User Reviews (61 - 71 of 279)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

A Game for all seasons.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 14, 1999
Author: Amazon User

I spewed my guts out on Age of the Empire's one. It was one of my greatest disappointments. I had hoped it was better than warcraft or starcraft but I was gravely disappointed. What a complete clone. That was why I was so relieved to see that empire 2 finally went where empire one should have gone the first time. How utterly sad that MS could not see it in thier heart to combine the games so that at least empire one would have been a little more tolerable. Oh, well. With empire 2 you finally get unique units for every given nationality and much cooler siege and ocean fairing units. Those large balistic artillery, that act like a cross between a catapult and a howizter make this a keeper. You had better have enough ram though. This one spells honkin pentium big time. Still lots of strategic fun for the little meglo maniac in your family.

an amazing game of wits,smarts and strategy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

this is an awesome game.its really fun to play.you get to choose the civilization you are,build up an empire,and destroy your enemies.it is really fun to let your tiny village grow into a vast empire.each of the 13 civilizations has special units like teutonic knights,war elephants and mangudai.im under 13 and i have no clue why its rated teen.you can use your villagers to make tons of buildings where you can research technologies,and it lets you upgrade and things like,cannon galleons,bombard towers,and champion infantry. this game is also awesome because you can play multiplayer and read about each civilization.THIS GAME IS SO INCREDIBLY AWESOME!!!!!!!!SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!!!???GO OUT AND GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Gamer from Michigan

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: November 23, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Many a time I would start a campaign, just start-barely move a person and all of a sudden I would get the message that I lost. Also, I have found that I couldn't play a deathmatch with the computers because they all gave up right away. Also when I would play a random game and group myself with a computer against say 2 other computers.....may ally would give up right away and the 2 computers would immediately attack me-frustrating! I'm hoping there will be some patch to fix this. However, I really enjoyed all the other enhancements-especially grouping my troops and being able to see villagers who are standing behind something!

Build and empire, kill everyone else, then shelf it...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: February 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

There has always been a dispute over which is better; real time or turn based strategy. And for the last couple of years we've seen many of the large names in the computer gaming industry (i.e Fraxis, Activision, Blizzard, and Mircosoft) battle it out on each seperate turf in order to gain the coveted spot at the top of the strategy gaming world.

This year, the well known little sequal to the foundering Ages of Empire has been seen by some as one of those few RTS games that will breath new life into an old genre. In my opinion, it's a great game, but it's still got all the same RTS components.

First off, let me just say that the graphics in this game are beautiful; all the castles for each of the 12 individual countries are different and highly detailed. In addition, each countries forces and militaries are also seperated from eachother, making the whole experince very real. Plus it's cool to see literally hundereds of little army men that are under your control battle a whole army to the death with a single click of the mouse.

However, I do have a couple of qualms. First off, It's no starcraft or even warcraft. The AI, in my opinion, although completly overhauled from the first game, is still lacking in some places. And second, although the senarios are all based on historical wartime events, (i.e Joan of Ark or William Wallace vs Longshanks) they really have no replay value otherwise. However, when all is said and done, compared to the first game, this stunning sequal has a lot to offer to the RTS gaming world. However, it's still far from revolutionary (no pun intended)

The Good News: If you like RTS games and like to line Bill Gates pockets (no offense Bill) then go for it.

The Bad News: If you're looking for something you won't shelf after you're done with it, look someplace else.

In the end: To the Victor goes the spoils, and this time, the victor is Microsoft.

actually about a 3 1/2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: January 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I would give a four if it wasn't for some annoying things that happen in this game. After a while I realized that my army was blowing up MY army durring battle. When I tried to make the soilders hang back so they wouldn't get blasted they would run up again. I guess what I am saying is that whatever controls your armys when you are not is very idiotic. I don't know if people like it like this or not but I don't. Please don't get me wrong. I think this is a very fun game that is very addictive (it's 4:30 in the morning right now and I just finished playing). Anyway I would suggest that people buy this game because it really is interesting and fun AND challenging.

Just be prepared to get a little frustrated but not too much because it isn't the worst thing that could happen and doesn't ruin the game, just makes it harder.

My two cents.

This Game Is Definitely A Keeper...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: July 26, 2000
Author: Amazon User

At least for those who like Strategy War Games.

Age of Kings does a better job than the original Age of Empires at landscapes, buildings, characters, and more. The battles seem to flow better, and the time does as well.

The game does seem to drag at times, especially when you start getting used to the beginning "province" kind of stuff, but that's something you can say about most other strategy games.

I suggest it for those who think they can beat it (I haven't yet)

You can't have more!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is the best real time strategy game that you'll find, you can enjoy it since you open the box, reading the stories of the civilizations, the origin of the weapons, etc.... The best.

Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I really love this game. Other games like Civilization just can't compete with it. There are some flaws, like sometimes you can't play senarios because before you can do anything, it says you lost. And sometimes it wont let you play on the internet, but all you need to do is restart the game, and its up and running. The interface is beutifuly set up, and is surprizingly easy to play, if not easy to win at. It is overall an aewsome game.

Good real time strategy game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 05, 1999
Author: Amazon User

I'm usually not crazy about real-time strategy games, as they tend to become real "click-fests" where speed is more important than actual strategy. This one, however, has kept me interested for a few weeks now. The technology tree is very important, as research will allow you to create more powerful units and new buildings. Gather resources (wood, stone, gold, food) to build, research, expand and conquer. The civilizations are just different enough to keep things interesting. Graphics and sounds are great and the scenarios are challenging. Online play, either competitive or cooperative, is fun. All in all, this is a great game with enough depth to keep Civilization fans interested.

Too many flaws to be a truly great game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I remember in 1999 reading rave reviews of Age Of Empires 2, and it was hard not to get swept up by all the excitment. And a few years ago I bought Age Of Empires 2 Gold , complete with The Conquerors expansion set. And indeed I had a lot of fun in those early days. But as my playing sessions progressed I got a bit disenenchanted. I feel that Age Of Empires 2 has some serious flaws.

Firstly I feel that instead if being a strategy game, AOK is mainly a race against the clock. The presmise is that your civilization has gour "Ages" Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial. But it's virtually impossible for a an earlier age to defeat a later age. So *priamrily* what you do is try to advance your civilization as quickly as possible. Everything else is secondary. It would be nice to think that you could cunningly build a town on a cliff top for protection, or engage in intrigue and espionage to emerge victorious, but that's not important. Getting your villagers to work as efficiently as possible to adavance an age before your opponents is what matters and that involves lots of frantic mouse pointing and clicking. Even in websites devoted to Age Of King strategy people say things
like "try to reach castle age in under 22 minutes" If I wanted a racing game I would have got Grand Prix 4.
Other bad points are:

* Only one zoom factor. Even on 1280 resolution it's very hard to get the "bigger picture" of what's hapening and you'll be continually scrolling around the map to get an idea of what's happening.
* Scouting is incredibly hard. It's hard to figure out what to do if you don't know what the enmy is doing also, and most of the time when you send a scout to enemy territory it gets killed. And you'll have to follow it closley to gain any worthwhile info. By which time you'll be unaware of the assault on your town...
* You'll frequantly get SWAMPED by imformation. When you're massed army is in the middle of the deciding battle of the game, you'll suddenly get several irritating mesaages in a row saying that a farm has expired back in the town, or an ally wants more gold, or a Teuton archer has lobbed an arrow at one of your pikemen in some remote corner of the map. It can be total chaos, and often the only solution is to pause the game every second or so and issue tedious commands to order a vilager to rebuild the farm back home etc. This game requires you to be everywhere at once. Computers can do it, humans can't
*Combat can be incredibly fiddly. With the limited zoom mentioned your situational awareness is terrible and most of the time you can only amass an army and let it loose and hope for the best. Very little tactics involved, simply a case of bigger army beats lesser army.
*Single Player can be brutally unfair. Since advancing throught the ages involves being efficient at gathering resources, the computer can be better than any human player at it, because by definition computers are efficient. And trying to play against several Ai players often seems pointless bcause half of the time they all team together and do organized attacks against you. I would not advise against having the diffculty at any less than "Moderate" Ohterwise you'l just get massacred. If you're new to the game always choose an ally beforehand.
* Since the armies are often described as being rock-paper-scissors, the only solution is to build a balanced army, without specialising in any one area.You'll often end up as jack of all trades but master of none. The only *major* decision will, be whether to build a navy or not.
*Dark Age And fedual Age rapidly become a boring routine of gathering resources, that becomes incredibly monontonous after the 20th time. Only Castle Age and Imperial Age are interesting any more.

So that's the bad points. However despite all the disappointments, I find I keep come back for more. I'm less enthusiastic about the game as I used to be , but it can often be quite enjoyable. The graphics can be sumptuous, especially the Byzantines, and you can obtain real satisfaction in building a large town, complete with walls and towers. Siege weapons, particularly cannons, can be great fun to use, and when you watch the cannonballs arcing though the air , you hold your breath in the hope that they'll actually hit their target.
And when they do you'll be tempted to say "bullseye!"
And when you watch your massed army of plate mail clad two handed swordsmen backed by archers marching across the terrain to attack the enemy monastary, you can literally swell with pride at waht you've put together.
So overall as a *strategy* game the Age Of Kings has somewhat dissapointed, but in some ways it makes up for it in the satisfaction you get from watching your miniature army in action. I'm not saying there's no skill involved, but more often it's in the realms of management rather than miltary tactics.

Bear in mind I'm talking about singleplayer here. I hear mutlti player is meant to be better. But at the end of the day it's still the same game we're playing.

I understand Age Of Empires 3 is to be released, I look forward to it, but am telling myself that I may be disappointed if it doesn't rectify the faults of AOE2.

Review Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next 

Actions