This game is mostly good, with a few minor annoyances. I won't speak much on the campaigns. I've played through the first 5 or 6 levels of the Korean campaign, but the fact is I love to skirmish, and frequently find it hard to tear myself away to follow the plot. The good: The graphics are better, though they aren't outstanding. Each civilization now has its own unique style of buildings and citizen dress which keeps things interesting if you're a skirmish addict like myself. The soundtrack is great. It's not like it's the best score ever written, but again each civ has its own set of tracks that evoke the area of the world they hail from, keeping things interesting and creating some atmosphere. The ability to choose your climate is fantastic, its one of those things that doesn't change the gameplay in anyway but somehow makes it that much more cool. The changing seasons and time of day are also great. I always restarted my game when I got stuck on an arctic map in EE, I don't know why, I just didn't like them. Now I enjoy the weather as a part of life. And the winter is pretty now. Storm effects are a neat addition too, though my machine can slow down when a storm comes, especially if its in the middle of a battle, even though the specs are well beyond the minimum. The variety of civs is also greatly improved. The unique character of each culture brings it special skills, as does its affiliation to a greater Region (eg: Incas and Aztecs each have unique powers, and both also have powers specific to the meso-america region). The variety of civs available and the specific graphics and music that accompany them completely make up for the fact that there is no civ builder in EE2 in my opinion, and to be honest I find these civs more fun to try out that anything I ever created in EE. Roads are neat. They provide some polish to your cities, which is nice if you like to design for aesthetics as much as function. I'll qualify this in the next section though. I'm a big fan of the new static defense systems. In the wall and tower system the towers automatically show up at intervals whenever you build a wall, and you can upgrade them to make them a defensive unit whenever you have the resources without having to waste resources by tearing down a space in your wall. There is a limit to the number of defense towers to a region, but rather than being a hinderance this seems to be more of a balance consideration. No more walls made exclusively of towers! As effective as those were, they did make it pretty easy to win. There are also new barriers that are more of a fence, starting as a bunch of sticks poking out of the ground and evolving into palisades, barbed wire, electric fences, and onward through the eras. This is a less effective defense system for your major borders than walls and towers, but are a great way to block your shores off to prevent transports landing or enemy bridge construction into your territory. You can also use it as a frontline barrier to protect your walls from rams, and it also has asthetic value for marking interior borders. The fortresses are greatly improved, now firing projectiles at enemys that dare too close. Outpost are also great as stand alone "towers" that forecast the weather and fire at enemys, including attacking wild life. The new territory system is also fantastic. Expansion is no longer about building ridiculous amounts of buildings you'll never use. Now you claim a territory, build it up as necessary, and move on. The little things: I would have liked to have had 360 degree panning. Not really necessary for the gameplay, but it would have been cool. The roads are great, but I've noticed an annoying tendancy where computer AI just builds random chunks of road everywhere that don't actually lead anywhere, clutter things up, and can't be built on. Roads can't be deleted or destroyed, so once you defeat an enemy and take a territory, you have this mess of road squiggles all over the place that make it hard to build walls and just look ugly. This generally only happens in a death match, when the computer AI has excessive resources at its disposal, but went it does it is truly annoying. Besides it would be nice to be able to change your own roads to account for new buildings as you progress throught the ages. That's more of an asthetic concern than anything, but its the little things that distinguish a game from all the others like it. Also, if you build too close to certain resources they become unusable, specifically oil or uranium, because you can't build the derrick/mine over the resource because the road is infinges on its space. Being able to delete the offending pavement would sure be handy. There are some issues with the snap grid as well, sometimes you click in one place but it lays the road one cell over. Speaking of cells and snapping, the new system is a little weird. You can't always place buildings right next to each other and sometimes you can't put them anywhere near trees, or sometimes you can practically stick them in the middle of the forest. There have been territories that I couldn't claim because there was no place to set the city center. Its as if the boundaries of each unit shift around. I like having a dynamic grid so that I don't have to make everything perfectly square to everything else, but this is a bit strange. The game didn't come with any instructions on how to use the map editor. While I know how to edit a map and create a scenario, I can't seem to load my maps in a playable state, and haven't been able to find any web resources to solve the problem. I'm sure if I look a little harder I'll find some, but some basic instructions wouldn't have hurt. Even the help "encyclopedia" that can be opened in game is only for the game itself and offers not a word about the editor. The physical instruction manual is also devoid of information, and while I applaud the fact that less trees were chopped down in its creation I almost wish for that inch-thick bible that came with the original EE. For a game that cost me as much as this one did they could have included something about the editor! Lastly, for my money I would have liked to have a real jewel case instead of the cheap paper envelope. So overall this is a great game. I have to say I'm completely addicted. I can play it for hours upon hours. It has all the elements that made the original Empire Earth great, and many new features that greatly improve the game gameplay. There are a few things that detract from the game, but not so much that it loses any addictive power.
This is a terrible, terrible game. Let's examine this car wreck one piece at a time. First, the interface is good on ideas lousy on execution. The picture in picture idea is interesting, but in practice feels more l... Read Full Review
This is a very wide game. Thus, game isn't that old, many things are reminding me, that it's from very begging of strategies. But it's not. The concept of this game is absolutely the same as in EE original game. Your ... Read Full Review
