Pyramid Pick: Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

Pyramid Pick

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

Published by Microsoft

Developed by Ensemble Studios

Price varies

The original Age of Empires played like a fairly standard (some might even say throwback) real-time strategy game. It shared several problems with similar games of the day -- specifically, the pathfinding and grouping for combat units was poor, and building your civilization required a lot of micromanagement. Its interface was nearly identical to that of Warcraft II -- a Pyramid Pick from three years ago! What made it distinctive was the large number of unique civilizations, each of which were limited in historically accurate ways.

The expansion pack, Rise of Rome, added better pathfinding and hero characters -- single units based on historical figures that were vital to the campaign. Unfortunately, engine limitations prevented them from having unique artwork for the hero units; a war elephant unit might be labeled "Hannibal" but look and act just like any other war elephant. Since losing your heroes meant losing the scenario, this effectively prevented heroes from actually being used in combat!

All in all, Age of Empires and Rise of Rome comprised an enjoyable, if flawed, strategy game. I'd been looking forward to Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, since both Bruce Shelley (who co-designed Civilization with Sid Meier) and Sandy Petersen (author of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game and level designer for Doom) were on the design team.

Age of Empire . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: October 22, 1999

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