- You will take an ancient people through a 1000 year span, and develop trade, armies and technology to lead them to greatness.
- Amass and equip an army like none ever seen, and use strategy to have them conquer enemies.
- Construct means of commerce and diplomacy, while discreetly employing intrigue and regicide.
- Command one of 13 civilizations - including the Franks, Japanese, Byzantines, Vikings, Mongols, and Celts.
- Battle alongside heroes of the day - Joan of Arc, William Wallace, Genghis Khan, Saladin, or Barbarossa.
Product description
-------------------
Age of Empires II: Age of Kings puts you in control of a
powerful ancient civilization and challenges you to become the
dominant power! Use the Editor to design your own campaigns
See if you can conquer a worthy nent online!
.com
----
Age of Empires 2 spans 1,000 years, from the fall of Rome
through the Middle Ages. Players control the destiny of 1 of 13
civilizations. The game keeps the epic of Age of Empires'
gameplay while evolving the combat and economic features.
Developed by Ensemble Studios, Age of Empires 2 features the
expertise of Bruce Shelley, codesigner of Age of Empires and the
hit strategy game Civilization.
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Review
------
It would be incorrect, but not entirely unreasonable, to cl
that Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings and its isometric 2D
playing field seem just like every other first-generation
real-time strategy game ever made. Take away the historical
context depicting a millennium of progress since the
Dark Ages, and you'd have a game in which you'd stockpile
resources, grow your population, and augment your technology, all
to amass an army with which to defeat your enemies as quickly as
possible. But even as this model has remained historically
relevant for as long as history has been documented, so too is it
not liable to stop being the premise for computer games anytime
soon. And if Age of Kings is any indication of how such real-time
strategy games will continue to improve, then we couldn't be more
fortunate.
Although Age of Kings runs at higher resolutions and looks
cleaner and sharper than many of its similar predecessors, you'll
find that there's nothing foreign about its appearance.
Villagers, buildings, trees, the black fog of war, and everything
else on the will be immediately recognizable if you've played
a real-time strategy game before. But even if you've played them
all, you'll note several differences in Age of Kings'
presentation that make it stand out against comparable games. For
instance, all the buildings and units in Age of Kings are shown
more or less to scale - town halls and castles nearly fill the
screen and loom high above your people. There are four different
styles of architecture in the game - Eastern, Middle Eastern, and
Eastern and Western European - and although they appear identical
in the Dark Ages, by the Imperial Age all four look entirely
different and authentically beautiful. Unlike the architecture,
your villagers and units look the same no matter what
civilization you choose. Fortunately, almost every one of them
looks good, and there are plenty to choose from, such as
smen and archers on up to ed knights and terrific war
machines.
Age of Kings can look a little bland and washed out before you
fill the screen with buildings and units, but this same
sparseness makes its interface clean and effective. The clearly
depicted controls at the bottom of the screen and the familiar
mouse functionality make this game very easy to pick up and play.
Best of all are the descriptive floating help messages that
thoroughly describe every unit and technology available, which
you can toggle off once you begin to remember them. Your units
move quickly and easily from point to point, and selecting a
mixed group will automatically assign them to a logical
formation, with tougher units in front and more vulnerable units
in pursuit. Grouped units will also travel at the rate of the
slowest member of the brigade, a feature that ultimately lets you
coordinate attacks far more effectively than in most any other
real-time strategy game. And as your soldiers fight and win, they
quickly seek out the closest and most appropriate target, thus
eliminating any tedious micromanagement and affording you the
time to oversee something more complicated and ly viable
than a head-on assault. With floating help turned on and all your
little units running around at once, Age of Kings can start to
look a little cluttered. But it also looks its best at times like
this, when the screen is so full of buildings and people you can
begin to imagine how their historical equivalents once prospered.
Even so, you'd think with only four styles of architecture and
one generic set of units, the 13 civilizations in Age of Kings
would seem identical. And while some of them seem similar, it's
to the designers' great credit that most of the civilizations
manage to feel very different from one another in spite of any
visual likeness. For one thing, each civilization's units speak
in their native language, and while they don't say too many
different things, it's great to listen to them anyway. Each
civilization also has its own unique unit that emphasizes or
augments that civilization's strengths, and this also helps
distinguish each one from the other 12. For instance, to
emphasize the Byzantines' defensive power, their units for
countering infantry, archers, and cavalry are cheaper to produce;
and to suggest the Turks' scientific achievements, they can
research powder technologies at a lower cost than any other
civilization. Such cultural distinctions are often subtle but
become more noticeable later in the game, when the skillful
player who takes greater advantage of his culture's offensive or
defensive inclinations will soon find himself in the lead.
Then again, to build up your civilization to its strongest
potential is by no means a simple feat, despite whatever luxuries
the game's elegant interface provides. The original Age of
Empires was criticized for combining the pretensions of a
complicated turn-based strategy game like Civilization with
real-time gameplay mechanics that were borrowed from Warcraft II.
But Age of Kings makes good on the original's promises by
providing a huge, branching technology tree and a correspondingly
profound depth of gameplay that rivals virtually all similarly
themed turn-based games. You must constantly reevaluate your
priorities when gathering the game's four resources, since those
priorities change as new technologies become available; and you
must constantly make key decisions based on the order in
which you research particular technologies. You need to keep
moving forward without spreading yourself too thin, although
you're afforded some breathing time to get started early on since
you can garrison your villagers within your town hall to defend
against a preemptive attack. And yet throughout the game, Age of
Kings' pacing is so fast and so exciting as to rival Blizzard's
real-time strategy hits. Consequently, under no circumstances
should you be prepared to win a war in Age of Kings without a
fast hand on the mouse. But similarly, you're not going to win
unless you think.
There are also several different ways to play the game. You can
use the random generator to quickly create a custom-tailored,
finely crafted for up to eight players, or build your own
from scratch. You'll find a consistent challenge in taking on one
or several computer nents set to the default difficulty or
above, although you'll soon learn of the computer's propensity to
use guerilla tactics and fall prey to particular tricks. You can
start with a ton of resources and just have at it in the
deathmatch mode; you can set out to kill the enemy king in a
regicide match; and you can play one of Age of Kings' five
historical campaigns. These campaigns focus on such legendary
leaders as Joan of Arc, Frederick Barbarossa, and Genghis Khan in
a series of linked missions interjected with voice-over narration
describing these figures' tribulations and victories. All five of
these, including the William Wallace tutorial campaign, are
fairly short and only begin to approach the sense of style and
cohesion pioneered by Blizzard's real-time strategy campaigns.
No matter how you play it, chances are good that you'll enjoy
Age of Kings if not for its careful historical detail then
because its context never takes precedence over the game's
playability. And if you've ever liked any other real-time
strategy game in this classical style, then you'll clearly see
why this one deserves so much credit, even in direct comparison
to the finest examples in its category.--Greg Kasavin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
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