Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

This game is probably is likely the most exciting game of its kind, and definitely the best one I have ever played. It is as addictive as it gets, and I believe that this owes a lot to the simplicity of the interface. Straightforward enough to attract the beginner, the options with which the interface options are enough to provide a large variety of strategies to the more advanced user. The use of hot-keys can make the game play very fast, and gives you excellent control of the armies, something I have felt lacking in, say, Rise of Nations. The expansion has taken the frustration away from the villagers lack of initiative Age of Kings. And the sequel, Age of Empires 3, seemed to me to lack the to ease of control, somehow as the second one. Perhaps adding too many variable makes it more tricky to feel inside of the game.

To explain the idea of what makes the interface superb, someone probably has to play the game a bit. But the great thing is that it does not take long to get used to, and offers great variety to the player. Four kinds of resources to gather produce an economy with logical and practical unit generating buildings (town center, stable, barracks, archery ranges, castles, monasteries, docks, markets, and siege workshops), with two research oriented buildings (blacksmith and university). And the economy is vital to production, especially at the outset of the game. There is the option of starting out the game with more or less resources, which can help enhance the early building of the civilization, and the option of having a lower or higher population limit. Additionally, playing the game against the computer has various difficulty levels, and numbers of opponents, so once you defeat two, you can move up to three, even seven opponents at a time. And map sizes and types offer a lot of selection, along with a variety of game play options.

The ability to play either defensively or offensively is open, as most civilizations can produce a great defense, although some are decidedly offensive only. And the challenge of finding a balance between a defensive and offensive strategy, and being able to switch from one side of the map to the other to be on the defense against the enemy's attack and at the same time attempting to rout his defenses and rid oneself of his ongoing threat, at the same time keeping your economy intact enough to continue the attack, is enough to provide for hours upon hours of play. And this is only in the single player maps.

Having not played the first installment so much, this review covers perhaps all of the features in one. There is so much that the game has to offer in the campaign department too, where you fight alongside historical figures such as Atilla the Hung, Genghis Khan, Saladin, and others. Every one of these is a unique experience and allows you to be right there in battles that decided much of the history of western civilization. The story line only allows you to fight within history, not create your own version, so the experience is quite authentic.

I've been playing this game since age 9, and it still finds ways to surprise and challenge me.

"Rome has fallen, and land is up for grabs." Beginning with a ramshackle town center and a few peasants, you rebuild a civilization in the medieval world. From collecting resources to annihilating enemy armies, you'll always have something to do.

Each civilization has their own unique unit and abilities. For example, the Mongolians have great cavalry archers and horsemen, but are not so hot on collecting food. In comparison, the Goths collect hunted meat very quickly, but their cavalry is not much.

No matter what your playing style, you'll have a civilization to play as. I heartily recommend this modern classic game to any player.

I have chosen to start this on a sour note, just as what I am reviewing does. After the clever and well-done opening cut-scene of the immediate predecessor to this opened that exactly as it should be, and setting the tone right, the intro of this is rather underwhelming. It's a lot of the same footage, some lengthened, in a very obvious manner, that leaves it moving too slow, and run downright choppy, a little has been added, to elaborate on what goes on, and it's not particularly pretty or all that well-done. It tries to look stylish, a bit, neglecting the fact that that does not fit with the material, indeed, with the rest of the product. Accuracy and realism are key, like with all prior entries. The wrap-around is taken out, awkwardly. The whole thing is just plain obvious, and it feels like it was thrown together without a lot of effort, and goes on for overly long, all in stark contrast to that of AOK. If you go on to play the single-player of this, and go in numerical order, you are shortly thereafter introduced to the Tarkan, which is unique to the Huns, a horse-borne man who carries something I could not tell what was at first. Then I realized it: It's a lit torch. This is a cool concept, and makes sense, but it doesn't actually look or work all that great(and when you have to try hard to be able to tell what it is...). They didn't take the consequence and make it able to actually set buildings(what they damage the most) ablaze, a la Populous: The Beginning, or at least do a strongly defined flame-effect and damage model, like C&C, and it comes off odd(meanwhile, it is a good investment). Why do I start on these seemingly small, in the big picture, complaints? Simply because they were the first impressions, they may very well be for others, and I hope to deter anyone from jumping ship from this initial disappointment. You see, beyond those, this actually has a bunch to offer... and some of it is golden. There are touch-ups since the "parent" to this. Attempts are made to smooth game-play and such out, if not all are successful. Workers immediately begin gathering resources when they've completed a place to deposit them, automatically, and that cuts down on hand-holding. Not to mention the Reseed Queue, that lets you set Farms to automatically rebuild, so long as you've got a Mill, and the Wood upfront. The Tech Tree is now always available, a button right there at the top of the screen. Advancing through the Ages now gets a status bar, also up there, so you don't have to consult your Town Center. There are strategic opportunities that did not exist before in these. You can Garrison inside Rams, though that can be annoying as it can't be turned off, and it's relatively limited. The objectives now change during missions, and this is more open. Color is used to make it faster to distinguish and keep track of opponents(when they message or attack you). There is clumsiness here and there, and the level design isn't always fantastic. There are new areas, and snow is put in, for example. There are ten real-world maps, and many new types. King of the Hill, Defend the Wonder, Last Man Standing, etc. are included. There are five civilizations brought in, including Spanish(Conquistadors and Missionaries!) Vikings(Longboats and Berserkers!), Japanese(Samurai!) and Korean(Turtle Ships!). You can also now build Petards, that appeared very briefly in AOE2. The story-telling is improved upon since that, and is mighty compelling and in-depth, better than that of any release earlier in the series. It's very detailed and clearly an area they spent time on doing well. The ridiculous accents are gone from the briefings(there are ones for units), and the voice acting is of higher quality, almost invariably, than earlier. The AI is changed, not always a positive here. There are now only three difficulty settings(and there definitely was not paid equal attention to them), and it picks up where Kings left off. However, the campaigns do seem to start somewhat soft. The population limit goes up in them. The fourth one is not a continual arc, like all apart from it. Instead, it is a compilation of grand battles, eight in total. You aren't limited to going through them chronologically. This makes for several of the best ones, as far as being interesting goes, although when the tailoring backfires, they can get a certain kind of bad, ugly, nasty, and worse. This expansion pack gets extra upgrades and research. The Scouts feature gives you info about your enemies and/or the surroundings, is there from the beginning, and like objectives and hints, can be viewed any time. The history remains the focus, and there's more of it than in the others. This may cost it fighting. I personally enjoyed it. The Aztecs are quite different from the others. I couldn't say if it evens out, unfortunately, as much as they did change for them, it still seems like they have technology they shouldn't. There is heavy-handed criticism of their religion, values and spiritual ideas. You can select men and horses that are inside something(like a boat, a tower, a Castle), now, and while I understand the argument against this, I'd say there's nothing negative to it. The authenticity is still far up on the checklist of important stuff, and it shows, in a marvelous way. OK, so El Cid's time is further back than gunpowder, at least in use in rifles, and spread beyond China, and outside of fireworks and maybe bombs... nevertheless, it makes for fun cavalry. The MP gets renewed vigor, not that it was lacking any. All in all, I'd surely call this a worthy purchase, if you dig Age of Empires, and like the second game of the franchise(while this isn't flawless). I recommend this to any fan of RTS(especially these). 7/10

... As long as you don't cheat

I got a demo version of AGE OF EMPIRES: THE AGE OF KINGS with a computer magazine and was so impressed with this that I purchased the full game . I certainly recommend this game for strategy fans in general and real time strategy addicts in particular

As with so many of these games you start of with villagers chopping down trees , collecting gold and tilling the fields in order to build up the economy , technology and military might but you've also got the choice of choosing different races , terrain , landscapes etc which unlike several other strategy games are in fact different . Not only that you can also choose several missions like embarking on a crusade against the mighty Saladin or unifying the Germanic lands .

I have to confess that not long after starting the game I surfed the net for cheats which spoiled much of the challenge . I awarded myself unlimited amounts of food , stone , gold and wood . I also managed to find a cheat which meant I could arm myself with cars that fired machine guns which while being fun in an anachronistic way ( The game is set round about the 12th century and never progresses beyond this time frame ) of machine gunning massive amounts of enemy means the game instantly stops being much of a challenge . Having said that I still sat in front of my computer for countless days wreaking carnage on my enemies knowing that there would be no chance of me losing a game which speaks well of its playability

It's a LOT like the first game, which was great. But I would have preferred if we had been given more technologies to research. All the discovery seems to be over a bit too quick before each game boils down to the standard 'smash the enemy to pieces' part. In this respect it game become quite repetitive, especially when you consider how long it takes to get a good game going. The only alternative is to try out different civilisations. And only then it's just the architecture that's different.

I do like this game a lot but I just wish for a bit more diversity and more surprises in the next one (as in Age of Empires 3, not Age of Mythology). I've not played the expansion pack extensively yet but if it gives you more to work with and is definitely worth getting too.