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User Rating: 10 | Age of Empires Gold Edition PC
The Rise of Rome Expansion added to the appeal of the initial Age of Empires - you couldn't leave out the Romans!

Age of Empire Review:
10 out of 10 for ten great years! Starcraft may be the RTS game of choice for certain people (and countries), but in our household this is the game that has stood the test of time. It may be not as graphically pretty (though I still find them well done) or feature packed as some of it's sequels and competitors - it's AOE's lack of complexity that has made it easy to learn and difficult to master.
While it may not have waypoints, unit queuing, gates in the walls, mega death weapons or battle formations it is the constant need to keep a watchful eye over the battlefield that has made it so exciting. Compared to Age of Kings which seems to bog down to trench warfare once the castles and fortifications are up, Age of Empires keeps its play dynamic and varied.
Given myself, family and friends have also been keen Civilization fans, in it's various incarnations from the days of DOS, we liked the historical perspective of the various combatants from the Stone to the Iron Age. It's something tangible and quite interesting - when reading into the various histories of the lesser known empires.
We've had some brilliant multiplayer moments over the years with this game and find the various victory conditions add to the appeal - from total battlefield victory, timed or points victory, wonder victory, or grabbing all the artifacts/relics and holding them. We still talk about one game when a players wonder was destroyed with only 20 years to go (roughly 30 seconds), only for our game to then rage on for another 3 hours before a victory was achieved. As well as the time I snuck away with two villagers as my original township was being destroyed only to rebuild in hiding and win after a major counter attack.
Back in the days when this was out C&C, Warcraft 2 and Starcraft were all the rage, but the points for me go to Age of Empires!