AGE OF THE EMPIRES II: THE AGE OF KINGS - Games - http://maxpages.com/strategyforum/Age_of_the_Empires

OVERALL: 97%

Introduction:
With the game industry on a downfall as of late with real time strategy games, an excellent example being Command and Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun. Five years of hype and we ended up with Red Alert disguised with a new name and package. Microsoft and Ensemble Dish out... Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings. It hasn't been that long since Microsoft broke from the pack and created a new generation of real time strategy games with the creation of Age of Empires. Age of Empires took the gaming world by storm with it being very similar to WarCraft/StarCraft series, but AOE added a whole new historical aspect to the genre. With the popularity and success of AOE, there was no doubt of a sequel that would continue the pace set by Age of Empires, so lets get to it.

The Basics:
You start out with a town center, the heart of your civilization, and a few villagers. Your first goal, is to gather up some needed resources like gold, stone, food, and wood. Build a few mills, mines, and your on your way. One of the most interesting resources to gather is food because of the means in which you gather it. You can pick berry bushes, or send out a hunting party to hunt the wildlife that is running around the map. You can even lead sheep back to your village. Later on in the game, you will eventually be able to fish. How cool is that? As soon as you gather up these vital resources, you can then build and upgrade buildings for training soldiers, building ships, researching, or trading. But your options are only expanded once you advance through the ages, namely, Dark Age, Imperial Age, Feudal Age, and Castle Age. Which represents the evolution of your town. For example; in the beginning, you can only build a weak wooden wall. As soon as you advance to the Feudal age, your walls can be built from stone to keep those pesky AI's, or clever human opponents out of your village. The Castle age is the big one where you build a cool looking castle that lets your train your villages special units.

Installation:
If there's one thing that bothers me the most about any game is the complexity of the installation process. Insert the CD and 15 minutes later, your still pressing buttons and configuring your system to conform to the installation requirements. Ok, so 15 minutes is a bit much, but you get the general idea here. With AOE2, not so. Insert the cd, choose weather you want a full install (300 meg) or a minimal install, choose the directory, and that's all there is to it! One small draw back to this is that transferring the data to your hard drive on a full install does take a little bit of time. Not to worry, check out the manual that comes with AOE2. Its filled with lots of historical information that help you pass the time away while your installing the game onto your machine. Along those same lines, having a monster system to play games is not something that I look forward too. Check these requirements out.

Required: Pentium 166mhz 32 meg ram. - 28.8 modem for Internet Play. Recommend: Pentium II 266 64 meg ram with at least a 4 meg video card 56k or better for Internet Play

Gameplay:
The playing options of the game contain five campaigns that trace the past of historical events of William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Barbarossa, Saladin, and Genghis Kahn. They are the typical real time strategy game adaptations, but they do give you that historical feel. Being a Braveheart fan I found the William Wallace campaign to be a bit disappointing due to it being the tutorial campaign to introduce newcomers to the game. On thing I found to be a bit annoying from the 5 campaigns, was the heavy accents that play during the gameplay, and narration of the story line. I had a hard time believing them as they were simply too thick. It lessened the enjoyment of the campaigns, but only slightly, so its not a real big issue.

I personally enjoyed the "Random Map" selection of the game. I had a good time getting beat by the computers AI. A capable AI that keeps you on the edge of your seat with intelligent play. The random map mode has a wide variety of map types, including coastal, island, and desert maps. If you want to win by conquest, you'll come across strong coordinated attacks, and defense. You can also win by building a unique and beautiful world and protecting it for a certain amount of time, or by using monks. Created at a monastery, you collect all the religious artifacts scattered about the map and protect them. And finally, you can win by having the most points, which is done by researching technology, resource gathering, and killing the enemy. Lots of options, but my favorite is conquest simply because it's a more rewarding style of play.

One thing that I like that the developers added to the game is in the form of each unit being unique to its military and building style. For example, the Britons get to train and enhance their archers called "Longbowan", who are trained about 25% faster! The Vikings have naval superiority with their "Longboats." Be a "Samurai Warrior" when playing as the Japanese, or be a faithful "Teutonic Knight" when playing as a Teuton. The wealth of options and gameplay are remarkable, and makes the game very suspenseful.

Still, more new features round out the package, but the one that grabs my attention every time I play, is the Unit Formations. Not as fancy as I anticipated, but it adds extra options to the units strategically, as well as providing some nice eye candy. Seeing my knights ride ahead of the archers, with the swordsman marching in the center, which makes for an impenetrable shield before the enemy can touch your archers. You will also have a greater variety of technologies to research this time around. Included in these is bow saw to aid your villagers in cutting trees faster, crop rotation for more efficient farms, and chemistry to create stronger weapons. It all comes down to having the proper buildings constructed and the proper amount of resources gathered to research them. Another noticeable aspect of the game that I found to be worthy is what I like to call, "the outlined feature." Where a villager walks behind a tree or building, and becomes outlined so as not to lose track of them. Another nice feature that was added is called, "Idle Villager." Click this button, and you center on a villager that is daydreaming, rather than madly working for you.

Multi-player:
One of the high points of this game series, is still great. The strategy has been broadened with the new game enhancements. The game still plays similarly and I would judge that Ensemble has done an expert job of keeping the good while adding just the right amount of new changes. Matchmaking is still done on The Zone and there are often over a thousand players on any given night. When not playing online, you will find a very challenging computer opponent. Playing on easy or very easy is simple as the computer will sometimes resign. But playing on moderate and above can be very difficult. The computer is formidable at defense so playing without the ability to win with a wonder is challenging. If you play the regicide game (kill the king to win), the computer will mount concentrated attacks with combined arms. I've even seen early game rushes with enemy infantry. On top of all the variety and value already mentioned, AOE2 also comes with a full-featured scenario/campaign editor. This is an easy to use tool for the most part but does contain some complex features for those who want to include custom AI or specific mission goals.

Final Thoughts:
This is certainly the best looking real time strategy game I have played this year. Crisp, clear graphics and architecture that just suck you into the game. The best part about it is that the buildings are proportionate in size. The castle takes up a good portion of your screen. Even the manual was well thought out with its historical information. There's even an in-game encyclopedia to tease your mind with the vast amount of information available. (Now that rocks!)

The general gameplay does not stray to far from the standard real time strategy game as I would have liked it too, but in the end, its all very familiar. With the wrinkles and bugs worked out from the first AOE, and new features added, Ensemble has created a game that is aw-inspiring and down right fun to play.

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Page Updated Mon Nov 22, 1999 8:20pm EST