Just a Great Strategy Game

INTRO

This game is all about warfare, building, and strategy. Everything is happening at once. In other words, it is not turn-based where you have to do the best thing possible in one turn while no one else is going. While you're building, your allies and enemies can be doing the same thing or something completely different. There are many teams that you can be, from the Franks to the Mongols. Each team gets some of the technologies and units and you have to collect resources in order to use them. Each team also has their own specialties and unique unis such as the British get archery bonuses and have the unique unit of the Longbowman. There are many types of scenarios too depending of what type of game you want to play.

GRAPHICS

The graphics are pretty good, the buildings especially. The buildings seem to be made by complete smoothness and they seem so realistic and what they seem to have been at that time of war. They have such specifics, it's amazing. You will see nice detailed brick walls, detailed beaten paths, and, of course a big change between the two AOE (Age Of Empires), the people actually look like they can actually fit in the buildings! In other words, the buildings are in pretty realistic sizes. Each building also looks according to what they are. The seige workshop for example; it has pieces of wood over the lot and a half made catapult lying there.

The units (or army guys) are very realistic looking but they have those graphical blocks on them. They also have limited moves on how they attack. They only have one attack per position. For example, the longswordman pokes when he's on the right or left side and he whacks when north or south of his target. They all walk realisticly, the seige weapons' wheels rotate when moving though they are moving on their own. They all fire with motions of realism; the scorpions fire with their strings moving fast and rubber-like after being pulled back for so long and the mongonels fire with speed. They all look like well-made pieces of wooden siegery yes, I'm laughing too).

You can really tell when you upgrade something to another. For example, when you upgrade your men-at-arms to longswordsmen, they seem to have better armor and their swords are longer. They also may look classier and of higher rank.

When attacking buildings, there might be some problems graphics and realism-wise. For example, when you are attacking a barracks let's say with five knights. The building, if taken enough damage, will then spout with flames without any warning. How is that possible? Do these swords have magical fire powers or something? Also, when a building catches on fire, these small "fires" pop out and are anywhere on the building. What I mean is that there could be a huge fire on a corner of a roof but half of the fire doesn't really look like it's coming from anyhwere but the air. It just doesn't look realistic at all. A building also should just collapse sometimes when destroyed. They made it so the building looks like it blows up from "fire-enchanted swords".

The overall graphics are pretty good in passivity but when there are battles, the graphics will sink to low levels and appreciation. (Overall Graphics: 7.5/10)

GAMEPLAY

This game is but a time-wasting fun. Hours will go by while you get captivated by this game. As I mentioned before, this game is not turn-based so everyone is going at once. So when you attack, they respond right away and all units are fighting and hacking and shooting at the exact same time.

There are many teams that you can be. From the Saracens, to the British, to the Chinese. Each team gets certain technologies of the technolongies and same goes to the units. Each team also has their own unique units and specialties. Example: The British have the Longbowmen and all archers cost less.

You usually start in the beginning ages where you experience the low-tech and small oppurtunities. You can advance to future ages in order to become powerful, able to conquer your enemies, and be able to research more techlology. You must accimulate resources to be able to research technologies, advance to ages, build buildings, and train units. These resources are food, wood, gold, and stone. Each of these resources have their own main uses, for example, stone and wood are mainly used for building buidlings. Each resource can be collecteed in their own way(s). For example, food can be collected by hunting, foraging, fishing, and farming. Wood can be collected by chopping wood. Gold can be collected by mining and trading. And stone can be collected by mining. The way you collect resources is in a variety oF ways but there are more options for some resources than for others. For example, you collect gold from villagers, or trade carts, or food from villagers or fishing ships. Some ways have their own advantages, which is fun because many people have different ways of gathering resources or some people use all of them at once!

There are many buildings in this game and each of them have different effects and results. There are buildings that are short stopping points for resources, that support population, recruit infantry, build seige weapons, build ships, etc. (I think you get the idea).

What feature I really like is the "ring town bell". This is when you ring your town bell in your town center and then all of your villagers (your workers, hunters, builders, foragers etc.) take shelter in the nearest tower, castle, or town center. This is so the attackers will have to destroy the building before getting to the villagers. This also increases the amount of arrows shot from the tower, etc.

The gameplay is basically flawless and fun. They pretty much covered every aspect of it flawlessly. This game is extremely fun to play.

DIFFICULTY

This game has ranging difficulties; easiest, easy, moderate, hard, very hard. They really did a good job getting a difficulty of every type. Easiest is perfect for beginers, because the enemies don't even research that many upgrades or technologies. Easy is when the beginers think they can take on a smarter bunch. Moderate is a pretty difficult stage from easy players. The enemy researches just about every upgrade. They also attack often with large amounts of units. Hard is when you really think you can beat the odds. It is very difficult and should be played by the most confident experts of AOE. In very hard, it is almost impossible to beat it. It requires the smartest and most strategic AOE players in the world. The makers seemed to have extreme care in making so there is a difficulty for everyone.

CONTROLS/INTERFACE/COMPLICITY

The controls (like usual) are a mouse and several keyboard short cuts. Things are not too hard to figure out though. There is a feature that I love. You can have a small help box apear in the corner when you put the mouse over a command button or something else. The box tells you everything; from the costs to the major effect. This game though takes awhile to master the basic strategies but once you master them, this game will occupy you for a long time.

CAMPAIGNS AND SCENARIOS

There are no special scenarios that you can play right away but you can use the simple map editor. There, you can create maps from resources, to units, to hills! You can make it really easy or difficult, whatever you choose.

The campaigns that they made are very fun and some are more challenging than others. There are five campaigns that you can knock yourself out with. A campaign is basically a large chain of scenarios following one big plot and all of the plots follow something that happened in real history, like Joan of Arc. The learning campaign is especially good for all beginners. They teach all there is to teach in large, or small scenarios and the final scenario will let you finish off your campaign with a little strategy and battle experience learned. (Overall Gameplay: 10/10)

AUDIO

This game has some pretty impressive audio; sound and music. The sounds are very well made and are realistic. You hear shouts of pain when someone falls in battle, you hear a loud crash or boom when a building or siege weapon gets destroyed or blown up. The sound effects might, sometimes, get repetitive. You will probably hear the same yell in pain from multiple soldiers; like hearing the same guy die ten times, and I'm telling you this, it CAN get annoying.

The music in this game is great, REALLY great. I love this music and it makes you feel like you're in the Dark Ages or something. The music is excellent but I can't really discribe it though it NEVER gets on anybody's nerve; not even my mom's. (Audio: 8/10)

OVERALL

This is a great game in all aspects. You'll love this game because of its countless pros and difficult to notice cons. You'll fall in love with game and play it till the end of time.

The ratings averaged out: 8.5/10