Note: This is a review of Age of Empires 2: HD Edition single player campaigns. I am aware that the multiplayer is where Age of Empires is at its strongest and this review does not cover the multiplayer experience.

Age of Empires II HD: The Age of Kings (Difficulty: Moderate)

Age of Empires was released at a time when RTS genre was considered one of the most popular ones. From Command and Conquer to Starcraft, from Dune to Warcraft, there was fierce competition. It was not hard for Age of Empires to build a fan base with major selling points such as bringing real history with real heroes into our PCs and a ton of nations to play with.

The Age of Kings have campaigns that could make someone who has any interest in history salivate: William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Saladin, Ghenghis Khan and Barbarossa. William Wallace serves as a tutorial campaign and each campaign offers a pretty unique experience with a standalone storyline and units particular to that nation. The game requires good micromanagement skills with its more sophisticated economy system, at least compared to other games of that era. In the Age of Kings, you don’t harvest just one resource e.g. spice, tiberium, crystal… You need to make sure to harvest wood, food, stone and gold in a balanced fashion in order to succeed. Food comes from various sources. You can fish from the lakes, you can farm, hunt animals, collect fruits etc. Hunting animals would give you a food boost, but you will soon run out of animals. Farming could give you a steadier income of food, but you will have to spend wood to build farms. Each strategic decision has consequences. This applies to the whole game, whether it is economy, expanding your base, building armies or waging wars. Keeping in mind every nation / faction has their own strengths and weaknesses, on top of the more sophisticated economy and requirement to micromanage, it is safe to say that the Age of Kings is more on the difficult side, especially when compared to other popular real time strategy series of that time. On the other hand, micromanaging in Age of Kings for some reason (whether it is the music or the color palette) is often relaxing rather than stressful.

The campaigns never get boring and there is even educational value with all the historically accurate information in your missions or cutscenes. My main criticism to the Age of Kings campaigns, however, is being too formulaic. My experience with the majority of the campaigns was the following. I start a campaign. Build my base (unless the hints suggest otherwise), enemy attacks my base, I lose the game. I restart, this time knowing when, from which direction and with which units the enemy will launch their attack and I prepare myself accordingly. More often than not, this involves collecting enough stones and building a castle to the other side of a crossing and walling up the other areas to my base. The sense of playing a linear formulaic experience was much stronger when I played the Age of Kings campaign, in comparison to titles such as C&C or Starcraft.

That being said, my only major criticism is something that only applies to the single player campaign. Playing against a friend with more or less even skills, is where the Age of Kings shines. As a more complex RTS, Age of Kings in multiplayer would undeniably be one of the best RTS games ever made, assuming you do indeed have a suitable opponent who matches your skills.

8.5/10

Age of Empires II HD: The Conquerors (Difficulty: Moderate)

This expansion is everything the original game wanted to be. As opposed to the formulaic and somewhat tedious campaigns of Age of Kings, each campaign mission is carefully designed in AoE II: The Conquerors. The narrative is better, missions offer enough variety, everything feels more balanced and the difficulty is just right. Age of Kings was a great game for its time. The Conquerors, on the other hand, escalates Age of Empires to a masterpiece level and can easily be considered a timeless classic.

9.5/10