Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

The Good
Age of Empires was so good that when I heard about Kings, I was a bit confused-- how could it get any better? Here in AoE you had smoothly animated, realistic units, varied civilizations, epic pitched battles, and an expansion pack that added to the fun.

But it did get better. AoK is clearly a gem right from the get-go. The graphics have been greatly enhanced. They are still flat sprites, but Age of Kings uses 2d graphics better than any other game I have ever played. You hardly ever see a clipping error, IE a catapolt wheel running through a house (which is painfuly common in other 2d RTSs). Another thing few people know is that the sprites were only in 256 color, a choice the devs made to keep performance optimal. Well, I didn't even realize this until I was told!

So many things have been expanded, fixed, and polished since AoE I really don't know where to start. One of the major ones, however, is scale-- no longer are building either 2 or 4 times as big as cavalry; no, now trees stand as high as they should, barracks are properly large, and castles tower above all before them.

All sorts of new features have been added too. You can now garisson your units inside of buildings, something I can't believe I lived without before. Archers and townspeople will fire out at attackers if they come near. Units are more plentiful and balanced, and they look cooler too. Researches no longer occur in weird places (whoever heard of researching Watch Towers at a grainery? Well, no more!).

Some people dislike the game because of its scope. It has more resources, units, tactics, and ways to utterly destroy your enemy than any other RTS out there. It takes almost forever to master this game, and then you'll find that it's a whole new challange to play a different civilization with a different special unit.

There are all sorts of game types, the random map generater is better, maps are bigger (up to four times), and enemies are a hell of a lot smarter. If you've been playing for years, like I have, you'll still get to know all their possible tactics fairly well, but to be honest with you I still can't beat the game on the hardest difficulty level. The unit max has been moved up to 200-- wooohoo!

I really should put loads more here, but I couldn't possibly cover all of the improvments. Suffice to say that just about everything that could have been fixed and/or enhanced from AoE was.

The Bad
...just about everything. The diplomacy is still awful. Now, don't get me wrong; I almost feel like a traitor for not putting this in the Good section, because the guys at Ensemble clearly made it much better. But they just didn't get it right (again). As I said, it's better; you can actually tempt players to become your allies, trade with them well, etc. But there are HUGE holes in the AI code! For example, if you make someone your ally, you can switch your status with them to Enemy for a second and then go slaughter a hundred of their men, while they whine 'I'm your friend, be mine!' (I do this when they're hacking at MY lumber). Then when you're done, switch your status back to Ally again, and bam-- you're bestest friends again! They don't have a single memory of the terrors you unleashed unto their civilization. Huh.

I also miss the animated cutscenes from AoE. I know they had reasons to keep them out of this one, but I still really miss them.

I also felt that the map system could have used some tweaking, to handle their Campaigns (that attempted to put some RPG into the game, like W3: RoC did later). The Campaigns were not the best I've played in a game. But hey... who plays them anyways?!

The Bottom Line
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings remains, in my opinion, the undisputed master of the real-time strategy scene. No other game-- yes, not even the overhypted Warcraft 3-- can defeat it. This isn't a game with hours of gameplay inside-- it's a game with years of it.

The Good
It did get the mind ticking on how to destroy the enemy, but other than that, I really didn't like it.

The Bad
There were too many different types of people and too many ways to crush them.

Also you need so many matriels to make even the simplest of things and the interface was so long it would take ages to make even 1 soldier!!

The Bottom Line
A general waste of time, money and hard disk. I wouldn't bother if I were you.

The Good
(Fanboyism ahead)

To me, this game represents the peak of the RTS genre. Age of Empires II isn't merely good, and it isn't merely great. It's almost perfect. Graphics, sound, gameplay, design...no matter how I look at it Age of Empires II comes up aces. It truly is a masterpiece.

The sequel to the promising but flawed Age of Empires, this game is where we see Ensemble Studios get their sea legs (so to speak) and begin their rapid ascent to becoming the arena giants they are today. Age of Empires II, Rome has fallen and you must lead one of 17 civilizations through the Dark Ages to the glory of the Renaissance. Like the original you can trade, fight, and form alliances with your neighbours both on land and on sea. There are lots of ways to victory; you can be a mercantile nation, an aggressive militaristic power, or an advanced nation that relies on superior technology. Each civilization has a set of bonuses and handicaps (for example, the Mongols have strong cavalry but weak infantry, making them suitable for raiding) that make each civilization feel unique.

Minus some details, this was pretty the same idea of Age of Empires, which honestly wasn't the most innovative game ever to begin with. So what makes Age of Empires II so great? Many things, but predominately the fact it is simply one of the highest quality games out there.

I've probably spent hundreds of hours playing Age of Empires II and for a couple years it was the only game I played. I had played through all of the campaigns several times, played random map mode to death, downloaded 200MB worth of custom maps from the internet, and logged over 200 games on the MSN gaming zone before it went the way of ARPANET. Age of Empires II simply never gets old. It's one of those games you can just play again and again. There's so much gameplay depth, so much strategy, you can still discover stuff about it you didn't know before after years of playing.

Design takes priority over everything. This isn't a game that was rushed to release. Gameplay is smooth, polished and refined. Even tiny details have been glossed over to provide the most intuitive gameplay possible. Example? When a villager finishes building something he will immediately start work on another building if there is one; meaning you can quickly lay down 20 foundations, point a villager at one of them, and trust that they'll all get built with NO micromanagement required on your behalf. So simple! Yet so...genius!

Since millions of problems that plagued Age of Empires have all been fixed, and what is left is one hell of a solid gameplay deal. There are enough units, buildings and civilizations to keep the average player busy for ages, and that’s only scratching the surface. Although the game doesn't take huge strides in any new directions there are nevertheless a lot of innovative details that have left a permanent mark on the RTS scene.

Most common tasks are automated, meaning you have to spend relatively little time micromanaging an economy and are free to plan offensives. This is quite a radical departure from Blizzard and Westwood's non-stop clickfests. Handy features have been introduced like garrisoning (you can hide villagers inside certain buildings, keeping them safe from raiders). As far as warfare goes, you can group your soldiers into formations. Strong soldiers (swordsmen and cavalry) will be at the front and weaker ones (archers and siege weaponry) will be at the back. There are advanced formations that can be customised for more specialised tactics, such as making your soldiers split into two wings and flank an enemy. It's a really simple, versatile idea, and helps keep your troops organised as well as protecting weaker elements.

Unit AI is excellent. It's a sad testament to the state of pathfinding AI in RTS games that I was impressed Age of Empires II's soldiers know how to walk around corners and obstacles without getting stuck. Like most of the game, pathfinding can be customised for easier control.

And believe me, easier control is something Age of Empires II has high on its priority list. Age of Empires II isn't a game tailor-made for hardcore geeks like Starcraft. It is squarely aimed at casual gamers. There's an interactive learning campaign, near-encyclopedic documentation (the manual that comes with the game is nearly 200 pages long, and there are additional files on the CD) and helpful text-messages that appear whenever you mouse over something. Fortunately, Ensemble Studios was able to keep the game simple without actively dumbing it down and most of the newbie-friendly features can be turned off.

Graphics are great. Despite using a sprite-based 2D engine Age of Empires II pulls out all the stops, from arrows that get stuck in the ground, you can see individual plants growing on the farms, and smoke rising from the chimneys of houses. The game captures a sense of scale that was missing in the original. Huge castles loom over everything, and mountains and cliffs are rendered in amazing detail. The numerous unit sprites were designed in the manner typical of isometric games (modelled in 3D studio and then converted to 2D) which gives the whole game a rendered, pseudo-3D look. The game models things like terrain, cliffs and mountains, which have tactical uses as well as serving as decoration.

And there's an epic medieval soundtrack, hundreds of voice-acted sound-bytes (each of your soldiers speaks in the language of his nation, a nice touch), and lots of SFX an ordinary person would probably phase out altogether. It's fun to mute the music and just listen to the faint bird calls, crashing waves, and windy echoes of the empty highland mountains. Age of Empires II captures well what was perhaps the best part of its prequel: the epic sense of immersion. You're in an actual world.

The Bad
OK, there's aspect where the game sucks and blows: the voice acting. The verbal responses your soldiers give when clicked are fine, but the cutscenes are cringe inducing. It sounds like they were behind budget, needed a voice actor, and grabbed a programmer from the next room. By far the worst is the William Wallace cutscenes, where they've got an American guy trying to force a Scottish accent. I agree with what that other guy said, couldn't they have just hired a Scottish person? The cutscenes are short and skippable so this is only a minor issue.

Gameplay is rather slow-paced next to games like Starcraft (usually several minutes have elapsed before you start fighting) but from where I'm standing that's actually a good thing, as inexperienced players don't have to worry about being steamrollered in the first minute of the game. Age of Empires II actually gives you some breathing space.

The Bottom Line
Greg Street is famous for his quote "anything that harms gameplay will be blindfolded and shot". In most cases this would be mere marketing rhetoric, but they meant it when they made Age of Empires II. This game is stellar. Ensemble Studios would never approach these heights again, not even with the game's sequels. All of the game's elements are great on their own, but everything just comes together to create something even greater.

Obviously some aspects of Age of Empires II will seem dated by today's standards but it's still a superb game and an awesome classic. Highly recommended.