Age of Empires: The Age of Kings

"A wonderful strategy title hides underneath this grainy exterior."

If you're a PC gamer, you've most likely played Age of Empires in some form. It's one of the most popular strategy titles out there. It mixes Warcraft-style gameplay with the history channel to create a game that might actually help you with your homework. Well, maybe not, unless your homework is about writing an essay on who would win in a fight between Genghis Khan and Richard the Lionhearted.

The series hasn't made the jump to consoles until now. Age of Empires: The Age of Kings is a new title for the DS. It may have the Age of Empires name on it, but this game is almost nothing like the PC titles of the same name.

For starters, the entire basis of the gameplay has been changed. AoE on the PC is real time. AoE on the DS is turn based, to accommodate for the limitations of the platform. It would be very difficult to control frantic, fast paced strategy on the tiny screens of the DS, so the developers allow you to take all the time you want in making your decisions.

Additionally, like most turn-based strategy titles, the game takes place on a grid. Each square can hold one unit, and you move your soldiers around and have them attack each other. If you've played Disgaea or Advance Wars, you know the drill.

The title still retains its historical bent, but that's about the only thing it has in common with the PC titles. So, when you have to write that paper about Genghis vs. Richard, pick the game up. (Richard could so kick Genghis' butt.)

So, yeah, the game is really different from the other games in the series. Is it still worth playing? Without a doubt. The underlying strategy fundamentals are spot on, and anyone with a bit of Napoleon (Bonaparte, not Dynamite) in them will have fun with this title.

As previously mentioned, anyone who has played Advance Wars or Disgaea knows what's going on here. When you start a mission, you're given some units to play with. On most levels, you also get towns and villagers to allow you to get an economy going. More on that later.

The battle mechanics are like a hyper-complicated Rock-Paper-Scissors match. There are three kinds of units in the game: Infantry, Cavalry, and Siege units. Within each of these categories are over a dozen types of units. Each of these types tends to be better against some types of units and worse against others. For example, most Cavalry tend to be strong against infantry. However, if that infantry unit happens to be a unit of Pikemen, then the Cavalry will get slaughtered. Infantry are good against Siege units, but Scorpions (A sort of ballista type contraption) will make mincemeat out of infantry.

So, there's a complex hierarchy of units in the game. Each unit available to you is strong against some type of enemy, and weak against another. The strategy of the game lies in balancing your forces for maximum impact against your enemy. Well, also making sure that your units hit where they will be most effective.

As I said earlier, I am going to talk about building towns and such. In AoE, you get villagers who can build towns. For each town, you get up to four buildings. These buildings have a wide range of effects, such as producing different types of units and opening up new avenues for research. (Again, more on that to come) Additionally, there are some buildings not associated with towns, such as Wonders and Castles. These powerful buildings have unique and awesome effects on your civilization, like giving you access to the best units your civilization can have.

Obviously, you get all these things for free, right? Wrong! Even an omnipotent dictator like yourself still has to finance his ambitious, world-conquering empire. To facilitate this, the game gives you two resources: Food and Gold. Scattered throughout the maps are squares with either a picture of Grain or a picture of Gold. By building farms or mines on these spaces, you will get an income of these resources.

Overall, the resource system is a nice, streamlined interface. I did notice one problem, though. Your economy builds up slowly, with the first ten turns or so playing out as a struggle to build up enough resources to do anything. If the game goes past twenty or twenty five turns, though (something that can easily happen on most of the missions) you have such a massive income that resources no longer matter. Your unit and building cap will be much more restrictive at that point than finances. It's not a major problem, though. It just bears mentioning.

Now, about reserching. Every turn, you can buy some new technology that gives you bonuses. These bonuses can be anything from increased income to extra armor for your troops. These researches get more effective with each successive Age. What are Ages, you ask? They are a way of tracking your civilization's progress through history. There are four ages, each closer to the modern age than the last. You start out with nothing but hand tools, but you can command cannons by the end. You “Age up” by researching a set amount of new technology. It bears mentioning that Aging up makes your troops much tougher. If you have the technological advantage on your enemy, you'll cut through his ranks like a two handed sword cuts through tissue paper.

So, you can build up an economy and buy lots of soldiers. What do you do with them? You complete a host of diverse and increasingly difficult missions. Each of the five different civilizations available in the game (French, British, Mongols, Japanese, Saracens) has a campaign of about 5 or 6 missions. These missions follow the life of each race's unique hero, telling his or her story. These missions host an impressive amount of variety. You rarely feel like one missions is exactly the same as the last one, only harder.

Speaking of harder, this games difficulty stood out to me. The learning curve is fairly steep, and it's no cakewalk even once you get the hang of it. The later missions, especially, require absolute perfection on your part. Don't expect to breeze through this game in a weekend.

So, all in all, the gameplay sound pretty nice, doesn't it? It should, because it's very good. I wish I could say the same for the presentation. In a word, it's adequate. The graphics are fairly meh. They are grainy and pixelated, sometimes making it hard to determine exactly what's going on. When the entire screen is packed with units, each displaying a health bar and their own separate character sprite, it can get mighty confusing. It's never a deal breaker, but it is a minor source of frustration.

The sound is also solidly average. Each different civilization gets a song that fits it nicely, but they aren't exactly exciting. Worse, that one songs plays endlessly during all of your turns. The sound effects are pretty good, though. The units all have voice samples in their own language. (I.E. Japanese units speak in Japanese, French units speak in French. Cool.) Also, the battle sounds are not bad. You'll hear some swords clash and arrows twang. It's all decent stuff.

The DS hardware is used to pretty good effect. Without the stylus, it would be quite difficult to control the chaos of war. You would have to manually pick out each unit with the D-pad and click over to tell it where to go. With the stylus, you can simply pick out which unit you want, then press where on the screen you want it to go. There is occasionally a moment of frustration when it thinks you're pressing on one square, but you want a different one, but they are few and far between.

The campaign is already a good length, but it gets more longevity through custom games. You can pick one of dozens of maps and place up to three opponents on it, then fight it out. Basically, you'll get your money's worth out of this game. A rental period is probably too short, unless you're some kind of tactics-savant. I'd buy if you're interested in it.

Overall Scores
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 6/10
Music: 7/10
Replayability: 9/10

Final Score: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/06, Updated 04/03/06