Age of Empires II is often considered one of the greatest games ever made.Īn updated high-definition graphics version of the game, Age of Empires II: HD Edition, was released in 2013. The original Age of Empires II and its 2000 expansion pack, The Conquerors, were later released as The Gold Edition. The game won multiple awards and is today considered a classic of its type, having had a significant impact on future games in its genre. Three months after its release, two million copies of Age of Empires II had been shipped, and it topped sales charts in seven countries. The game received "universal acclaim" according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. Reception of Age of Empires II was highly positive. The design team focused on resolving significant issues in Age of Empires, but noted on release that some problems remained. There are five historically based campaigns, which conscript the player to specialized and story-backed conditions, as well as three additional single-player game modes multiplayer is also supported.ĭespite using the same game engine and code similar to its predecessor's, development of The Age of Kings took a year longer than expected, forcing Ensemble Studios to release Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome in 1998 instead. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, it is the second game in the Age of Empires series. The new game also has support for the Steam Workshop system, which allows users to easily create and share maps for the game, thereby guaranteeing that new content will continue to appear long after the game's release.Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. One area where the new game does shine is multiplayer, as Age of Empires 2: HD Edition supports Valve's Steam digital distribution service and allows users to play against one another in online matches easily and without any hassle. The new version takes the population limit up to 500, but the game will start moving very slowly and gets filled with lag long before you reach that number. The HD remake did bring a small improvement to the interface and some new visual effects, but you'll only notice them when you compare the old and the new editions side by side.Ī major issue of Age of Empires 2: HD Edition appears when you have lots of units on the screen. ![]() The pathfinding continues to remain awkward at best, as some units will go in all sorts of directions except the most obvious one. The scripted campaigns haven't received any optimizations, so you'll often be forced to wait out certain events, including victories, to be triggered even if you completed the necessary objectives. Speaking of groups, the new version of the game still doesn't allow players to select a bigger number of units, so you'll still have to split your men into smaller legions so that you can more easily order them around. What's more, when playing at higher resolutions, the units seem quite small and you'll barely be able to tell them apart in larger groups. ![]() ![]() There are very few customizable graphics options so you're pretty much stuck with the age-old sprite-based animations that dropped out of style ever since 3D took the real-time strategy genre by storm. Sadly, besides being able to play the game at a high resolution, the Age of Empires 2: HD Edition doesn't bring that many new improvements over the original title that came out in the early 2000s. The HD Edition brings together both of these experiences and allows players to freely select between the different campaigns, ranging from the tutorial William Wallace scenario that teaches the core mechanics, to the much more challenging missions that focused on Atilla the Hun, for example. While the core experience, in the form of the Age of Kings, was quite expansive, original developer Ensemble Studios delivered a special expansion called The Conquerors, which added campaigns for new civilizations like Aztecs, Mayans, Spanish, or Huns, as well as new units, technologies and much more. Instead of going the sci-fi route like other franchises, its campaigns and missions borrowed heavily from actual historical events, teaching lots of players about the history of famed nations from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or South America. Age of Empires 2 took the quintessential real-time strategy mechanics and added much more depth to the experience.
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