It's more of a challenge of endurance to the fun towards the good game mechanics.
RTS fans wouldn't be disappointed to know that Age of Empires is back and his game delivers in every aspect you can imagine. They've delivered good working mechanics to the point where you wouldn't want to waste your time going back to the first sets of games.
This time around, the games campaign considers of skirmishes which is tells stories about war heros during the middle ages. the presentation considers of images and sound narrivation, which adds to the story. Unfortunalety, the only thing I would say is missing from the stories are FMV cutscenes, which would bring out the game alittle bit more, also considering that the first game FMVs.
It is a bit of a letdown to be honested, because the rest of the game looks excellents, which has good artwork all around, which brings to my next point, the graphics really improvement, they look colourful and clear. However considering 3D RTS games are becoming common, it may get boring after a while, however so along as they're clear enough to show that units are units and they dont look like aliens, it's does a good job. The sound effects are good, however the music will bore you and you'll be best turning this off after a few hours.
The mechanics of the game is huge, you'll able to select your unit, assign them to alot of tasks, and as it's set in the middle stages, you have a huge selection to select from, everything from foot units to a collection of seige weapons, you'll have alot of stragety to play with. Also the game has civilivations to control, each have there own unique units, which changes up the playing style of the game after a while.
Researching technologies has improved alot and does make your army much powerful. The biggest part of the game is building castles and building the unique powerful uniques in the game which can often turn the tide of war after a while.
Also sometimes your unit will go out of control without knowing, luckyly the few functions which do the game good and keep them under control works, however on the most part, it's gets difficult to to manage all of them at once, this happens alot.
My final problem is that new RTS players would get turned off by the difficulty of the game, setting the game to normal. During the normal mode of the game, at some point, along with the huge maps, it would take alot of time and frusturation to complete a level. It make me wonder why people would say Half life takes away your social life when this game clearly does it much more. Also you can adjust the game speed, which often helps at times, good examples includes controlling your army at the slow pace of the game to building and gathering resources at the fast pace of the game.
For the short term, the whole game would grow on you, however in the long term, problems will occur, the biggest of all is during the last sets of skirmishes, you'll end up doing the same old, set up your base for 1 hour, attack for 3 hours and scout for 4 hours, this on the easiest mode. Towards the end, you'll end up doing the same thing and along with that, it would get on your nerves alittle bit. Once in a while, there would be a good surprise once in a while, however in the end, the campaign may be a pass for some people.
In terms of the mechanics and option, the biggest value from all of this is the Multiplayer games, which make the game worth while to purchuse and play and it gives everyone a good reason to play the game. There are other modes including deathmatch, where you start with a huge some of resources and build your units like crazy, and King of the Hill were you have to kill the enemies King.
This putting you in the challenge of managing your army, along with these mode and maybe staying clear of the Campaign, players would get the most kick of the game. As it's a PC Game, it offers alot of value and learning it will take ages considering there alot of micro managing functions of the game that could benifit the player.
Overall, it wasn't my best experience playing the games campaign, however it does deliver in terms of a RTS game, there a few bumps alot the way, however if you can get over them, you'll have alot of fun from Age of Empires 2.