Age of Empires review

Game: Age of Empires
Platform: PC
Genre: Unknown
Developer: Unknown

Reader review by ratking

March 02, 2003

Age of Empires was an interesting PC game. To conquer your enemies you needed to know exactly what you were doing, and the best method would be to set up the right amount of defence and attacking specialists, along with a useful collection of structures. Age of Empires is a true strategy game, cause to win you will need to use your wits, and hope your enemy does not.

GRAPHICS (8/10): This was an older game in the CD era. While it will work on all modern computers, it will no longer dazzle the casual gamer. But you must look at the games in in hinesight, and everything looks crisp and clean with no slowdown. This is an old game, and it looks better than a good deal of modern games. The inhabitants all move smoothly, and even seem a bit realistic.

SOUND (6/10): The Age of Empires is a game that takes place from the Neolithic Age, until the age of the Romans. The characters all grunt, and the nose of steel against steel really kinda screeches and does not give out a very realistic sound. But those are things you have to live with, and I sure will. The music is definitely below par, and the little victory cheers are also kinda a nuissance. The sound is not great, even for the age of the game.

GAMEPLAY (48/60): Age of Empires is the first game in it's respective strategy series. The basics of the game are you have a certain race to advance through the ages, and defeat your enemies. Now to do that you need to have food, wood, and steel so you can build those structures needed to defend yourself, and feed your people. That means you are in need of hunters, foragers, archers, knights, and other specialties. Also through in buildings such as vaults, armouries needed to increase those attackers class into cavalry units, and even catapults and Ballistas. This gives you a variety of weapons to attack with, and the different races make that variety even larger. Each type of attacker has its own distinct advantages, and you will need to utilize a good combination of these attackers to succeed in this game.

It is very slow paced, and that is an entire weakness in Age of Empires. While many strategy games are slowpaced, Age of Empires is the worst I have played. The game moves at a monotomous pace and it really hurts the game in it's entirity. While the gameplay itself is good, it is repetitive and slow which hinders the thrill of the game itself.

MULTIPLAYER (1/5): Age of Empires while being a great strategy idea, does not have any type of succesful multiplayer action. To the best of my knowledge it is impossible to play the game online, and you can not really control two races at the same time. So in the end, you will always be competing against a computer, and in a strategy game it's just not that good of a tactic.

REPLAYABILITY (4/10): A good strategy game is a game you can play for months on end. At first Age of Empires seems like that type of game. All the needed aspects are there, interesting gamepaly and the needed strategic influence. In time, however, you will realize that the game is very repetitive. Some series of battles if walls are set up could take months, and that is just a long time for one repetitive battle. It just gets boring fast, and the different respective races don't give a big enough variety to keep the game new.

DIFFICULTY (2/5): As many older games are, only the best stand a chance at victory. Strategy is important, and in the higher levels you will need to create a solid defence, and a powerful offence while keeping your people fed and having the money and steel to make your weapons. In the end that makes the games difficulty much above average.

VINTAGE VALUE (+1): Age of Empires was not the first strategy game, but it was an innovative one. In time it would lead to Age of Empires II which was more succesful, and more entertaining gameplay. S

OVERALL (70/100): Age of Empires is a game for only the true hearted strategy gamers. Only the masters will have any shot of success on the higher levels, and even those will struggle the first few attempts. If you plan on buying this game make sure you have patience, or I will guarentee you will be chucking this one into the garbage bin. But if you do have the patience, and enjoy racking your brain for the best tactic to kill some Egyptions, then this is the game for you. It's all a matter of preference.

Rating: 7.0/10

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