Age Of Empires II Blog Post

Age of Empires II is a real-time strategy based video game that was developed and released in 1999 by Ensemble studios and Microsoft. This game was set in the time period of the middle ages and is not limited too just one playable civilization, you get to play through thirteen of them. The game also allows you to choose from five different campaigns. The single player campaign that I played was called “The Age of Kings”. In this game mode there is a large focus on first gathering resources, building towns, and generating armies (or units). In order to conquer an opponent one must ultimately destroy their army units and town (buildings). As you play through this game you fight your way through four ages, The Dark Age, The Feudal Age, The Castle Age, and the Imperial Age. As you advance through each of these ages you unlock the ability to use and create new units, buildings, and technologies. For me, the game began as I played as William Wallace. This portion of the game acts as a tutorial and focuses largely on helping you top get the hang of moving units and defeating your enemy. There are two different types of units in this game, civilian units, which collect resources. Whereas military units are used for protecting your own town.

The game mechanics are very good, especially considering when this game was made and produced. The map and game objectives are very easy to use and view, as well as constructing buildings, moving units and completing tasks. Most of the actions performed are done using the cursor much like Civilization 5, which we played earlier in the semester. However unlike Civilization 5, Age of Empires in interesting in the way that as time progresses appearances change, buildings progress and the game almost evolves.

This game would appeal to anyone who is into historically relevant games, strategy game, and possibly even turn based strategy games.