I have grown quite attached to single player campaigns ever since I was shown by a few RTS titles that there is such thing as a good campaign. Since then I have raised the bar for the overall judgement of a game’s single player experience. Despite the disappointment I met with the previous installment’s offer, I found myself amazed at the work that had gone into the sequel’s large variety of single player campaigns.

An obvious improvement in mission scripting has been made. Scripting is in my opinion the most important aspect of an RTS title. Without proper scripting the mission loses all hope of keeping the player interested through the battle. Now instead of just some before and after briefings, we have events that take place during each mission. Your force could stumble into a large battle, or scuffle between a small town and highwaymen. More RTS titles are just now adopting a more involved scripting system, as this wasn’t commonplace during the days of Warcraft II and Command and Conquer. I am just glad to see that someone aside from Blizzard is doing it right.

Thankfully the backdrop for each campaign is pulled from particular moments in history. With this wealth of recorded events and storytelling possibilities, the missions are able to keep themselves very real without locking players in the death grasp of boredom. From William Wallace (Braveheart) to Joan of Arc, AoEII manages to capture their stories and plop it down for the player to experience. As separate stories develop, mission objectives change dramatically to fit the need of your people. Sometimes you need to transport supplies, and sometimes you need to storm a castle full of British folk. Either way you don’t often encounter the same types of missions most of us are used to.

The AoEII environment is extremely rich in detail. Even more than the original, details on buildings are captured right down to the dead leaves resting on the rooftops. Most of the buildings seem to have a much bigger presence than before. Castles can be made to look quite extravagant, although nothing can beat the fortresses you encounter during the single player missions. The player who has time can still make quite a little foothold for themselves.

Units, of course, animate very well too. They even have different stances that effect their actions. An aggressive stance will have a unit attack anything in range and follow it, while a defensive unit will attack something in range, but peruse it for only a short distance. The Stand Ground command confines the units to attack only within their immediate range, while No Attack Stance has your units make no aggressive movements at all. This is an increase in control that is really welcome in my book, especially when being allied with the computer.

Not only is there a large number of civilizations to choose from, but each civilization now gets a unique unit. These units are some of the most powerful in the game. My favorite has to be the Japanese Samurai who slices through the opposition. Be warned though, these units are in no way invincible, they can die real easy if caught in a storm of arrows or hand-cannon fire.

The market system is probably the most ignored system in the game, at least from what I have seen while gaming online. Most players go straight for the classic tower rush, or just a whole load of archers. For the people who want nice (and sometimes long) games that require strategy being more of the deciding factor, the market can be very useful. The new market model seems much more polished than the last one. You have far more control of where trading actually goes. The ability to save yourself when you’re desperate resource wise is probably one of the most important ones.

As mentioned earlier, the player gets a lot of control over what happens on the battlefield. You can even lock the gates to your castle to prevent easy entry. This attention to detail really does get some attention from me. With the standard RTS control scheme seeming so polished these days, Ensemble Studios took a risk and attempted to make control of individual units even more precise, and as far as I can see this has really paid off.

The AI although seemingly more intelligent than in the first AoE, still suffers from a problem or two. The AI in AoEII seems to judge how it is doing against how the player is doing. Sometimes if it sees a situation in which it cannot win, it supposedly surrenders. This is a neat idea, but the main problem with this seems to be the AI likes to quit for odd reasons. A week ago I was watching my friends in my network class play against two AI opponents. The game had barely started when both AI claimed my friends were formidable opponents, at which point they quickly surrendered. I’m not sure what this occurrence is, but when playing a simple skirmish type battle in conquest mode it becomes quite annoying.

Performance as a multiplayer title is still top notch. Although I find most of the new unit control options, or market options aren’t even used that often, (which is in no way AoEII’s fault) the game still appeases the people out there that play this game for hours on end just to raise their rank on the charts. For people who do want to explore the level of control and strategy, at least that option is now open. The game doesn’t restrict you to learning how to tower rush or learn to amass archers faster than the next guy. Simply find some friends that feel the same way you do and this game can get a lot deeper in multiplay.