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Caveat Emptor

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 26
Date: September 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I would like to say how much I love this game. However, I am unable to do so due to the arrogant nature of the customer disservice and the irresponsible attitudes of Sierra and its programmers.

If you use a firewall, even one other than Zonealarm, you will be unable to run this game without first DISABLING your firewall, or giving the game indiscriminate access to your internet connection. I mean you MUST do this for SOLO play.

I can understand that you need to allow a program to access the internet in order to have a multiplayer game over the internet, but given the number of titles that support and encourage multiplayer over the internet (both those of this and other genres) that do NOT have this bug, it is my recommendation that you play some of those other splendid titles and allow this one to fade away into the ignominous fate that should await all examples of bad programming, regardless of what former luster their publisher may have had.

I have contacted Sierra concerning this bug, and their official stance is to ignore it, claiming that EE does not attempt to access the internet unless multiplayer is selected, it merely makes certain system calls that cause firewalls to THINK they are accessing the internet, even though the game crashes when you allow your firewall to block access to the internet.

They consider this a user problem. I consider it an invasion of my privacy and a security risk. The necessary steps to secure my computer (disable DSL connection and firewall) and have solo play are an offensive and unacceptable intrusion, and Sierra's attitude towards this bug is intolerable so I encourage you not to tolerate it. As I pointed out to Sierra, there are lots of other games of this type without these problems, play them instead, and be sure to let Sierra know why.

Great opportunity to SAVE MONEY!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 18
Date: August 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Just don't buy this one. You will have more fun watching your money sitting in a savings account. And for goodness sakes, don't let your kid waste his/her money & YOUR time!
Seriously, this stupid game has wasted more of my family's time than any other software product we have ever purchased. It runs like molasses on a top-of-the-line processor, with a top-notch video card, tons of memory, lots of disk space. From scanning reviews, I'd guess you might possibly manage to get it working if you happen to have the exact same system as some of the early testers...probably means some out-of-date version of Windows. But don't count on it.
There are so many recommendations in the handbook for speeding up the program, that it's obvious they knew on release that this would be a problem. Half of the recommendations basically involve turning off and/or crippling the promised attractive features of the game. To release a program like this which does NOT reliably run on any machine meeting recommended or better system specifications (and you are out of luck if your system only reaches the "minimum" specs) is totally unprofessional.

Far too difficult for the average player

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: February 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Empire Earth has been heralded as the true successor to Age of Empires, and perhaps it could have been. The game fails on two levels.

The first failure is the combat system. The military units represent quite literally an enhanced game of rock, paper and scissors. In this case, shock weapons trump pierce, pierce weapons trump ranged, ranged weapons trump shock... rock - paper - scissors. This is pretty silly.

The second failure is the difficulty level. There is no novice or beginer level from which to learn this game. It begins slamming you from the outset with pretty advanced computer AI that individually manages the combat units on the rock-paper-scissors scale while you manage by unit groups and the AI builds up its civilization far faster than the beginning player could hope to.

In short, this game is a stunning disappointment for the average gamer. Avoid.

Too slow

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 26
Date: November 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Too slow interface with too much time consumption
the game took 6 hours to finish a random map game with no fun

I just played out of curiosity
But this is almost similer to the age of empire with less originality

Just adding 14 epoch does not give much fun
there is not so much difference between the prehistoric and nano age

Despite the advertisement
actually there is no civilization at all

I think AOE 2 is much better than this game

DO NOT BUY !!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 40
Date: December 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This has to be the worst video game purchase I have ever made.
I really regret the [money] plus tax that I spent on this.
I m surprised so many people like this game.
Let me tell you why to me this game is a complete failure.
They are trying to mix all the game genres into one, hoping that that would make it the best game ever.

First, they try to imitate Age of Empires (even in the Title!) which as we know is quite popular as an RTS. But you only get the worst aspects about AOE: a slow and confusing RTS, this one is almost unplayable.

Second, they wanted to add a bit of "Civilization-like" aspect to the game. Even make it a strategy game I guess. Well here are the different strategic options: Kill your ennemies, conquer your ennemies, mind control your ennemies, destroy your ennemy, and whatever your choice is, make it fast, before you run out of missiles of course.

Third, the game is also an RPG. You have characters, points to allow to the different abilities of your civilization. (ahem)
This is "really cool" if you know what I mean.

Finally, I dont care what people say, this game looks ugly, the sprites look like squished fruitflies on your screen, and they move about as fast as a bunch of tetraplegic snails.

Nice cinematics though.
Good Job Sierra

Here we go again

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 31
Date: August 31, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Oh brother, not another AoE, C&C, StarCraft clone. In fact, it sounds like they just took all of those games and put them into one long one. Hey guys, Wake up! These RTS games are all exactly the same! How many times can you gather the same three or four resources, upgrade your units and fight repetitive battles over and over before you realize that its not really a "strategy" game anymore? Have some originality and try a real historical simulation strategy game like Europa Universalis.

Too slow to be playable

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: December 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

On a 500 MHz PIII w/ 256 Mb mempory and the latest drivers from the OEM, this game was simply too slow to be playable, even with all their suggestions for best performance. Mouse movements were incredibly jerky and imprecise. In some cases the mouse had nearly 1 full second delay!!!

In addition the game essentially ignores all the hit, attack, speed, range, etc. combat factors in favor of a ridiculous rock/paper/scissors system. No matter how well trained and researched a unit is or how big an advantage it has in combat factors, it has no chance against a unit of the wrong type. A single swordsman can easily take out two elephant archers despite having only 1/6 the hit points, 1/4 the attack factors, and no range. One would expect the archers to take him out before he got close enough to do any damage at all!

The graphics are great for buildings and scenery, but they are awful for anything that moves. Land units are so small on the default zoom that you have to click them to find out what they are. To visually recognize the unit type for the r/p/s system you must zoom in to just a few units.

Standing orders (Guard, Hold) are often ignored as units rush off to attack the enemy as soon as it is in sight. For some reason the default targeting matches your units against those where they are at a disadvantage in the r/p/s system instead of attacking the units where they would have an advantage.

In addition the formation controls do not allow mixed units to hold a specific formation (e.g., archers in the rear) when moving on the enemy. The units move based upon speed, so any initial formation is quickly shredded. So your fast units routinely outrun their cover and end up attacking a superior force by themselves. And they engage the wrong unit types when they do, just to make it truly suicidal. Fortunately the AI is not too bright so if you can set up a standing formation in the enemy's path, they will obligingly walk right into it.

Your Warrior Hero is usually unresponsive when you need him to boost morale. For some reason he decides to not move at all just before a battle. You select and right click on a location and he just sits where he is. You kind of feel like putting your foot through the screen.

Bottom line: by the time I got through the tutorials and half way through the first campaign I gave up. It has the potential to be a lot better than AoE, but until the performance problems and bugs are fixed it is not playable.

Bad Game Play

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 15
Date: April 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game have good graphic but fail badly in game play.

For example : the trevuchet has too fast of a rate in firing and hits infantry up close that is not accurate at all... Did these people that design the game ever play AOE2... My god, the game is very long just to defeat the computer on easy. And when you think you defeated the computer, it has several ships just hiding somewhere on the map, thus taking more time to search for them...

I didn't like the map at all, it doesn't seem real and hard to see if my troops are moving in the right direction...

Also, the bomber are stupid: for example if an enemy troops comes near your place, the bomber will totally bomb that area including whatever is around it, makes it worst if the bomber plane had an atomic bomb...

the ships are bad too, making them hard to move and takes them time since they bump into each other...

Oh, yeah I love the Wonders, which looks nice but don't do jack...
For Example: the Babylon Tower suppose to reveal that area of the ocean, thus lighting up anything within its surrounding...

Hell I built like 7 of those Wonders and still don't see my enemies, I also built them close to the shore lines...

Final but not least, infantry is hard to flak in battle, compare to AOE2 with its awesome in flaking abilities...

Final Word: Empire Earth looks nice and pretty but does not completely deliver what was expected....
After 10 hrs of play I think I would have gone mad, game play is too long and drawn out.

If I was you guys, read more reviews and ask someone close to you how the game was and ask them if they ever played AOE2 before... Even better, hell just borrow your friends game to see if you like it, then buy... For me this game doesn't work...

Also I had crashes when playing with multiplayer on a local system...

Too much copy guard

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: May 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game, loaded it and tried to run it only to find
that the copy guard on the CD is so strong that when I try to start the game it rejects the CD. Sierra technical support finallly admited that they went overboard this time with their copy guard protection and some CD ROM drives will not work with the CD in the game. I have one of those drives (72x Kenwood). Contacting Kenwood did no good as they refuse to "Crutch" Sierra's problems.
This is a true example of the term: "Buyer Beware"

Lag Unlimited

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 16
Date: December 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Look - I like Real Time Strategy games as much as the next guy. I loved StarCraft, Dune II, Command and Conquer, and their ilk. I loved Age of Empires. So when Sierra (a company I have followed since Ken and Roberta opened shop in the 80's) announced a MASSIVE RTS with all the whistles and bells - I started drooling in anticipation. The letdown was enormous!

I have a P4 1.6 GHz computer with a 64 Meg Video Card and a 128 M 3D card with 1 Gig of RAM. ANYTHING should run smoothly - regardless of the number of units or art style. Normally games tend to lag online - it's just a fact of life - you deal with it. BUT TO LAG ON A COMPUTER ABOVE AND BEYOND THE REQUIREMENTS, IN SINGLE PLAYER MODE, IS ABSURD! The art is repugnant, the sprites are rediculous, the gameplay is so incredibly dense, slow and hard, I regret ever having given my money for this tripe!

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