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One of the best games for random play

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Age of Empires II has a particular strength: its "standard game." A number of variables may be set by the user or left to random selection (such as nationality and geography). This provides a nearly limitless combination of foes, allies, and landscapes on which to play. Each of the approximately 15 nationalities has unique abilities - imagine Starcraft with 15 alien races instead of 3. Turtling is limited by the trebuchet - a huge catapult - and cannons. If you get the game you will want the expansion as it allows more automated farming and provides new races such as the Aztec. MS is on the right track with this very impressive game.

This is an excellent "product" from a guy who...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 16
Date: January 14, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is an excellent "product" from a guy who admits he is just a "casual" gamer. He actually admits this in an interview somewhere and I think he's more competent than most designers and much older. So there, you little whipper snappers.

My main complaint with this game has nothing to do with the game or developers except that they should be more careful about who they allow to start fan sites. A certain very popular site, perhaps the best site with the best forum gave me a very bad experience. In one of my first posts a regular there refered to me as stupid and silly and wondered in public if I was senile. All this because I questioned the diplomatic system in AOK, which any competent reviewer will recognize as being a joke. When I complained to the moderators of this site about this abusive behavior and a general abusive behavior towards Americans, I was banned from the forum and my ISP contacted for the crime of contacting these people through e mail. And now on to more pertinent information.

I found the game easy to learn and fun to play. The graphics were good but not great. Pretty soon I found myself relying on one strategy. Wall out the invaders. Get to castle age as quick as I can and build lots of town centers to expand and defend. Once you beat the initial big invasion, the idiotic AI tends to just send invaders in little trickles that never stop, but aren't that hard to deal with.

It's fun to use the various seige weapons, but I didn't really bother mastering the armor and tremendous variety of knights and swordsmen. They all looked about the same to me with the exception of the english longbowmen. You could play this game for a very long time, but there are lots of very good games to play.

This is deep strategy, but not as deep as Railroad Tycoon 2 and Rogue Spear. It's also all tiny people and buildings. There's no zooming in and out or rotating. The fans are kind of ummmm...well, you read what I said above.

I only played twice on the internet and the first guy left as soon as I knocked down his whole wall with a massive seige attack. The game then ended leaving me without the ability to even finish off what he'd built. My second game I used the wrong culture and after a prolonged build up I quicklly got slaughtered by the elite teutonic knights. My Woad raiders didn't have the ability to build cannons I found out too late. So there you have multiplay in a nutshell. If you are winning, people leave and call you a hack. If you are losing, they love you and possibly think you suck.

There was no third, more experienced multiplay for me as I got wrapped up in the incident up top and lost interest in the game.

AOE is boring and needs more than 128 meg of ram to run well

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 108
Date: November 19, 1999
Author: Amazon User

build build build build build build build. fight. build build build build build build build. lose. that's about it for the Age of Kings from Microsoft. MS just can't get it right with games.

Boring Repetitive, Many flaws

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 17
Date: September 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If I could give this less than 1 star, I would! When I started playing this game I thought this is awesome, then I saw the truth. The cities that you create are all the same, housing for the servants, military buildings, your wonder, university and blacksmith, all so simular to the enemy. They own all the same buildings and the people act as stupid as ants. When you attack a town, they just continue their work. The enemy's towns even look simular to all the other towns. The whole empire you build is based on war, and nothing else. You send your villagers to mine, and collect wood to fuel the war machine. They could have included many more ideals of the other Simulation games, like SimCity. Far too much about invading and killing the armies that are limited to 40-50 soldiers/seige warfare. When you can build up to 200 troops if you will and nothing can stop you from totally overrunning their cities, with an ensured victory. The limit is 200 in your population, and it should be 500 at least. 200 is not hardly enough! Plus, Always daylight, no season changes, the oak trees are green as if they are conifers. As well all the enemies are friends, NEVER do they attack each other! That is so stupid! It's all made against you. Everything is limited, so all their is, is war. Same neighbors that throw at most 15 troops in line at you. The buildings are all the same, no non-war related buildings, no museums, no stadiums, no civilians that aren't doing anything but slavery for the war machine.

Pros:
-Passes time

Cons:
-If you don't have a pacifer in your mouth this game isn't for you.

-If you aren't robo-tripping this isn't the game for you.

Addictive Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The only other real-time strategy game I'd tried was Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far. I really enjoyed that one, and this one's almost as good. I have to say I really enjoy the early parts of the game the most, when you're making really tough decisions about division of labor. Later in the game, you're basically just building as big an army as possible (usually several times).

This is a 5am game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 12, 1999
Author: Amazon User

This game will likely go down as one of the best games of 99, or at least it should. Its a fun and refreshing Strategy sim... you will easily lose track of time playing this game. Well worth the cash...

Late Nights With Kings

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: August 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

4:30am and three hours 'till I leave for work. I'll save this game after I get all my farmers working! I wish they would rebuild farms on thier own!

It's now 5:00 am, I'd better get some sleep before work.

Good, but takes too much time

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: March 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Indeed, this game is really STRATEGY. Or as close as the games got to it yet. I mean, take WarCraft II, for example. The strategy there is to build as many units as possible, and kill your enemy. Here in Age of Empires all different tactics are possible, and it's cool! The bad part is that one game takes too long. On average, a WarCraft game takes no more than 60-90 mins. For AOE, 60-90 mins is the average time for a game...

Same Old Same Old

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: July 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

There is nothing wrong with reinventing a tried and true formula but one would at least hope that the more annoying aspects would be winnowed out. Alas this is not the case. Some of the more annoying aspects of the game remain intact. I have yet to hear a positive word said about the ability of wimpy lowly monks to convert the most savage of fighting brutes. I play the game to see some action not a mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus fest. Where is the fun in that? Monks never lasted more than a few seconds on the battlefield yet here they are among the most effective of weapons? LETS NOT GO HERE FOR A LESSON ON ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. History 101 this is not. Also I get rather tired and frustrated with having to continually tell my farmers to rebuild fields or my boats to drop nets. This is especially tedious during combat when I have to stop to read prompts telling me this farm or that has been exhausted. Some of the short cuts to victory and even some of the technologies should be optional in all scenarios. Building a Wonder and capturing all relics as victory conditions are just not good gameplaying. There is no excitement in this. There is also a curious bias in the way that so called special attributes have been assigned. The Britons seem to have been vastly under rated in the final (Imperial) age. Their technology research has been so limited that it makes them a none starter, the weakest of the bunch actually. Just ask the French how accurate that is. Despite being one of the first to use gunpowder as a weapon, the Britons are denied the use of advanced ballistic weapons. Jugding by the campaigns (Joan of Arc and William "Braveheart" Wallace") one suspects that the bias is not coincidental. One can apply similar inaccuracies to other civilizations, too many to list here. The transporting of troops across water is very limited. Some clans can only carry 10 at a time on transport vessels. This is not Kosher. It severely limits amphibious operations and makes for a very frustrating time. I can't command my troops when I am sorting out landing craft. Trying to get two or more transports to unload at once results in all vessels converging on one spot and queuing. The ones at the back wont move to the front till the one in front moves aside, which I have to order it to do. The creators of this game should study TZAR: BURDEN OF THE CROWN to see how technology and unit actions should work. Which is ironic because I am sure they borrowed heavily from A of E in the first place, they just interpreted it much more successfully. Don't get me wrong I like the game but am frustrated that improvements haven't met expectations.

Why does this game get suchh a good review

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 14
Date: October 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I don't hyave this game. Then how could I write a review for it? Because my younger has this game and he plays it quite a lot. The pros? buildings look pretty good and ummmmmm oh yah there are a lot of units. The cons? Big one. It seems that that this game was a rushed attempt by microsoft. The game seems to be lacking so many things. Also resource gathering tkes a realy long time. This is a really bad thing since the only way to win in this game is to throw lots of units at your enemy. You harvest 4 recources. It takes a REALLY LONG TIME to get enough of any of the 4 recources. Also it seems like you have to constantly have to replant your farms. The game involves little or no strategy. This might have something to do with fact that all the 13 races are almost identical. Each race has the same buildings, technologies to research, units, and tactics. Upgrading gets repetitive and boring. The graphics for the terrain are terrible. There is a unit limit wich is annoyingly low. Also age of empires has some of the most boring batles in any RTS game. You spend more time on getting resources than attacking. The sound effects are horrible and the game has NO music. Also there are no air units. Except for trees the terrain is not deformable. It comes with tons of useless game modes. If I couold give it -2 stars I would have. This is a game for little kids. There is so much micromaneging in everything. The naval units are pathetic.
In conclusion every element of gameplay you can imagine sound, graphics amount of strategy etc. is terrible. This is a rushed atempt by microsoft to compete with the best games such as dark Reign and Red Alert 2. I think that this is a disgrace to strategy games. This is the most BORING AND PATHETIC STRATEGY GAME I have ever played.

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