Age of Empires: Age of Kings takes a PC real-time strategy game into a deep turn-based one thats very true to its roots.
What AoE for Nintendo DS does best is captures the experience of Age of Empires on the PC and squeezes it into handheld form. Taking a smart move instead of designing a RTS on the DS (even through the system is quite capable) you get a TBS game similar but much deeper than Advance Wars DS. In AoE you are one of five historical commanders, there are five lengthy campaigns in the game with each one you play as one of the commanders. Each campaign is comprised of five missions giving you a total of 25 different missions to go through, each are different from one another which gives lots of variety. The games first campaign is the tutorial which you command as Joan of Arc which is very seamless from the rest of the campaigns since it is a campaign but gives you very helpful tips at the beginning which you can also choose to ignore if you please.
Where the game starts to differ more from Advance Wars (other than it being a historical game obviously) is that it involves much more RTS game elements into it, giving it more of a traditional Age of Empires feel. You have structures that you command you have your villagers construct new ones to give you more options such as new units, abilities, better resource income, etc. The thing with Advance Wars is that you have static units, you set your army out and fight until once side is out of units thus making gameplay much faster paced. With AoE you can constantly build new units from basic swordsmen, knights, archers all the way to special units which you earn when you have newer structures such as siege weapons, exotic units, etc. With this your not going to have that feeling where the enemy outnumbers you because you have one unit left, with AoE you just simply rebuild a new army before the enemy strikes down your base. With this of course makes the gameplay much longer than a session of Advance Wars but thankfully the save anytime anywhere option lets you continue your campaign whether you want to spend 5 mins. doing your campaign as you wait for the bus or want to spend an hour, it simply continues on your most recent turn. The game controls very well, again similar to Advance Wars, you use the touchscreen constantly throughout the entire game, the only buttons you may press is "B" to cancel a command and "start" to save your game. The game controls very smooth, sliding around the map is fast as well as selecting units/ buildings to give commands.
Visually the game is very clean and vibrant, from a good presentation to an easy to navigate menu system. Obviously not as detailed as you would see on the PC but for DS standards its pretty sharp. There is also the battle sequences which are nicely detailed with nice 3D rendered sprites clashing into combat that animate well well with each other but if you turn off this feature then it will be pretty hard to tell when a unit is taking damage other than the little health meter since there is no combat animation outside the battle sequences.
Another part of the game where fans of the Age of Empires series will get a good vibe is from the audio. Featuring all the unit sounds from the PC versions of AoE as well as the music which all sounds fantastic and is very clear but the only downside is that the music is pretty repetitive yet not noticeable since you'll be hearing the sounds of units clashing weapons more than the music most of the time.
Multiplayer is a great feature to AoE, though only local, its great if you have a few buddy's that are up for a good match up to 4 players or if you want to have a skirmish with the computers which adds a lot of replay value.
A note about some minor issues about the game, the only problems that you will encounter is that sometimes units can be very hard to pick out when your in a mass crowd, larger units like mounts tent to block smaller sized units on screen like siege weapons, happens not that often but can be a pain, best way to pass this is to use the shoulder buttons to skip through units. The only other problem I encountered is a very infrequent freeze up. The game will sometimes lock-up on certain battle animations so best be sure to constantly save your game so if you do freeze up, just restart your DS and continue where you left off, or do as I am currently doing and turn off the battle animations.
So if your looking for a solid strategy game for the DS that packs it full of what you loved about Advance Wars and/or Age of Empires and offers a deep lengthy single player and fantastic replay value then look no further.