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The Nintendo DS Game Of 2006

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 101 / 107
Date: February 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have logged 30 hours with this game. I do not think I will ever play Advance Wars DS again. An amazing array of units, buildings and research options all come together seamlessly. An experienced strategy gamer cannot play this game without falling in love with its meticulous attention to detail.

The missions provided with the game are very challenging. For example, the Joan of Arc tutorial provides a map where you lift the seige of Orleans by destroying 3 castles. I quickly used ranged units to destroy an English castle near the city. The english respond by sending in another eight mounted Knights! Since I only had weak ranged units they were quickly defeated. I had to restart the mission and capture nearby mills before I attacked the castles. The mills allowed me to create stronger units to fight off the surprises waiting for me later.

The ingame library provides a history of all the characters, kingdoms and units in the game.

A three phase custom game setup, provides the player with a multi-part toolset to give hours of entertainment. You get 25 victory points for every AI opponent you beat. So, if you decide to take on 3 AI opponents at once, you'll get 75 points if you win. The AI does have programming weaknesses. Keep in mind that you are playing on a battery operated computer. The processing power required for a better AI is simply not available.

The points can be redeemed to unlock more maps and special characters.

Pros:
1) Library of medieval history was fun to read.
2) Exciting soundtrack
3) Rich graphics
4) No need to use stylus!
5) Large selection of maps
6) Highly Replayable!
7) Indepth tutorial mode, no need to open manual
8) The game is an exceptional value at $30.

Cons:
1) The game did lock up once.
2) No custom map building.

Updated Lockup Problem Workaround

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 26
Date: June 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

From the Majesco support forums:

The save/quit issue seems to be caused by having an empire name of 2 or 3 letters in length.

To Avoid the loss of data and the Black screen issue our current suggestion is to edit your user profile.

Make sure the profile is more than 3 characters long (That's 4 or more letters or symbols)

This work around should prevent any data loss while playing age of kings.

And the oscar goe's to Age of Empires...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 24
Date: March 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

PHENOMEM. JUST GREAT. MAN YOU CAN TRAIN ARMIES AND BUILD ALMOST EVERYTHING. THIS TIME, EVEN AN UNEVERSITY. MY ONLY COMPLAINT IS WITH THE GRAPHICS. THE GAMEPLAY IS GREAT AND SOUND IS AWESOME. OVERALL, THE BEST DS GAME.

p.S.- TO MOTHERS, THIS GAME IS EDUCATIONAL!! iT'S ABOUT HISTORY HEROES. sTRATEGY. aLSO THERE IS A LIBRARY TO RESEARCH THINGS.

great DS game...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: April 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

this is one of the best handheld turnbased strategy games you'll ever find, up there with the best like fire emblem. i was surprised to see some claims of lockups because i've played dozens of hours with no problems at all, maybe it was some bad carts. with the diversity of units, fun and challenging battles, and historical library info you can't go wrong with this game.

amazazazazazazing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

great game!!!!!! i got it a few days ago and i've been playing it non-stop. Gameplay is great, i dont care what u people say. It hasn't frozen up yet and i don't think its gonna. I have it for PC, it's a lot different. The game is a lot like Advance Wars DS. It's pretty much the same game except different levels and different units.

Possibly the best Nintendo DS game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: March 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Turning Age of Empires 2 into a turned-based game doesn't seem like a good idea at first, however it works out surprisingly well.

If you loved Advance Wars Duel Strike.. Then this is going to be one of your new fav. games of all time - I would say this is the best Nintendo DS game - It's addictive, smart, interesting.. & manages to be incredibly fun too

a must-own.

Truely An Epic Game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I finally managed to obtain a copy of Age of Empires: Age of Kings for the Nintendo DS. Odd, the game has been out for a few weeks now, but it's so popular, that it's becoming hard to find! Having never played any of the Age of Emipers games for the PC (tho I am learning the fine nuances of Civilzations IV) but loving turn-based strategy, I decided to buy it.
It has a long learning curve if you've never played Age of Empires before (and I haven't) but the game has a great built-in tutorial that teaches you everything you need to know.

I am almost done with the tutorial, and I must say, I am loving this game! Everyone[IGN, GameSpot] mentioned about the issues with the screen cluttering up when you have units, buildings and enemy units on the same screen, but I never found that much of a problem, I simply used the D-pad when that happened.

The touch-screen works great, but there are certain points when you will want to use the slower D-pad (on a bouncing bus, for example!) I love the parts in-between the "chapters" and the library which give me lots of information on the real civilizations as I play them, and about the characters (like Joan of Arc) whom I never really knew their story! It's a lot like the info given during a History Channel documentary, and it really enriches the gameplay for me.

Chapters have goals to play, but the fun part are the bonus goals..you don't have to do them to beat a chapter, but if you do, you get "empire points" which allow you to unlock new units and maps for multiplayer. I found the game a lot more fun when I tried to complete all the bonus and main chapter goals..it's harder then you think!

My only gripe is the lack of personality during the battle scenes when you attack (or get attacked) units are animated but look the same, and do the same things everytime! Also, I don't like the fact that while their is a mini-map, their is no option to leave it on during gameplay; basically, all you get to do, is look at it, then put it away until you need it again!

And there is Fog of War, which I some people hate, but I think makes it more of a challenge then if the whole map was revealed...
it works just like it does in all other strategy games..can't see unexplored territory, and when you leave an area that has been explored, you can still see the terrain, but not any units!

I enjoyed the resource gathering element, but it's very bare..see gold, build a mine..it refreshes each game "day" ditto to farms and mills..no servants have to go back and forth (like warcraft 2 and 3)
Also, I, like many others, found the game does suffer slowdown when a battle begins, and it even froze up on me! Be sure to save often, just in case. Great Game! If you liked Advance Wars, give this one a shot!
Now, it's on the Age of Empires II and the expansion for me. Hope it's as good as this one for the DS!

Fantastically Fun - Just Check your Profile Name First

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: December 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Age of Empires - Age of Kings for the Nintendo DS is not just a straight port of the fun real time strategy game. Instead, it's a turn based version based on the same missions.

Let me first say that several people have had issues of this gaming locking up on their DS. I haven't had this problem at all with mine. The creators of Age of Empires - Age of Kings say that this is a known problem if your profile name (i.e your DS name) is only 3 or less characters long. If you are running into crashing problems and you are sure your profile name is MORE than four characters long, please let me know so I can research further.

OK, on to gamplay. I really wish they could have done a straight port of the great real time strategy game to the DS, but I understand that this little unit just couldn't handle the graphics and speed necessary. They did a nice job of downgrading the game just enough to work on the DS while keeping a lot of what made it so fun.

The library has all sorts of great background information on the different cultures you meet, and you start out with a wonderfully done tutorial featuring Joan of Arc. You can learn about each stage of the game, or easily listen to some while skipping the others. They do a good job of ramping up the challenges slowly so that it's not a cake-walk at any stage, but you can achieve the objectives given.

You have standard unit and terrain issues to keep track of - horse units don't do well while mired in a swamp, and archers do best if they're up on high ground, shooting down at their helpless enemies.

The graphics are reasonably well done. The cut scenes and animations look really nice, but I found the actual in-game map to be a bit cluttered. Sometimes it was really challenging to pick out which specific unit I wanted to work with, and get it into the spot I needed. It would have been nice if there were more zoom / rotate / detail graphic options so that you could, for example, turn off the detailed graphics and just have letter representations of troops when you ran into that situation.

The sounds were reasonably well done, with music that tried to represent whatever culture and era you were working with.

Well recommended!

Age of empires is great

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

who would have thought that they put this game on for ds?!? it is a really fun game for me and i cant stop playing it. there were a few glitches in this game but dont let it stop you buying it. one thing my game froze up like twice so far so i just save it every now and then. and also the characters became fuzzy onece but that isn't a problem. my advise is get this game.

Great DS title

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

An exceptionally fun and challanging game. It is fully worth the 30 dollars. Extremely good graphics and soundtrack. Probly one of my fav. games ever. And for the record, Robin Hood is not on the game, even though it says he is in product description. BUY THIS GAME!!!!! It is a great multipplayer game too.

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