The good part of this game is the range of weapons, buildings and resources. This game is best when you have just started a match, and you are chopping down trees for wood, collecting food, and mining rock and gold. But the fights are quite disappointing. Its not very realistic, and it takes AGES to destroy a single building! Another bad thing, is that you can set fire to stone?! It takes a long time to destroy the enemy, and gets pretty boring if you spend too long on it. Not bad, but not too good.

This game is one of those timeless classics. I have loved it from the first and still do. It will even run on Vista. You may need to alter some settings in graphic section, in the options menu. Even the map editor is far better than any other I have used, (apart from WBC4 which is equal in ease of use). It is a good game for all ages. I am currently teaching a 70+ year old neighbor to play it. Not a worry to him. I would surely recommend this game to everyone.

Sometimes we want a fairly simple game too play but can't seem to find a game thats worth playing. But AOE 2 is a great companion to play with your friends via LAN or Microsoft server. Overall the game is to test if you have skills such as speed and the proper usage of your army. I give it 9.5 out of 10 as the graphics are pretty old for now. The good thing is that you get to run this on some random integrated video card on your pc. Such as the Intel GMA950.