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Review: Age of Empires II - Gold EditionReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Date: December 17, 2001
It's been said that there are two types of people in this world; leaders and followers. That, of course, is not true. There are many types of people in this world. If ever you're at a party and someone says, "There are two types of people in this world..." you may as well head back into the kitchen to see what's happening there. The person with whom you're currently talking is a moron. Leaders and followers. Whatever. What about all those elite skirmishers who aren't happy unless they're attacking non-threatening villagers? Sure, you tell them to stay put and wait for reinforcements, but no. Let some weary farmer wander into view and it's like releasing a rabbit in the dog pound. If Age of Empires II - Gold Edition has taught me anything, it's that war is a great big mess of people running all over the place, shooting arrows into crop fields and chasing enemies miles away from the castle they're supposed to be guarding. So, I guess you have leaders, you have followers, and you have everyone else.
Now, a good while back, MacSoft brought us the first in this line of games, Age of Empires. It was decent enough, but the announcement that Destineer's Bold division would be bringing it to the Mac left me wondering, "Do I want hot dogs tonight, or should I take Tieraney out to Grinders?" Since I've started playing AoE 2, food has been the least of my worries. Now it's all these little people and what they're doing. I've gotten much more into AoE 2 than I did its predecessor, so let's take a look at the reasons for that. Age of Empires II does a much better job of training you for what's ahead. I enjoyed the first few levels of the original AoE, but then the enemy developed a Navy and I immediately starting losing...badly. AoE 2 does a much, much better job preparing you for the big campaigns, and it doesn't get too difficult too quickly. This is extremely important for those who are new to this type of game or who generally hover towards other genres. AoE 2 builds to a deep complexity that will challenge hard core RTS fans, but does so at a pace which allows newbies to gain some confidence before deciding that, yes, they really should take a look at the manual.
The audio is equally nice, and just as important. As I may have mentioned, there's a lot going on in this game at any given point. More often than not, audio alerts are all you'll get for notification that your farms have dried up, you're under attack, or that the new villager you've created is ready to be put to work. The fact that each sound is quite distinct and gets precedence over ambient sounds makes the game much easier to manage. Of course, so does the new "idle villager" button. This big, yellow icon on the bottom of the user interface has proven to be a godsend to the "out of sight, out of mind" crowd (of which I'm a member, I guess). If you click this button, it immediately takes you to a villager who's currently just loafing about. It's a great way to make sure farms stay seeded, for instance; much more effective than me yelling, "Hey, if you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean!" It also proved quite helpful for repairs. Rather than pull villagers from their tasks or create new ones to repair a damaged building, I could just repeatedly click on that button and cycle through to the nearest idle villager. It works for soldiers, too, but they tend to do a better job of staying busy. The cut scenes were the next item to pull me deeper into the game. It's pretty much standard these days for RTS games to tie the levels together with a story, but this was particularly effective in AoE 2. You not only get historic campaigns of William Wallace, Joan of Arc, and Barbarella, but you also get... Wait...scratch that. Barbarossa, not Barbarella. Historians will happily note that Jane Fonda does not feature in this game.
As I've made quite clear in my previous reviews, I'm a single-player guy. Whereas many gamers cry ghastly murder if they don't get a multiplayer feature, I probably wouldn't even notice it if I didn't have to review it. If you're like me, you're going to love AoE 2. You get five campaigns in The Age of Kings (each with around five or more levels), plus four more in The Conquerors, the expansion kit include here for free. Yet the fun doesn't stop there. The random map feature allows for the quick, slightly customized generation of new missions to complete, and you can even build your own maps if you're so inclined. Most everyone, however, will happily turn towards multiplayer gaming even before they've completed the single player scenarios. AoE fully supports GameRanger, so getting online and finding a game is very simple. There are a wide variety of games to be played, including the traditional King of the Hill, Death Match, and so on. The variety here should appeal to all types of gamers; those who enjoy the strategy of mining for resources and building an empire can do so, while those who just prefer to march straight into battle have their opportunities as well. Just make sure you've got v1.0.3 or later, as previous versions had some multiplayer problems. Of course, the game isn't without its flaws. You can't select an entire army once it exceeds a certain size, making it unnecessarily annoying to move from one point to another. The customized cursors don't work in OS X, while selecting the technology tree in OS 9 would cause the cursor to disappear. I found it extremely annoying that you can't view the play field from another angle, making it impossible to destroy palisade walls behind castles, for example. And speaking of walls, make darn sure when you're building them that the entire area is currently on the screen. Moving the wall builder even slightly close to the edge of the screen causes it to speed across an entire map. You could start out just wanting to surround your village and end up building the Great Wall of China.
Yet these are all just minor quibbles. Although annoying, they don't ruin the fun. There's so much going on at so many levels in this game that it should probably be covered in three reviews. Ensemble Studios has somehow managed to take a complex genre and make it accessible to both veterans and recruits alike. The stories are intriguing, the action is intense, and the game play is entraining. The more you play Age of Empires, the deeper into it you want to get. Luckily, with the number of campaigns included, the random and custom map features, and the multiplayer capabilities, you can get very deep indeed. So, don't worry if you're a leader, a follower, or one of us who fits outside the cliche. Age of Empires II - Gold Edition may not turn us all into the next Attila the Hun, but that's probably for the best. Some leaders never really should've been followed in the first place.
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The whole point of Age of Empires II (AoE 2), therefore, is to build up a group of people you can control, and then control them. This must appeal to a great number of gamers as AoE 2 has been wildly popular on the PC. Of course, so was 
The next thing that struck me were the graphics. Even without the benefit of 3D acceleration, the maps in AoE 2 were nicely detailed and fun to explore. As much as I love those high-end 3D accelerated games, how long has it been since a tree actually looked like a tree instead of cardboard, holiday centerpiece for the dining room table? The animations are minimal, but there's more than enough to look at so this doesn't become a problem. In fact, in some ways, its a benefit. The simple movements can help you identify character, and this becomes extremely important when figuring out which type of solider to use for counterattacks and such.
Anyway, dialogues often carry-on throughout the levels, and many campaigns serve mainly to carry the story. In other words, you won't find yourself gathering resources, building a village and attacking a castle in every level. Many are just a matter of getting someone safely from point A to point B, others center around rescuing civilians, and so on. In this way, it plays a little more like Myth, and that's never a bad thing.
Although the battle strategies are fairly accurate, I sometimes found that charging headlong into the fray--John Woo style--was the most effective way to get the job done. Speaking of that, the box claims it's possible to conquer the world through military might, commerce and diplomacy, or intrigue and regicide. What they actually mean by this is military might, military might, and military might. The others play a part, of course, but this game's all about the firepower. Build your natural wonders, find your ancient relics, and give some wood to your allies. That's all well and good, but you're still not going to win until you've "blowed some stuff up good." Actually, you can win some games by building natural wonders, but you'd better be prepared to defend them and to attack those of your enemies.