Empire Earth II Review (no fat)

Game Description

Empire Earth II is a real time strategy game with a historic setting that captures the past technological developments into a couple of hours involving fifteen epochs. If you have not played Empire Earth earlier, it would take some time to learn the strategies and tactics involved in Empire Earth II. There is a wide range of difficulty settings that makes the player resistant to frustrating situations.

Empire Earth II Gameplay

The fifteen epochs or stages in the game are divided into different empires such as Korean, German and American. The first five stages aim at creation of Korean empire; the next five stages involve the Prussian age that ultimately becomes the German empire. The last five stages have the advanced American empire with the latest technological developments. Each stage includes twelve different technologies and you have to research on at least six technologies before entering the next stage.

There are very few games that can take you to the Dark Ages and Empire Earth II gives you an opportunity to peep into the Stone Age Era. Empire Earth II mainly focuses on the military advancements and the game starts with a few cavemen and goes up to the most modern machinery used in the modern army. This game has all the resources required by the cavemen to build buildings for you.

Empire Earth II Maps

There are three main features in Empire Earth II that were not present in similar real time strategic games of this genre. The first feature is the worker management system that allows you to manage the workers and the available resources. The second feature being the two-dimensional strategic map mode where you can draw plans and you can share them with your army associates. The third main feature is a picture-in-picture mode that gives the player an extra window with a selected piece of turf and it can be used as the main window.

The maps are divided into territories and these territories allow you to build a city center, which is the heart of your city. One player controls each territory at a time and gradually you have to increase the population of your city. Since this game mainly focuses on military domination and territorial acquisition, you need a large army. To defend your land from being acquired by others you need to protect it on different fronts. Your army can capture the opponent’s buildings or even have an option of destroying the existing buildings and re-building tem with the help of your peasants.

You need to know and memorize the strategic units to defend from being attacked by enemy’s infantry. You can easily customize the behavior of your military units to perform according to a desired situation and to attack your enemies.

Empire Earth II Spies

There is a very interesting feature of spies. These are used to keep an eye on the enemy buildings and to do everything to damage those buildings. Spies can be extremely helpful in getting some secret information of your enemies and can obstruct the normal operations of your enemies…an idea that has, perhaps, been inspired by the Civilization series, even though it has been developed further.

Empire Earth II - Technologies

You have to research on 6 different technologies to advance to next epoch. But it depends on whether or not you have the required technology points and the required building to research that technology. By having your peasants in the university and priests in your temples, you can earn technology points. There are three types of technologies namely, Imperial, Economic and Military.

Empire Earth II - Sound

The sound tracks of this game are quite impressive as each nation has its own theme song. You can easily find out which nation you are playing at by hearing the song as it is unique to each nation. Overall the sound tracks are good and the audio quality is impressive.

Empire Earth II - Graphics

Comparing Empire Earth II with some similar games in this genre like Rise of Nations, the graphics are not very impressive. The graphics and animations are not very smooth and they don’t look current to the time.

Empire Earth II - Final Verdict

Although the audio tracks are good but the graphics are not at all impressive. According to the current technological advancements the graphics look too old. The best part is the historical facts that are exposed in this game. With some new features incorporated in this game, Empire Earth II is a good pick for strategy buffs.

Empire Earth II – Cost

The retail price of Empire Earth II is $42.95US at the time of writing.