Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings

[Saph]

Hello fellow gamers and wonderful review readers!!!

Today I'm gonna tell you about a game that is held very close to my heart, and I'm sure that everyone here will agree with me when I say that it's one of the top 3 best real time strategy games that they've ever played!



Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings is a birds view real time strategy game. It has the standard genre fitting controls of left clicking a unit and right clicking on a location to move them.

Information

Release: September 30, 1999
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, PS2
Developer: Ensemble Studios
Publisher(s): Microsoft(Win, Mac), Konami(PS2)
Engine: Genie
Designer: Bruce Shelley
Mode(s): Singleplayer, Multiplayer

Gameplay



The gameplay is fairly complex to begin with, but gets progressively easier as you play through the campaigns, and eventually you can do things at incredible speeds once you tweek key bindings etc.

The games bare basic gameplay revolves around "Villagers", which are argueably the most important unit in the game, cause without them, you cant build anything. Villagers are also your main source of resources. They can take on jobs, such as gatherers, who gather berries for food, lumberjacks to gather wood, farmers to gather food, miners to gather stone, and so forth. With said resources, you can build military buildings, which then can produce military units to defend your town(s), or go on the offensive to destroy an enemy town. The main objective of the game is in campaign mode to complete the objectives, and the goal varies depending on what kind of skirmish you choose!

You can build many things in your entire city! But of course there's always a population limit to cities to avoid squalor and overpopulation! Therefor, the Gameplay also has a population limit. Population count for ANY moving unit with interactivity available(that includes siege weapon, villagers, etc). However, when you have a population limit warning, there is a way to avoid it for alittle longer! Houses. Building houses will increase the amount of people you can support, and therefor increases your population limit! There is a population limit-limit though, and I believe it is about 70, but I could be incorrect!

And military units is not your only defense, you can of course build walls, which you can use to lay claim to an area! If you have the nerve, you can for example send out a group of military tasked to protect a group of villagers, who go out and begin spanning a fortification wall all the way around the area you seek to control(that means you could build the wall RIGHT at your city limit to avoid ambushes from wildlife or enemy military units, or decide to build it several miles away, maybe even go as far as claim half the world map by building a wall ALL THE WAY ACROSS the map. If you do this, I advice a wall several layers thick, and not just one, to give units time to arrive)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZF1eNRCx0Q

Civilizations & Styles

There're 4 different styles of buildings

West European
Central European
Middle Eastern
East Asian

These 4 styles are then divided between 13 playable civilizations:

Britons
Byzantines
Celts
Chinese
Franks
Goths
Japanese
Mongols
Persians
Saracens
Teutons
Turks
Vikings

These 13 civilizations also each have their own unique units, which only they can train, each unique unit has their own strengths and weaknesses, which means that some civilizations have a slight edge over others, for example, Britons have longbowmen, while vikings have...well vikings? Raiders? Whichever, and Longbowmen are long range, powerful units, while vikings are heavily armored strong melee units. Britons have an edge over the Vikings, cause the Longbowmen can dispatch them on distance. While the Turks have an edge over the Britons and so on.

Ages

It's hard to have a game where Age appears twice, so of course there're ages to evolve through! There're 4 seperate ages to get, which together complete a 1000 year timeframe.

Dark Age: The earliest of the early you can get, where sticks and stones are your weapons, and pure blunt luck wins battles!

Feudal Age: A step up from the Dark Ages, although still very young age. This age had only minor huts, and some leaky straw roofs, which very scarcely made weapons that were in all earnest weaker than a simple club. Bows dominated this age.

Castle Age: The more advanced age, where stone buildings became standard, and wood was only used for the smaller tasks. Kings were forged, and very formidable weaponry was made. Siege engines have been developped to counter the almost impenetrable walls that were constructed in this age!

Imperial Age: As high as we can go. This age has art, culture, beautiful decoration, and GUN POWDER! Guns begin to out do bow and arrow in performance, and trebutchets must make way for the mighty Cannon! Strong navies to dominate the water are also constructed in this age!

The Feel of Realism

This game feels very real and factually correct cause everything is actually historically correct, atleast in the campaigns. Note worthy individuals from the medieval ages are present, and playable, such as William Wallace, Ghenkis Kahn, and Jean D'Arc, all of which have their own seperate campaigns!

Wonders



Every single civilization have their own wonder. A majestic and awe inspiring construction to prove a king/queens dedication to architectual advancement! These buildings hold no special interest to you for buffs or resources etc., but if you're playing the right kind of skirmish, completing a wonder will win you the battle In most fights, it is essential that you build yours before everyone else! Note that wonders take extremely long to build, over twice as long as the second, the Town Center

Multiplayer

Although I never actually played this game on multiplayer(I was too young to understand it), I have heard many stories about that it was very well made, and became the main source of game play for this game for alot of people after completing the campaigns!


Ratings:

Gameplay: 7/10. Quite good gameplay, it holds alot you can do. It begins quite easily for you, teaching you the novice basics, and as you play, you will be introduced to new, easier ways to do what you already know you can do. It's a logical system worth a good rating. My only deal is that the UI is empty and dull, and your accessibility to new troops goes MUCH too quickly, and you can be at the Imperial Age with the best troops possible within the first 4 hours of gameplay. This lowers the rating quite abit.

Graphics: 8/10. This is based on the graphics being age appropriate. I of course wont base the graphics on games from the mid to late 2000s since AoE2 cant compete with them on that front, so compared to OTHER games from that same time as AoE2, I give it quite a high rating, cause it is better than other, similar games from the late 90s!

Multiplayer: N/A. I didn't play the Multiplayer, so I truely do not know how good it is.

Sound: 4/10. The sound is not really that great, lots of repetitive noises, and bad quotations when you click a soldier or villager etc. Sound is not really anything to waste time noticing.

Music: 9/10. Wonderful music! The music is one of this games key strong points! Without the music the atmosphere of the game almost disappears instantly, making it feel like just another AoE game! There're of course many other variables that makes this game slightly better than the rest, but it is DEFFINATELY one of the main things.


Final score: 8.5/10

Age of Empires: The Age of Kings, is deffinately the best AoE game out there. Sure there're lots of newer, more technologically advanced age of empires games out there that'd blow both gameplay and graphics out of the water. But to me, AoE2 has a unique flare to it that none of the others have. I highly recommend this game if you're looking for an easy-to-run strategy game that is NOT modern warfare! It is one of the greatest out there, and in my opinion, kicks Warcraft IIIs ass in every single aspect.