Age of Empires
Age of Empires is a real-time strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft originally for Windows on 1997-10-15.
I first played this game shortly after it was released when a friend of my brother's let me borrow it. I played through the Egyptian scenario to learn how to play, and then started playing online with him. I really enjoyed the game and got pretty good at it, well enough to beat most amateur-level players. This wasn't the first real-time strategy game I played (that was Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, but it was the last one to interest me since I noticed that they all pretty much follow the same routine.
Contents
Review
8 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 9 |
Best Version: 82%
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- The graphic art is fantastic. Pre-rendered 3D graphics in 2D usually look awful, but the artists did a good job here.
- The game's music and sound effects are really good.
- The game's AI it very competent, and can be quite a challenge at the hardest difficulty.
- A lot of detailed history was put into the game, and the various touches were noticed and enjoyed.
- The built-in scenario editor was a wonderful bonus, and certainly stole many hours off my life.
- The game had really good multiplayer support.
- The manual is really informative and well-made.
Bad
- The civilizations are not evenly balanced. The fast villagers of the Assyrians and Yamato make them superior for standard play.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Rise of Rome
The Rise of Rome expansion adds new civilizations, new units, more scenarios, bigger maps, and lots of bug fixes.
Media
Documentation
Graphics
Links
- Video Game Rating - 8
- Video Game Graphics Rating - 8
- Video Game Sound Rating - 10
- Games
- Video Games
- Video Game Prime Order - Strategy, Action, Adventure
- Video Game Genre - Real-Time Strategy
- Video Game Genre - Historic
- Game Mechanic - Playable Non-White Character
- Macintosh Classic Games
- Windows Games
- Favorite Games
- Multi-Player
- Multi-Player Co-op
- Multi-Player Versus