The Best in the Series, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings ranks amongst the best RTS game in the overall series.
From being able to choose whatever faction/race you want in this game, more recognize able people, The Britons, The Vikings, The Presians, The Japanese, The Chinese, The Mongols, The Franks, The Turks, and the Teutons, all of these people are playable, all of them have their strengths and weaknesses, their special units, From the Britons, The Long Bowmen, to the Teutonic Knight, to the Japaness Samurai, all of these special units including more are offered in the game, all of them do better against certian other special units than others.
1) The Gameplay: remains the same with the idea from the first one, of building, upgrading, and destroying/converting through out the game. Gather resources, research technologies, upgrade your empire, build your armies, unleash them upon your enemies, Convert or Destroy your Enemies bases. However, its introduced a new element to it. The trading system and Diplomacy system. Forge Alliances with those you trust, Stay Neatural with those who have economical Benefits, or Swear Oathes to Destroy those who oppose you. ethier way you'll have fun with this, atribute to the game. Also trading resources, can be really beneficial to you, your allies, and even your enemies, it really speeds up the gameplay somewhat , especially if your in a map with low resources, and you need to build and stay on top of things. The Game Play is a Excellent improvement over the first Age of Empires game.
2) The Graphics, are great, even better than Age of Empires 1, the detail to the game tribled. For its time it had excellent cinimaxitics.
3) The Storyline, to each of the 13 races, was very interesting, and it gives you a Historical insight of what actually went down in History all those years ago. it has breif commentary, so its not like there making this stuff up completely, its cool they got Historical Facts and used them for a game.
The Map Editor and Muiltplayer features were overall the best inclusion of this installment, it brings a closer feel to your mind's eye and heart of what the actual times were like. Also the fact that you can build massive armies and attacking your enemy using tactics, it was beautifully, it works really well. This game is Worth playing.