Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (PC CD)

The point of the game is to shepherd your fledgling civilisation to world domination, using war, trade and exploration. You start with the bare minimum to get going, and you've got to balance your people's needs with your desire to be a little Napoleon. The Age of Kings gives you a ton of new units and technologies to enrich your strategic options. Each scenario is placed accurately within history, but you're also free to create your own.

The multiplayer format is robust, allowing up to nine players to share a world. When battles commence, you can take control of every aspect of your workers and soldiers, sending them running for shelter in the town centre, ordering them to defend a watchtower, or setting their combat stance to aggressive for free-for-all sword smashing fun. When you're not fighting, find your idle peasants with a mouse click and send them back to work chopping trees, rounding up sheep, fishing or mining gold and stone.

As you acquire more resources, you can improve your soldier's gear and skills, start to trade more efficiently, and make life better for everyone in your empire. You can choose from 13 groups to manage, from the Japanese to the Teutons and Franks. Each group has unique units and special characteristics, making this a game that changes every time you play it.

If all this sounds complicated, it is. New players may be intimidated by the range of choices, but the teaching scenarios are very helpful in conquering the controls. Age of Empires II is a sophisticated, gorgeous successor to the wildly popular original. It's a real feather in Microsoft's cap--a world-building game that will hold you captive. --Therese Littleton

If you're into strategy games, I highly recommend you get this one!


Age of Empire Rocks!!   April 4, 2005
Mrs Tania M Lewis (Oldham, Lancs United Kingdom)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

This is a totally addictive game. All the family plays it from my 6 yr old daughter to my 40+ husband. You need to manage several different strands simultaneously and be able to anticipate and react. I love the range of different scenarios and random maps which give the game almost infinite playability - talk about value for money.
Sell you TV - you won't be watching it for several months to come.


Excellent game   October 13, 2004
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

A classic game for both single player campaigns and network games. Addictive gaming and long life span. Highly recommended for serious real-time strategy fans.


Superb Sequel for an amazing game   August 25, 2004
5 out of 8 found this review helpful

I've had this game for quite some time now - about two years. But because this is such a great strategy game it does not fail to impress, even if you do only keep it for a few months "while it's still good". With everything from the first game plus more realistic features such as castles and unique units this game exceeds standards for many other strategies such as "Warcraft" and "Command and Conquer". Only a few flaws exist though rather than a list (Thankfully). In the first game, just a storage pit was the requirement to gather resources from the surrounding area. Now you need a mining camp for stone and gold, a lumber mill for collecting wood and a mill for food (animals and berries). The other flaw is that the AI is still pretty poor. Their order and discipline is a disgrace e.g. Your heavily fortified wall and castle is attacked by a mere scout, and even on hardest mode they never change their tactics if most of the men they send are obliterated easily. Oh, and if you attack an army on land with boats they fail to defend themselves, even if they have 20 mounted archers at their command! They also never seem to run out of resources (cheats). Other than those flaws this is an awesome game with so many features, and the fact that it's so expansive gives you a chance to develop various tactics throughout the game. Overall this is definately worth playing.