Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Instant classic"

In 1999, Ensemble Studios released their sophomore effort: "Age Of Empires II : The Age Of Kings", and wow, just, wow! What a game! This game follows basically the same formula as before. There are random maps, death matches, historical campaigns, and the scenario editor, just like in the previous game. (Although there are more options, whistles and bells, and game variants here.) . When you start a game, you have four resources: Food, Wood, Gold, and Stone. You use your villagers (created at the Town Center, your central building. They cost 50 food each to make, but you start with 3 villagers and have 200 food to start with, so you can, and should, make more) to collect these resources, and to build more buildings, like houses to support units, and a barracks to create military units. As you advance through the four ages, more buildings, units, and technologies become available. The object of the game is to build up your army, and destroy your enemies units and buildings. This game does not take place in the ancient times like it's predecessor, but rather, in the Middle Ages. The four ages are: Dark Age, Feudal Age, Castle Age, and Imperial Age. That's right. Castles! Castles and knights! Except it's on a very epic scale, and SO much fun to play. Units are now able to be organized into marching formations, and the whole problem with units getting stuck all the time in the previous game has been fixed. The graphics are also more lush, and vivid, and a tad less gritty than the last game. It looks very nice. The historical campaigns are much more interactive. There is an audio dialogue in many parts for you to follow along to, and this time, they got the difficulty JUST right. It's hard, it is a challenge, but it's not on the fringe of impossible, like the campaigns were on their previous release. I give this game (standalone) a 9.0 rating.

As if it couldn't get any better, well, it does. In 2000, Ensemble released the expansion pack for "Age Of Kings", entitled, "The Conquerors Expansion". Not only does it include TONS of new maps, gameplay types, and four exciting new campaigns, but, the new civilizations are amazing! (You get to play as the Mayans, Aztecs, and the Spanish, to name a few!) Whatever issues the game had, are fixed here. For instance, as soon as a villager builds a lumber camp, he will immediately get to work chopping wood. Extremely convenient things like that were added all over the game. With the addition of this expansion pack, I give the game a rating of 9.5.