Age of Empires II

As an avid AoE II fan I’m honoured to be writing the review of the classic PC game which has been transferred to the mobile phone.

In truth I was a little unsure about just how close this game would relate to the original and yes, at times it does lack some of the finer touches that the original version has to offer, but none the less this is definitely a great game to add to your collection!

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, you have two aspects to try and cover. The first is getting your town, resources and economy developed as fast as you can and the second is to ensure you have an army to protect yourself from envious enemy advances.

Set in the middle ages, your townsfolk are the workers of the game. They gather materials (wood, gold and stone) which can be used in different ways. Wood and stone are used to construct buildings and gold is used to conscript troops. Unlike the PC game there’s no trading aspect to help you tip the balance of power in your favour.

To build is an instantaneous result, rather than watching your worker hammer away to construct the building, it simply is a case of select the building from the menu, pick its location and click – it appears! Although it’s a bit like playing the game at warp speed, but this is a nice thing, particularly as this would slow down your mobile and the gameplay considerably. The other thing which has been improved is the civilisation advances. To go into the next ‘age’ you must click on your town centre and when you’ve gathered enough materials you can instantly advance. These advances are critical to your survival, as they unlock new buildings which offer you better technology for your civilisations development and offensive/defensive capabilities (improved armour and attacking ability from your blacksmiths etc.)

Your army consists of soldiers, archers, cavalry and siege engines. Your foot soldiers are slower to move, but pikemen are effective against horse mounted units, swordsmen are better against archers and siege machines as well as other foot soldiers. Ranged units (archers and crossbowmen) are good at killing off soldiers – but you must try to keep them away from horse units. Mounted units are better at rush attacks by scouting and wiping out archers. Siege engines are slow moving and quite weak against everything but archers, but are particularly strong when destroying buildings.

As touched upon, this game is largely the same as the original but it does seem like everything’s playing at speed and your opponents AI is not as strong as it could be. However, the fundamental elements of the game are superb – the battle tactics and the town developments are recreated perfectly and you can develop quite a large army and civilisation without any significant restrictions to the game.

Ultimately this game is very enjoyable and is a brilliant RTS game which should be added to your collection.

Rating 82%

Positives

Very enjoyable and challenging

Tutorial, Campaign and Random Map mode to keep you challenged

Reasonable graphics

No real waiting time for units to move or buildings being made

Negatives

Games are quite short and pretty easy

No option to have a bigger epic battles and no selection of the civilisation to command

The speed of the game means you have to keep yourself on the ball and can lose

Controls are a little fiddly – you can end up de-selecting accidentally

The AI of your units as well as the enemy units is pretty awful

Mobile version misses out on some of the finesse of the PC game (but this is to be expected)