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.