Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (PC) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 487
13From cave men to trébuchets!
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, it is the second game in the Age of Empires series. An expansion, The Conquerors, was released in 2000.
The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically based campaigns, which constrict the player to specialized and story-backed conditions. There are three additional single-player game modes, and multiplayer is supported. Despite using the same game engine and similar code to its predecessor, development of The Age of Kings took a year longer than expected, forcing Ensemble Studios to release Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome in 1998 instead. The design team focused on resolving significant issues in Age of Empires, but noted on release that some problems remained.
Reception of The Age of Kings was highly positive. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. The Age of Kings received "universal acclaim", according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Three months after its release, two million copies of The Age of Kings had been shipped, and it topped sales charts in seven countries. The game won multiple awards and is today considered a classic of its type, having had a significant impact on future games in its genre. The original Age of Empires II and the expansion pack were later released as The Gold Edition. Age of Empires II is now considered one of the greatest games ever made.
In April 2013, Age of Empires II: HD Edition was released on the Steam digital distribution platform for Microsoft Windows. The HD Edition includes the original game and the expansion The Conquerors, as well as updated graphics for high-resolution displays. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, a definitive remaster, was released in November 2019.
Prior to the completion of Age of Empires, Ensemble Studios had signed a contract with Microsoft for a sequel. The design team chose to set The Age of Kings in the Middle Ages as a logical progression from the ancient era setting of Age of Empires. The design team was conscious of attempting to capture the broad appeal of the first game without making the game's design too similar. Nonetheless, they attempted to appeal to the vast demographic who played Age of Empires.[34] The Age of Kings's design team intended to complete the game within a year by using code from the original and reusing the Genie game engine.[35] Several months into the process they found they would not be able to complete a game of the quality they sought in that time. Ensemble Studios informed Microsoft they would need another year and instead created Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome, an easily developed expansion pack of Age of Empires, as a compromise which could be released for Christmas 1998.[34] To help meet the next year's deadline, additional programmers, artists, and designers were employed.[36] To overcome another significant objection to Age of Empires—that of path finding—the team completely redesigned the game engine's movement system.