Empire Earth II

"A major disappointment."

I was a very big fan of Empire Earth. Sure, it had its flaws, and it was perhaps too ambitious for its own good, but at least brought something interesting to the table - from cavemen to mechs. That single idea is probably the only reason why it got any ounce of attention, rather than being written off by every living creature as an Age of Empires rip-off (which it probably is, I won't argue that point, but it was a good Age of Empires rip-off). But the sequel merely falls flat on its face, and cannot get up. For whatever reason, the developers decided to throw absolutely every unit, building, age, civilization, and feature into the game that they had ever seen done in an RTS, and it is an absolute mish-mash of horribly imbalanced gameplay, not to mention what is essentially an Age of Empires/Rise of Nations hybrid.

Graphics
Sure, the Graphics look pretty, but the unit models are absolutely horrible, and are probably on par with the first ones units. Not only that, but the system requirements are high. Very high. Despite having a good computer, things are still very laggy, and it shows, especially when you fight it out with big armies (if you can be bothered playing long enough to make any). The environment looks nice though, although, at times, the water looked incredibly fake. Also, this isn't entirely related to Graphics, but the scenarios have absolutely terrible looking maps. Couldn't the developers have spent a few days at least trying to make it look like they put effort into this lame game?
3/10

Sound
And the Sound. Goodness me. After ten minutes, the repetitive background music, and intensely irritating unit quotes that pop up every time you click on something will drive you to the point of insanity, and will make you want to ride into the nearest city with a torch, and a pitchfork, eating babies and tearing your hair out. It is seriously that bad. It would have been bearable had the units not said the exact same one quote for everything. It might have even been good if the voices weren't so nasal sounding, but no, we're greeted with the same monotone "Yes m'lord" phrase with almost every single land unit, while their getting bombed with nuclear weaponry. It gets one point because it was possible to listen to the narrator, although the sound quality was a bit dodgy.
1/10

Gameplay
The entire way Empire Earth is played has been changed. Forget building up a solid economy before probing your enemy for their weakness - the fact that you can now reassign all your citizens to resources in about thirty seconds completely eliminates any challenge. Instead, it becomes a massive clickfest. And what in Westeros is up with that interface? It's about as friendly as a hungry shark. It's not even worth playing the game if you're scared off by walls of menus, instead of a nice, clean format, as has been traditional RTS format, but the developers had to be "edgy". It is absolutely horrible. And, while we're speaking of new features, they've also added in a bunch of new crap, the most notable of which is the ability to scribble war plans and send them to your allies. It's fun for the first three minutes, and it might even be helpful at times, but you soon realize having to wait a tedious thirty seconds for your allies to respond just gets boring. You may use this for the first two or three games, and then forget it exists.

The A.I. is horrible too. As well as the pathfinding. Multiple times, my units refused to cross that darn bridge, even when the cursor showed that they should be walking through it. It was irritating beyond relief, but fortunately, the game is so damn slow that you could have dinner, and they still won't have reached their destination. The computer is painfully weak. I laughed at one Korean mission, where it's your typical "Fall back to the last city!" when the narrator gained some urgency in his voice, and spoke like we were supposed to be struggling to cope with the advancing Chinese. The missions were hardly a challenge, and the "turning points" lasted about ten minutes each. (Well, they would have, if it didn't already take ten minutes for units to walk to their destination.)

More on the "game-altering" decisions that have been made - the map is now a jigsaw of cities. Cities (which are your standard villager-producing building) have boundaries, which are filled in with your colour on the mini-map once you conquer it. You can now capture buildings, although it takes so damn long, that force you spent an hour building up will be half-dead by the time they've evicted a few peasants. And then you realize you moved them too far away from the building, and now you must start the capture process over again. The resources are again, way too easy now, but also way too complex. In an attempt to pull a Rise of Nations, new resources arise every few ages, which you may think is historically realistic, but is just plain a pain in the arse to cope with. Why not stick with Empire Earth's resource system? It's simple, sure, but at least it's not broken.

The units suck. Apparently, X > Y > D > R > B > Q > M > Z > A whole bunch of other jargon that is mostly not going to register. For the most part, it's you using the common sense of "spear beats horsie," and so on. The tutorial may throw waves of information at you in an attempt to give false depth, but see past it, and you can see that this system barely works. I've managed to overwhelm Spearmen with Cavalry - very easy, and with minimal losses too. Exactly what is going on? And why the hell can my Nuclear Warhead not destroy a puny Bronze Cannon?

The missions, at least, are something to look forward to. You get three Campaigns, and "Turning Point" missions. The Campaigns are divided into three - Korea, Germany, and the United States, which each pretty much take up a third of the epochs (ages) in this game, and are mysteriously missing the prehistoric cavemen that made the first game so popular. Anyways, the missions are very dull, and repetitive. There is a neat one every once in a while, but they are so few and far between that it really isn't worth it. Not to mention, about 90% of them include a way to "ally with another force to get that upper-hand on your destructive enemy", when they only attack every half-hour, and in such pathetic numbers that you've got a better chance of rushing SCVs against Zerglings than trying to lose to this. The "Turning Point" missions are disappointing too. Five missions, which are actually two missions, with you being able to assume the role of different players. The first is D-Day. The second is Three Kingdoms. Neither are challenging in the slightest. Three Kingdoms amused me, because as Wei, you have enough starting troops to pretty much knock out most of the world, and, as Wu, you and your ally combined have enough troops to destroy Wei before they can do anything. If this is the case, why are we not being challenged as Wei?

3/10

Overall: 2/10

There are few games I'd take over this. Empire Earth was good, and it worked. Empire Earth II is not good, and it does not work. Simple as that. As fun as pushing needles into your eyes.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/08, Updated 07/14/08

Game Release: Empire Earth II (US, 04/26/05)