Empire Earth II

"A solid game, with familiar game play."

I'll be honest, I like RTS games. They're pretty much my favorite genre of game, and I'll give a game a lot of slack before I put it down. Empire Earth 2 is one of these games that has just enough going for it that I keep coming back, even though the game never really gives me quite as fulfilling an experience as I've wanted. Somehow it does tend to end up being fun though.

The game is an all too common formula these days: start with a stone age tribe, expand, build up and then one day you get to nuke things. It's a lot like Rise of Nations and various other games that follow this basic premise, both in concept and execution. Unfortunately, this familiarity is also a downside, since the idea's been so done, there's not a lot of new things to bring to it. So the game winds up being unremarkable in the idea or execution, and has to be judged against some virtual twins.

The gameplay for me always seems to go in one of two ways. Either the nearest AI to me goes hostile right away and rushes endless stone age forces and it becomes a long exercise in annoyance, or no one touches me and I fight my enemies on my terms at a time of my choosing. The favorite aspect of an RTS for me has always been building, so I don't fight until my building urges have been satisfied, so in Empire Earth 2 that means my strikes come in the form of nuclear bombers and Leviathan battleships. While these games are foregone conclusions, I do find them more fun, yet I'm left wishing there were an in between. A WWI or WWII era fight, for instance. Sadly the AI has yet to deliver. It seems to focus on low tech rushes in a game that's brutally tech oriented, which to me is a plus. There's nothing worse than having your main battle tank destroyed by some savage throwing spears at it. Rarely does the AI even advance far enough to discover oil, though.

My other complaint with the game is the size of the maps. The top size, ‘Gigantic' is, well, not in my opinion. It's more what I'd describe as medium. Now I'm a fan of large, epic wars, so I like larger maps than normal, but it would have been nice to have the option at least. Unfortunately, I suspect this would have slowed the game too much. The game runs well on my (ultra high end) system, but I can start to see slowdown if it's pushed too much. Especially by weather (sandstorms and snowstorms are a great idea, but are so opaque and in the way that they're just a major hindrance, unfortunately.) and because of the picture in picture window the game has in the lower right corner of the screen. The PiP window is an interesting idea that I never find myself using. I'm not sure if the implementation could be improved or somehow made more useful or not, but as it stands it's a use of system resources I have to basically call wasted except as pure eye candy.

Now, despite all this, the game still is fun. The gameplay might be familiar, but the flip side is that it's a tested and working formula. It just never seem to get old carpet bombing and nuking some poor Renaissance era fool who thought war with me was a good idea. I also enjoy the game's systems of walls, fences, towers and fortresses. They take time to build properly, but the end result is quite nice and very effective for defense. The game does have a fair bit to offer, but innovation is unfortunately not on the list. Still, even if it is familiar gameplay and looks, there is fun to be had here.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/05