In this review of Age of Empires II. I am covering Age of Empires II from 1999, The HD Edition from 2013 and the Definitive Edition from 2019. This is a highly detailed retrospective review as I share my experiences when playing this game over the years. I have also linked a youtube video that coincides with this article. There will be gameplay for you to see as well as a very interesting way to see how Age of Empires II has evolved since its 1999 release. This review is a celebration for Age of Empires II as it will be having a 25th anniversary on September 27th.
What is Age of Empires II?
Just like Age of Empires, Age of Empires II is another historical Real Time Strategy developed by Ensemble Studios in 1999 while Microsoft is still the key publisher for the game. Age of Empires II brings new improvements to the game formula by adding army formations to organize troops for movements, and an in-game tech tree to view the specs of each civilization you will be playing in before entering a new match. Other additions include toggling your army’s position of when they should be defensive, aggressive, or stand down and not attack when enemies are nearby or when you are scouting the area on the map. The developers at Ensemble Studios nailed the balance between the civilizations and strategic gameplay.
Age of Empires II’s menu features a more thematically designed layout and is one of my favorite menus in any game I have played. The game takes place in medieval times. The main menu is like you are taking a stroll in a village. The campaign menu was similar to opening a book filled with maps and each campaign would take place in that specific part of the world.
Age of Empires II is the first game in the series to feature voice acting. Each campaign you will play features its own voice actor’s vs filling every campaign with the same voice actor.
Campaigns
Age of Empires II contains campaigns set in medieval times. The first campaign, William Wallace Learning Campaign is one of my favorites. Like how Age of Empires I’s tutorial takes place in Egypt. Here we are in Scotland and are going to defeat the British from taking over the land of the Scots.
One of the things that I like about this tutorial is that you learn the basics one step at a time but fill it in a campaign-like narrative that works as a tutorial and a historical lesson. The William Wallace Campaign gives you the full experience from the start with the introduction and then the gameplay. The campaign starts out by showing you how to move your armies, gather resources and then create an empire. As you are leading the Scotts, you will have to battle it out against the British empire led by Edward Longshanks also known as “Hammer of the Scots.” One of the best campaign chapters in the William Wallace campaign would be “The Battle of Falkirk.” You start out defending yourself, then receive troops from William Wallace to lead an attack on the British forts.
One of my favorite things to do in this campaign is to replay the chapter. I could gather all the resources, not destroy everything, and leave their market standing so I could use the trading carts to steal their gold. That would enable me to use an infinite supply of gold on better tech upgrades. I would use these upgrades on my armies to destroy the castle to end the campaign.
Outside of the William Wallace campaign, I was able to discover other campaigns that were available. Some of these campaigns let you take part in playing as Joan of Ark in the hundred years war between Great Britain and France. Another campaign that is my favorite is Barbarossa where you help Frederick Barbarossa work his way as the emperor in the buildup of the Holy Roman Empire in Germania. Along with other campaigns where you embark an invasion in Eurasia as Genghis Kahn and defend the holy land as Saladin.
As for goodies, the history tab has been expanded in its own page like a history book giving you history of each civilization that is available and the time period. A great way to read through the manuscripts if you really enjoy history.
Game Modes
Whenever I take a break or finish all the campaigns. I would play the skirmish-based modes. Some of these modes all came from Age of Empires like Random Map and Deathmatch while a new one I really liked is Regicide. Regicide added a particular cautionary design by making it so that if your king dies, its game over.
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion
I enjoyed my time in the Age of Kings, next it was time to become a conqueror in the next expansion. The Conqueror’s Expansion added new campaigns and new civilizations along with what I would say is one of my favorite main menu designs and music to go along with it.
Some of the campaigns in The Conquerors expansions became one of my favorites like Montezuma, El Cid, and other campaigns from a pack called The Battle of the Conquerors. My favorites from this pack are Vinlindsaga, and Hastings. The Conquerors Expansions offered more campaign content than Age of Kings which gave me more years of playtime. Even replaying the content to see what other strategies I could do added more playtime in the number of years I would keep playing the game.
The Conquerors Expansion did expand the number of game modes you can play in a Standard Skirmish. You could be able to play a King of the Hill, Wonder Race or Defend the Wonder. Along with a Turbo version of Random map which speeds up the game speed.
Scenario Editor
In 2010, I decided to fiddle around with Scenario Editor for both Age of Empires 1 and 2. I was able to create my own maps and had some other things to do that were quite playful to do like placing down so many units to attack other units. Creating my own battle simulator-type mode but within the editor itself. Some parts of the editor features “Seed” which generated randomly generated map layouts of any kind or it can generate a map of any type you choose. I would later learn the official term “Procedural Generation” from another genre called Roguelike.
While I wish I were to have these maps due to the hard drive being fried on the computer I first played Age of Empires on. I was able to re-create one of them from memory when I was able to look at it before the hard drive stopped working. The Scenario Editor for Age of Empires I and II introduced me to level design. Sometimes I discover units that are not from the period the game takes place in.
Cheat Codes
In 2014, I gained a new tutor to help me out with school. When we were both on a break. I showed him my favorite games, Age of Empires 1 and 2. One thing I thought was cool was that he also played the game in his childhood and showed me something I had no idea existed in the game which made it hilarious. Pressing the enter key and typing in “how do you turn this on” spawned a Shelby Cobra that had built-in guns to shoot at any enemy or even a building. It was also fast, faster than any soldier in the game. Along with other cheat codes where you could speed up the game even more by making gathering and building processes last a second. You can even take control of the wildlife called “natural wonders,” although this would cause you to lose control of your civilization in the game making that civilization your enemy.
Around that time, I discovered Age of Empires I had cheat codes. One of my favorites was the photon man, an astronaut that had a laser rifle that could decimate a whole battlefield in a few seconds. Another cheat code I liked was the Saint Francis cheat code. Just type in “convert this!,” you have what looks like an ordinary monk that has spawned at the town center. But, instead of converting the enemy with the holy powers of the monk. Saint Francis turns that holy power into a lightning bolt.
Complaints
I really enjoyed Age of Empires II, but I played Age of Empires I more. The only reason is because the copy of Age of Empires II I owned didn’t come with the music. Of course, Age of Empires II had music but only in the intro, the main menu, the campaign narrative scenes, and the scoreboard for winning and losing. The game itself didn’t have any background music which is why I liked Age of Empires 1 more. There was a sense of musical rhythm in Age of Empires 1 that really helped with strategical thinking. While in Age of Empires II, things felt quiet unless you are near your gatherers, or a battle is going on. Even in the settings, there is a music option, turning it up to the max didn’t help. I wasn’t sure if this was a made by design, or the game originally didn’t have background music.
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
In the year 2019, I enjoyed Age of Empires Definitive Edition. I was thinking about buying Age of Empires II: HD Edition which came out in 2013. However, I went on vacation to the beach. Talked to some online friends in Discord and they had the idea of playing a drinking game when watching the X019 games showcase, and the rules were that we could only drink water or soda. Every time we saw a game that was announced as an exclusive to Xbox. We would drink that said soda or water. I chose water and the rest chose a variety of sodas. We all had fun until I spotted what looked like art for Age of Empires II. The other friends thought this was an Xbox exclusive from the beginning of the video and I said “No, this is Age of Empires II, A PC Exclusive.” I only came to that realization from the art and when the trailer narrator said “Do you remember a time, when armies were built, and powerful cities collapsed. When the smallest of choices echoed through the pages of history. It was an Age of Empires.”
As I have been playing the original Age of Empires II for 13 years at that point. I knew that I had to get the Definitive Edition. So, I skipped the HD Edition in favor of the Definitive Edition. The Definitive Edition does include all the campaigns from the original and HD Edition. I had nothing to worry about since I was able to experience all of the campaigns that weren’t in the original and including a new Expansion that released in the Definitive Edition called “The Last Kahns”.
However, I will point out that the launch trailer gave me a nostalgic feeling at the beginning as it showed kids playing the original on CRT monitors. I used to play the original Age of Empires 1 and 2 on a CRT monitor until the tubes were blown a few years later.
Later, I would discover youtubers for Age of Empires II such as Spirit of the Law, T90, and many others that made AOE II content or played the game at a competitive level.
My Experience
The beginning parts of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition were amazing. They kept the main menu design very similar. The main menu music was updated but sounded similar. The campaign menu was like opening a history book. In terms of playing the game itself. It was amazing, I got to hear the game’s music for the first time, and I liked it more than the music from Age of Empires 1. Even to the point I would later buy the soundtrack on steam and listen to it when doing homework or just send the mp3 files to myself to listen to it on my phone.
The narration for the campaigns is different, like different voice actors, I really liked the authenticity and graphics. You could tell there was a much higher attention to visual clarity.
The Definitive Edition later included features that would increase the accessibility of the game such as Auto Scout which used the game’s AI to scout for you vs manually scouting the land yourself while playing a campaign or multiplayer match.
As for multiplayer, I am not that great when playing with other players in ranked or custom lobbies, but I do have fun with family members and friends in either Multiplayer skirmishes or COOP Campaigns.
New Additions
A new tutorial has been added but made specifically for multiplayer. This new tutorial is called “The Art of War” which gives you several missions to play. Each mission consists of replayable objectives you need to replicate as it teaches you the strategies that professional RTS players use or in this case professional Age of Empires II players. In historical reference, The Art of War was written by Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist. In the Art of War Tutorial. There’s a narrator who is narrating as Sun Tzu which fits for the tutorial.
When it came to downloading mods for games. You would either have to go to a site like Moddb or Steamworkshop to download mods. You would have to restart the game for the mods to work but Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition introduced its own Mod Loader built in the game. The one thing I liked was that when you download a mod in the mod loader, you don’t have to restart the game. It’s already loaded into Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.
More Campaigns
Just like the original games, the campaigns would have this number to tell you which campaign to play in order or show you the total amount in that campaign set. In the Definitive Edition, all the campaigns are scattered around with several swords based on difficulty. You can choose which order you want to play the campaign or click on the bookmark to access another region of the world filled with other campaigns. You can even use the mod loader to download community-created campaigns and access them in the custom campaigns section or create your own.
Even though I knew I had to replay the campaigns, I didn’t mind that. I learned they updated the AI in this version of Age of Empires II. I learned that the original AI would cheat by being able to see the entire map while you couldn’t be able to see due to the fog of war. In some circumstances and mostly in the hardest difficulty area for AI. The AI would have infinite resources while you only have resources based on what the map gave you. Even though the hard AI will have infinite resources. They will still gather resources which may frustrate you as you won’t have all the resources on the map. Being able to experience the new AI in the campaigns made my play time sessions longer and more memorable since the AI uses strategical moves that players would use. This makes it more interesting as you feel like you are playing with a player even offline.
More Expansions
Originally, The Last Kahns for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition was going to be the last expansion for the game. However, that wasn’t the case. The game received more expansions due to how Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition succeeded. A year later, The Lords of the West expansion was announced, and it would be adding two new Civilizations and three new Fully Voiced Campaigns. One of the campaigns I really liked from this expansion was the Edward Longshanks campaign. That may sound familiar since Edward Longshanks was in The William Wallace tutorial campaign. The most interesting part in this campaign is that you take part in a younger and more cowardice Edward Longshanks and see how he becomes what we know him as “The Hammer of the Scots”.
Later I learned that the expansions would usually release two civilizations. They would use an existing civ from the AOE II Civ roster. The next expansion would be Dawn of the Dukes and the campaign I played was “Algirdas and Kestutis.” This campaign was interesting, takes place in Lithuania where they are in a religious conflict with the Teutons. It was a battle of the Roman Catholic Crusades vs the Pagans. Algirdas and Kestutis campaign had something going on as the title is named after the two brothers who were both Kings for their country. Both shared their leadership powers for their kingdom and normally we only see a King and a Queen right beside each other in medieval times.
The next expansion to come out was the Dynasties of India. The part I thought that was cool was more Indian civilizations and campaigns since the only Indian campaigns that were available were in the American campaigns like the Incans and Aztecs. This expansion released Three civilizations instead of two which would expand the Age of Empires II roster even more.
Age of Empires II: HD Edition
As long as I have been enjoying Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. It has become one of the most played games in my steam library. Yet, I wanted to play the game with the original sounds and music. There’s Classic Music and sounds mod in the mod loader for AOE II DE but it didn’t feel right. This time, I decided to buy Age of Empires II HD Edition to experience the original music and sounds with the graphics I grew up with when playing the original.
As I did end up replaying some of the campaigns. I was still sunk into the game like the Definitive Edition. While listening to the original music. I really liked it, and I recognized them from the Definitive Edition.
While Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is an improvement in so many ways. I forgot how bad and funny pathfinding was when playing the HD Edition. Sometimes I even wonder to myself why I didn’t get the HD Edition before as there were new expansions for the game which are in Definitive Edition and Steam Workshop for downloading mods.
This was my way of playing Age of Empires II as a classic mode that Age of Empires Definitive Edition had and Age of Empires II Definitive Edition didn’t come with it. Being able to experience the complete original game with the music that I didn’t experience when growing up on the original.
I even discovered a pretty cool mod in the steam workshop for AOE II HD called Age of Doom which turns Age of Empires II into a top-down Doom shooter. Another mod I liked is called the 256-tech mod that allows you to infinitely add the upgrade statistically for a unit. My favorite is when my pikeman is running faster than the speed of light.
Present
As of right now, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition released on the Xbox one and series S/X consoles. This was the first time since the PlayStation 2 port was released back in 2001 from Konami (sadly it was only Age of Kings).
Return of Rome brings Age of Empires I into Age of Empires II. A game within a game in the sorts. The Expansion does include new things such as three new campaigns and a new Civ called the Lac Viet which is a Vietnamese civilization. The original Age of Empires campaigns are slowly coming into the expansion for Age of Empires II. One of the things that makes this an upgrade for Age of Empires is that it will use mechanics from Age of Empires II such as Garrisoning of units, army formations and better pathfinding. Hopefully more improvements when bringing over to Age of Empires II.
To me this also makes Return of Rome a much more improved version of Age of Empires Definitive Edition. Age of Empires Definitive Edition was built around the classic mode to keep the gameplay and mechanical feel of the game the same as the original experience. However, this harmed Age of Empires Definitive Edition from adding new content and features to the game as new things would break classic mode. I can see others playing Age of Empires Definitive Edition for the original feel but the idea of having more content would have to be either downloading or making scenarios from Age of Empires Definitive Edition or if you don’t know how to do this. You can get Return of Rome for an updated Age of Empires Definitive Edition experience.
In Return of Rome, one of the new campaigns I tried was Sargon of Akkad. This campaign lets you play as the Sumerians during the birth of Civilization of Mesopotamia. I have studied about this place in both middle school and college. Although I don’t think I ever learned about Sargon.
Sargon was a great leader of his people and was a great conqueror of all on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Sargon was under the influence of Ishtar, the goddess of war. This led him to overthrow the current ruler of Mesopotamia and allowed him to gather his troops to conquer other territories. Even at the end, rulers can have a side of Ego and power. Sargon crowned himself as a god and had other rebels worship him. But even mortals can’t live forever, and someone took his place to make Mesopotamia a better place from all the destruction that happened.
At the time of working on this review. Two new Expansions released for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. The new expansions are The Mountain Royals and Victors and Vanquished.
The Mountain Royals brought over two new civilizations and three new campaigns for Age of Empires II. I don’t have much to say other than that I really like it and I just started playing the Thoros campaign for the Expansion.
Victors and Vanquished is a Singleplayer only expansion featuring nineteen scenarios. Instead of full-length campaigns. Each scenario is a campaign from a particular time period. It’s like The Battle of the Conquerors from The Conquerors expansion but much lengthier. Some of these scenarios were made by community members.
While not really anything new, I discovered my original copy of Age of Empires II on the Collectors Edition disk contained a custom scenario campaign. When I read more about it on the Age of Empires II wiki page. This campaign “782 The Saxon Revolt” wasn’t available anywhere else. The creator’s own forum page didn’t exist and the two other pages that were linked on the wiki don’t exist either. I decided to preserve this campaign and three other versions of the same campaign but translated into a different language. I put the complete authentic original on moddb which will require you to own The Conquerors expansion. I even ported it to Age of Empires II HD and Definitive Edition. Although I couldn’t figure out how to make or add the voice overs for both versions of Age of Empires II. Now everyone can play the campaign in three different ways of playing it.
782 AD The Saxon Revolt addon – Age of Empires II: The Conquerors – ModDB
Steam Workshop::782 AD The Saxon Revolt (steamcommunity.com)
https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/209979
Conclusion
As of finishing this review, we have entered the year 2024 and it will be Age of Empires II’s 25th Anniversary but for me it will be my 18th Anniversary of playing Age of Empires I and II. Age of Empires II has been one of those games where I can easily get into the zone and spend countless hours in the game without even noticing how long time has flown. I really like Age of Empires II and I think you will like it as well. Whether you are on PC or Console. You are going to be able to learn more about history. Will you Return To Reign?
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