Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is quite literally a glorious game.
It heralds as the successor to the highly successful RTS Age of
Empires. AoE II had a lot to live up to, and it quite clearly pulled it
off.The best part of AoE II, of course, is its gameplay. As in most RTS
games, the goal is to build a base/town, build an army, conqueror
enemy. In AoE II, there are three unique ways to do it, but I'll get to
that later. To first start off in the game, you must build a base. To
build one, you need resources, such as wood, food, stone, etc., the
necessities to survive. To collect resources, you must first make
villagers. You can create buildings with villagers, attack enemies or
wild animals with them, or use them to repair damaged buildings. To
collect resources, you can either set up a Lumber Camp or a Mining
Camp, where harvested resources can be dropped off. Your villagers will
then go to battering down trees or picking away at mines. Which I found
helpful in AoE II was that once you assign a villager a task, their
name will change also. For example, if you take a villager and assign
them to cut down a tree, their name will change from "Villager" to
"Lumberjack". This all really helps in the long run once you've
depleted your local resources and you forget what your villagers were
doing.
But for all of this to happen, you need to keep your enemies at bay.
You can have your villagers raise up walls to protect your city or
other buildings. For example, I laid a basic wall around my city for
protection, but I was trying to protect my Wonder (which I'll explain
about later), so I built a wall around that also. On the outskirts of
the walls, you can create guard towers to blast away at the enemy while
they advance. Towers come in two forms: Arrow tower or Cannon tower.
The latter is used only in the later part of the game, but both are
extremely effective. However, towers have a limited range to them
(meaning they can't shoot at targets far away, or extremely close), but
this can be overcome (meaning the "extremely close" part) with an
upgrade from your University. To better protect yourself, you can
create Castles. Castles act like fortresses, in which they fire a
barrage of arrows at any incoming enemy. Castles create your
civilizations exclusive infantry and can be garrisoned by a long string
of people.
If defending yourself is not enough, or not particularly your interest,
you can take the offensive and create an army. Building an army is not
mandatory in AoE II, because there are multiple ways to conqueror your
enemy (which I will talk about later), but building an army helps a
lot. As with most RTS games, AoE II has the basic string of soldier
types: Melee weapon units, ranged units, mounted units, siege weapons,
and a Navy. All of these types of soldier have both their advantages
and weaknesses over the other. For example, Pikemen have a clear
advantage over Calvary, but are quickly cut down by Archers. It's this
system alone which makes AoE II such a compelling and strategist game.
To further strengthen your troops, the local blacksmith can quickly
(and expensively) upgrade your armor and your weapons to have an
advantage over your enemies. The dull thing about this, however, is
that the effects aren't visually shown on the soldiers.
However, sheer numbers and force won't usually win the day in a battle
in AoE II. Turning on the Advanced options, you and your troops must
utilize and master the way of putting your troops into formations.
Formations can help turn the tide of the battle because each of them
has their own, unique advantages. You can simply line your troops in a
stacked line, advancing toward the enemy to shove them back, or you can
space out your troops to avoid impact damage from siege weapons. You
can also form a box around a special unit (such as a Monk, which will
be explained in more detail later), or you can perform a flanking
maneuver, by splitting up your troops and having them fight the enemy
from both sides. It's a shame Ensemble didn't put more formations into
the game, but I can believe how that would confuse people, and I guess
the four right there are the only ones you really need.
As I've been saying about most things in this review, I kept stating
"Which I will explain more later", or something to that equivalent.
Well, now would be that time to explain the uses of Monks and relics.
Relics are holy items which are scattered along the map. There are
usually five relics to a map. To capture a relic, you must use a Monk.
A monk is a slow and weak unit created at a Monastery (a Medieval
church). Monks are useful in battles, because they can both heal troops
and convert enemy units (or enemy buildings, if you have the upgrade).
When a monk has captured a relic, the monk must huddle back and place
the Relic in your base's/town's Monastery. There it will generate free
gold for your civilization, which helps greatly once all of the known
gold nodes are depleted from the map. Relics, as described by
Wikipedia, generate free gold because "this reflects the historical
realities of the power and influence that possessing famous relics
brought to a church". Collecting relics has two advantages, meaning
they don't just generate gold. Relics can also be used to win the game.
To do this, you must collect all of the relics off of the map. This is
a somewhat difficult task, because your enemy is also trying to achieve
this goal, but it pays off (literally) and it beats completely
destroying your enemy.
But destroying your enemy and capturing relics isn't the only way to
win. For those players who are to lazy to conquer your enemy, yet to
afraid to leave the safety of your base, you have the ability to
construct a Wonder. A Wonder is a large building which takes a massive
time to build, but in the end, it pays off. Wonders, if they stay in
one piece for long enough, can also win you the game. However, Wonders
obviously cause a lot of attention, and any nation which is not your
ally will quickly set off to destroy it. Maintaining a Wonder is
difficult because you will be face with heavy bombardment for a long
time, and if all other nations are either Neutral or your Enemy,
building a Wonder is probably not the smartest thing to do because you
will attract a lot of attention to yourself.
But enough about its gameplay, and onto its graphics. Even for a 2D
game, the graphics on the game are still something to look at.
Villagers will hack down trees, soldiers will move around restfully,
birds will fly through the sky. It's these simple things which make AoE
II so pretty. The best thing about the graphics, however, is the view
of the aftermath of a battle. Once a battle is finished, you can see
the destruction and carnage of the previous fight. Bodies of infantry
men, horses, and siege weapons will scatter the ground. Slowly the
bodies will decompose and finally turn into skeletons, which lie on the
ground for a very long time until finally disappearing. This is
probably what made battling so fun; seeing the aftermath. I don't think
any other game (except maybe StarCraft) does this, and this is what
truly makes an RTS game good. To not have the dead simply disappear and
just lay on the ground rotting really ups the terms of realism of the
game itself.
Next thing I'd like to talk about is the sound of the game. Everything
is brilliantly done, as your troops will talk in their distinct
language instead of just English. Not many other RTS games attempts to
do this, or at least try to do it realistically. Battles are also
something good to hear, as you can hear the swords clanging and people
falling over dead everywhere. Age of Empires II also has a very funny
and very useful taunt system. The game holds 42 pre-set taunts, ranging
from "Attack an Enemy Now" to "You played two hours to die like this?".
The value of the game is simply astounding. Even eight years after it
was released, I still play it to this day. The game is good, actually,
that Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds used the Age of Kings system for
their own benefit (but it didn't really work out so well in my
opinion). The sheer array of units and buildings you can create really
makes the game feel realistic and fun. To increase its replay value,
Ensemble added in a World Creator, so you can create your own maps.
It's really gratifying to create a small town, and set up an army for
you to conquer it. You can also create a string of maps, and compile
them into your own campaign, further adding to the replay value. Age of
Empires II really springs your imagination, and gleefully lets you
create worlds of your own.
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a worthy addition to any
person's collection. Those who still haven't played will still find it
to be a wonderful RTS game. If those words are not convincing enough,
the recent success of the games sequel, Age of Empires III (which has
so far spawned two expansions) will help persuade you into buying this
revolutionary classic.
