Age of Empires II: Age of Kings
Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings
Microsoft and Ensemble Reinvent RTS
In the game industry, what has been displayed
lately is the downfall of real time strategy games. An excellent example was
the long awaited Command and Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun; five years of hype and
waiting and all we ended up with is a repackaging of Red Alert. On the other
hand, Microsoft just started making real time strategy games a couple years
ago starting with the original Age of Empires. Age of Empires was an instant
hit. It was very similar to the Warcraft/Starcraft series but added a whole
new historical side to the genre. With the success of Age of Empires everyone
knew there would be a sequel, so without further ado.
Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings doesn’t add
to the original Age of Empires. Unlike other real time strategy games
there’s no official storyline. The tribes are not imaginary like GDI, NOD,
or Protoss but are rather based on actual civilizations that actually existed
on Earth centuries ago. These tribes or civilizations include the Celts,
British, Turks, Teutons, Chinese, Byzantines, Mongols, Vikings, Persians,
Japanese, Franks, Saracens, and Goths. In Age of Empires 2, the civilizations
are at the base fairly similar, but they all have their own unique arts and
several units. For example, the Persians are an attack-oriented team and their
defense is not weak and they are the only civilization to feature the War
Elephant. To take full advantage of each civilization, you must know their
attributes.
Each civilization has its own voice--it speaks
its own language. The languages of the civilizations are not made up jargon,
they come from their respective cultures. For example, the Persians speak
Farsi, Japanese speak Japanese, Brits speak English, and so on. In addition,
new to Age of Empires 2, the game features male and female villagers to add
some variety. Each sex speaks with his or her own tone of voice.
The actual game play of AoE2 is what makes it
unique. It is exciting, strategic, and extensive. Your money comes from four
natural resources, with some inner diversity among food sources as well.
There’s wood, gold, stone, and food. It’s obvious where you get wood,
gold, and stone, but you can get food from a range of different places such as
forage trees, fishing spots, farms, and animals such as deer and wolves. The
one thing that got me frustrated was that resources do not regenerate, but the
game is made so that if you can get wood (which there is usually plenty of
available) you can get every other resource by building farms or exchanging
using the Marketplace.
Attacks are strategic like the original Command
and Conquer. Quantity does not always promise victory. Different units hurt
different units more than others. For example, War Elephants are slow and
won’t be able to kill archers easily, but if you see a whole lot of them
running down to your base you know they’ll plow a hole straight through it.
There are so many units, buildings, and upgrades in this game that you will
rarely get to build or upgrade everything before a game ends. That not only
makes the game better because you are constantly building, but you have to
choose what to build or upgrade first.
Now that you know how the game plays, you have
to decide which game to play. Ensemble added plenty of ways to play a simple
game. You can pick from random map, deathmatch, regicide, campaign, or a
multi-player game. Random map is a regular game where you start a map with
limited resources and can win the game by conquest, building a wonder,
accumulation of wealth, and other options. Then there’s regicide where you
start off with a king and queen and have to protect them. In deathmatch, you
start out with a ton of resources and are simply on a quest to crush all the
opponents down to their last unit. You can play a multi-player game in a
number of different ways too. You can pick from IPX network, entering an IP
address, a serial cable, a modem, or playing on the Internet using
Microsoft’s Internet Gaming Zone. They have all their bases covered.
Overall, Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings
proves that you can always bring a genre back from the dead. Ensemble Studios
threw detailed graphics, excellent sound, historical detail, and good 'ole
strategy in a bag and mixed it up to create the best real time strategy game
of the year. Players who aren’t into RTS will definitely enjoy this sequel
and others who are counting down the days will get more than what they are
asking for. What’s next? Most obviously an add-on, but it hasn’t been
officially confirmed yet.