations and a variety of units spanning from the Arbalest(archer) to various types of cavalry(Paladins, Cavaliers, etc.) to War Elephants, they speak for themselves. In this game, the basic principle is to kill your opponent, whether it be the computer, or a friend online. This game has graet internet options. Every unit in the game, there are about 50 in all, counter some other unit, so there is no one unit that overpowers the rest. There are many types of gameplay, such as Random Map, and Death Match. In random map, you start out with about 200 of each resource, stone, food, wood, and gold, which only allows you two bulid a couple of buildings and a few extra villagers. Villagers are used to gather resources. After you accumulate enough resources, you build a formidable army, and wreck, or get wrecked, by the comp or your friend. In death match, you start out with 20,000 wood, 20,000 food, 10,000 gold, and 5,000 stone. The second the game begins you build the biggest army possible and start fighting. Don't get me wrong, though, you will stil need to collect alot of resources. The game allows you to alter a lot of the settings, there a re many different maps you can play on, such as Arabia, where there is an open desert and sparse vegetation, or Black Forest, which has plenty of trees and only small pths leading through them to your enemy's. You can also build your own map if you like. The population limit, cheats box, lock teams, record game, and many others are options you can turn on or off. Your max popluation can be set anywhere from 25 to 200. Cheats box allows cheats if turned on, while you can also record the game if you check the record game box. This allows you to watch the game at a later time, over and over if you desire to. Each civilization in the game has a unique units, which can only be made if you are playing that civ. The elite war elephant can only be made if playing with Persian, and so forth. Overall I cannot give this game a rating on a scale of 1-10 using stars because it does not meet the criteria of the other games. Mainly because a big portion of the rating is storyline and this had almost none, but that's ok because it is not an RPG. As strategy game's go, this is defintiely one, if not "the" best. I also want to mention that this is not a turn-based game. All the fighting is happening in as you watch, so timing is of momentous importance. |