“Rome has fallen, and the world is up for grabs.” This is the quote printed on the back of the Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings box. It is certainly a powerful statement, and I have to admit it gave me the chills when I first read it. You see, I am a sucker for historical games. Get me in front of a game like Civilization II, Imperialism II, or one of my old favorites, Conquest of the New World, and I will forfeit sleep, food, or any other form of sustenance in order to keep playing. I love the feel of being able to play out or even rewrite history. Up until the time of the original Age of Empires, however, there was never a real time strategy game based on real history, at least that I can remember. Orcs, futuristic weapons of global defense, and other imaginative elements graced our computer screens, and while fun, it was Age of Empires that gave me that “feel” created by the previously mentioned games. There were problems, however, and reviews were a mixed bag. The biggest culprits were poor unit pathfinding and inadequate AI, with various other design quibbles creating a general feel of mediocrity among the gaming press. Well, I was not writing reviews back then, so I took it for what it was and had great fun with it, and so did many other people. Have you seen how may people are still playing it online? So when I heard about the sequel I was eager to get my hands on it. After a long wait, it has arrived, and I can safely say that as a gamer, and as a reviewer, it is simply awesome.
That is not to say it is everything that was expected. It could have just been me, but from the previews I got the idea that Age of Kings was going to take a bit of a departure from the standard real time fare to create a more expansive gaming experience. I felt that diplomacy, trade, and research was going to play as big of a part as combat. Do not get me wrong, these are still vital elements to the game, but the most frequently used option is still good old-fashioned skull bashing.
Players have the option of choosing to play the single player campaigns, multiplayer, or random maps. Let’s explore each of these, but first a brief description of the general gameplay for those not familiar with the genre or the original Age of Empires.
Players start out with a town center, the crux of your civilization, and a few measly villagers. Your first objective is to gather resources, which come in the form of food, wood, stone, and gold. You can build lumber camps next to forests and mining camps near the supplies of gold and stones that are on the map, but the most interesting resource to gather is food because of the many ways to go about obtaining it. Bunches of berry bushes (alliteration!…sorry) can be picked and collected in a mill, you can send out groups of villagers to hunt wildlife running around, build farms, or even find sheep and lead them back to your village for slaughtering. Eventually, you can even have your villagers or fishing ships gather some sea life. After obtaining a good amount of these vital supplies, the player can train more villagers, construct a wide variety of buildings for training soldiers, building ocean vessels, researching, or trade. But your options are expanded only by also advancing through the ages, namely the Dark Age, Feudal Age, Castle Age, and Imperial Age, which represents the “evolution” of your civilization. For instance, in the beginning you can only build weak wooden walls (there it is again) to enclose your village. After advancing to the Feudal Age, however, you can build them out of stone, which you’ll want to do to curb the aggressive AI or wily human opponents. The Castle Age should be sought after ASAP, as it allows you to build an impressive castle that lets you train your civilization’s special unit. Now, on to the playing options.
There are a total of five campaigns tracing the paths of William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Barbarossa, Saladin, and Genghis Kahn. The missions are your typical real time strategy game variants, but they do give you that grand historic feel. The William Wallace campaign is a bit disappointing only because it is a tutorial campaign to teach newcomers, and after watching Braveheart so many times I was looking forward to this one the most. The other four, however, will have you helping Joan of Arc lead the French and Genghis Kahn to unite the Mongol clans in order to dominate. The enjoyment of these campaigns is lessened (but only slightly) by the accents that play during gameplay and story line narration. The problem? They are simply too thick to be believable. This is the only real problem though, so no real complaints here.
There are all your standard multiplayer options, and of course you can expect oodles of fans to be playing on Microsoft’s Internet Gaming Zone. As many know, this is a great advantage. The Zone continues, at least in my opinion, to be the most reliable and easiest place to get a game going any time of the day. There are a nice selection of games to play including Deathmatch, where each player gets tons of resources and simply builds an army and fights, or Regicide, where the object is to kill the opponent’s king. Or you can just play the standard harvest, build, and conquer mode.
And now for my favorite part…random maps! I nearly lost my capacity to speak when I played a few games against one computer AI…and lost! Finally, capable AI that keeps you on your toes and intelligently plays. This was on moderate difficulty, however, and I have had the experience of the computer players resigning on the two easiest settings. I’ve heard explanations in various online forums that they resign because they evaluate their situation, and if they do not reason that they can ever get the upper hand, they quit. When this happened to me, however, the game had just started! Luckily, I have also heard that Ensemble is planning a patch to fix this problem. But other than that, the random map mode has it all. There are a wide variety of map types to randomly generate, including coastal, island, or desert. As I stated before, playing the computer opponents is a challenge, and thus greatly extends the shelf life of the game. If you want to win by conquest, you’ll meet strong defense and coordinated attacks. You can also opt to win by building a Wonder of the World, a unique and beautiful monument, and protecting it for a certain amount of time. Or you can win by using monks, units created at a monastery, to collect all the religious artifacts called relics scattered randomly about the map and protect them. You can even win by having the most points, which is raised with each technology researched, resource gathered, and enemy killed. Lots of options, but military conquest is still the most rewarding.
How does one pursue this military conquest? Units of course! And Age of Kings has them in spades. There is a full complement of soldiers that are the same for each of the thirteen civilizations available. These include everything from skirmishers and pikemen, to archers, swordsman, knights, and camel riders. There is also a wide variety of siege weapons (for long range fighting and breaking down walls) and naval vessels. Monks can even convert enemy units and heal your own. Another interesting addition to the series is the use of gunpowder to train Hand Cannoneers. Also, once you build a marketplace you can construct trades carts, or trades cogs at your docks, and send resources to other civilizations in exchange for gold.
Besides the four types of architecture available in the game, which changes which each of the different ages, the developers added a special touch to each of the civilizations in the form of a unique unit and special bonus. To say this distinguishes one from the other is an understatement, as each of these units and bonuses reflect the civilization’s military and building style. For instance, the Britons get to train an enhanced archer called the Longbowan, and all their archery ranges train 25% faster! The Vikings have naval superiority with their Longboats, and their docks cost 33% less. Play as the Japanese and build an army of Samurai, or be the Teutons and train faithful Teutonic Knights that are more resistant to conversion by enemy monks. As you can see, the wealth of options and gameplay variety is impressive, and makes the game that much more gripping.
Other new features round out the package, the most notable being unit formations. Not as fancy as I had hoped (after all, real time strategy games have not yet reached the complexity of war games) but it definitely adds extra strategic options, as well as providing nice eye candy. It gives me great pleasure to watch my legion of knights ride in ahead of the archers, with the swordsman valiantly marching in the center. Useful too, the enemy now has to get through this “shield” before they can touch your archers. There are also a greater variety of technologies to research this time around. These include everything from the bow saw to help your villagers cut trees faster, to crop rotation for more efficient farms, and even chemistry to create stronger ballistics weapons. You simply have to have the right buildings constructed and the proper amount of resources gathered in order to research them. Oh yeah, did I just mention eye candy? This is most certainly the best looking real time strategy game I have played. Crisp, clear architecture and unit graphics suck you in, and the best part about it is that the buildings are their proper size. Villagers will walk under the canopy around your town center, and the castle takes up half your screen! Luckily when a unit is behind a building or trees, they are outlined so you don’t lose track of them. Speaking of keeping track, a nice feature is the “Idle Villager” button. Click it and it automatically centers on your villagers twiddling their thumbs instead of slavishly serving you. Bad villager, bad!
In the end I can’t say enough good things about Age of Kings. Even the manual is so well put together, and is filled with lots of interesting historical information (not to mention there is a vast amount of historical info available in an in-game “encyclopedia”. How cool is that?). The general gameplay doesn’t stray from the standard real time strategy game as much as I would have hoped, so in the end it is a bit familiar. But they have ironed out the wrinkles of the first in the series, added many new features, and created a game that is both epic in feel and beautiful to behold. Bravo Ensemble!
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