General Analysis - GangBug/AgeofEmpiresII GitHub Wiki

#History Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a RTS for PC developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft on the 15th of October in 1999, with a PlayStation 2 version coming out on 2001 by Konami.

The original game had 13 available civilizations to play with, but that number was expanded to 31 with expansions for the base game. It has single-player and multiplayer modes, where the goal is to conquer the enemies by collecting resources and growing an unstoppable army.

Although Ensemble Studios closed back in 2009, an HD Edition of the game brought it back to life, and with it came 3 expansions along the years: Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten (2013), Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms (2015) and Age of Empires II HD: Rise of the Rajas(2016).

#Technical Profile System requirements (Original)

  • CPU: Multimedia PC with Pentium 166MHz or higher processor.
  • OS: Microsoft® Windows® 95/98/Me/XP/NT 4.0
  • RAM: 32MB of Ram for Windows 95, 98, ME / 64MB for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.
  • HDD: 80 MB of available hard disk space, additional 100 MB of hard disk space for swap file.
  • GPU: Super VGA with 2 MB of video memory.

Minimum system requirements (HD edition)

  • CPU: Pentium 4 1.3GHz(Intel) / Athlon MP(AMD).
  • OS: Windows XP.
  • RAM: 1GB.
  • HDD: 2 GB.
  • GPU: GeForce 6200(NVIDIA) / Radeon X1300 256MB(AMD).

Recommended system requirements (HD edition)

  • CPU: Celeron E1200 Dual-Core 1.6GHz(Intel) / Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3600+(AMD).
  • OS: Windows Vista 32bit.
  • RAM: 2GB.
  • HDD: 2GB.
  • GPU: GeForce 6600 GT(NVIDIA) / Radeon HD 4350(AMD).

#Comparation with other RTS Age of Empires II differentiates itself from other games of the genre by its medieval setting, which makes it more believable and inmersive for the player against the likes of StarCraft II (Sci-Fi) or Warcraft III (Fantasy).

#Market positioning Age Of Empires 2 was a major hit in several countries, including USA, Japan, Germany and France among others. The critics praised the game for its revolutionary mechanics, AI, multiplayer and graphics, and even today it's considered one of the best RTS in history. Nowadays it's still wildly popular thanks to the HD edition and its expansions, along with the improvements on multiplayer and the accessibility through Steam.