Age of Empires

The Good
The historical theme is quite nice. I'm not a historian but from what I can see it is more or less correct in it's historical descriptions (although "correct" is a bad word when talking about history, because history is not about facts but how we interpret what we THINK are facts). Anyway, this gives a somewhat educational touch to the game which I quite like.

The Bad
Well, the rest, more or less. There are no obvious flaws that jump at you when you start the game. It is just so... bleak. The graphics are boring to look at, and the menus would suit some Microsoft excell-program better. The illusion that you aren't just playing around with ones and zeros aren't there at all. It really feels like a computer programe, not some "alternative" reality. In short, there is no way in which I can ever feel involved in the game and that makes it uninteresting and boring, since the game is so depressingly slow. Most strategy games are slow, but when involving even the most slow-paced game becomes exciting (civilization is an excellent example). Age of Empires is just plain boring and depressing to look at. The graphics aren't bad in that sense, the game just looks bleak and uninspired. One of the most overrated games in the history of games, since it has virtually no entertainment value at all.

The Bottom Line
Well made, but oh so uninspired and boring. Bleak, boring and bad.

The Good
Age of Empires got me hooked on real-time strategy games. It was Ensemble Studios' first game; they put a lot of hard work into making it just right, and they succeeded brilliantly. The graphics are breathtaking and the units are plentiful and unique. Resources are balanced; sometimes hard to come by, but never impossible.

The campaigns are perfect! I didn't like the sequel's campaigns much at all, unfortunatly; I still play these sometimes. The cutscenes in between them are stunning, comparable with Blizzard's work IMO, and the stories are captivating. But the maps for them are perfect! They are challenging but balanced, with resources in key spots and enemies in just the right places to make it hard just when you thought it was gonna be easy. You'll really need to use your head to win them, unlike some other, very simple RTSs. Ground troops, flankers, bowmen, seige weapons and war boats all have their places, and they are all neccessary at some time or another.

The Bad
Stone is just about impossible to come by if you squander it early on. They fixed this in Age of Kings, by the way.

There is also a bug with the AI-- if you have two priests trying to convert a unit at the same time, it can't decide which one to attack and will just freeze. So under the right conditions, the game gets dangerously easy. On a larger scale, this could have pretty much ruined the playability of the game, but it's only an annoyance as it is ('cause the enemies normally come by with buddies who chop your priest into mincemeat when he gets near enough to convert). Also fixed in the sequel.

The Bottom Line
If you're wondering which RTS to get, get Age of Kings. It's better than this one in almost every way. But if you're either collecting good RTSs, or just good games, or want to see where Age of Kings got its brilliance from, look here.

The Good
It had nice graphics... the intro was nice, and the little guys running around and getting killed by elephants was cute.

The Bad
Good Lord... I was SOOO disappointed... I bought this in a sale box at the local Electronics Boutique and, having heard already so much about Age of Empires, was practically salivating... and man, did it suck! Sure, it looks cute, but the different civilizations are completely unbalanced, the tech tree is small, limited, and sucky, wonders are complete idiocy (someone builds one, go and nuke it or lose the game), the campaign mode is boring and every game ends the same: you try to survive until you build enough whatever and come over to kill. Sure, the same might hold true for Civ or C&C or Dune 2 or Alpha Centauri... but at least you have fun and options and along the way.

The Bottom Line
Avoid like the plague unless you ADORE this genre and are willing to forgive it's flaws. I've heard Age of Empires 2 was a vast improvement but I never dared to take a look.