Empire Earth II

In the great annals of game history, there have been strategy games that stand out to the world. Civilization. Age of Empires. Command and Conquer. These games made everyone go “hot damn” in a blitz of entertaining and difficult construction, war, and diplomacy. My prior Civilization 4 review made it clear- Strategy games can be good. But sometimes, in rare instances, they tend to steal way too much to the point of becoming mediocre. Welcome to the world of Empire Earth 2.

Empire Earth 2 is based off the exact same concept as Age of Empires, except slightly upgraded to excuse the lack of ingenuity. Empire Earth starts you off with a small grouping of villagers in privative times- and continues your reign through multiple eras of your country, slowly growing into a fully modern technological monolith. Real time controls allow you to quickly build and acquire various buildings and resources, the whole point being the exact same as any strategy game- become the biggest and baddest, and punish anyone in your way.

Empire Earth 2 works basically like this- click around, guide some civilians around, make them work, and try to trip your way into building a powerful community in what has to be one of the most irritating and complex game systems of all time. Pulling basically everything in the game from titles like Age of Empires or Civilization, the only thing- and I mean the only thing- different about the wonders of Empire Earth 2 is the name. One may marvel at the work Mad Doc Software put into stealing ideas from others. But that doesn't even begin to explain it.



From the start of the game, everything references other strategy games. Starting off, as I mentioned above, you go with small members of your civilization, able to colonize the wilderness and begin transforming it into your future city. Much akin to Age of Empires, all of this is based on raw resources- that is, stone, gold, wood, food, and all the things that seem to be important to people who bash on rocks. With a technology system matching that of Civilization, you slowly but surely develop the knowledge to do things better, faster, and more efficiently- and grow your country proportionally. A “Crowns” system (possibly the ONLY thing unique in this game) allows specific countries to become victors in specific realms (such as war), and thus gain special abilities (such as added defense) from it.

One of the biggest problems/features in this game is the fact that unlike other strategy games, it seems like Empire Earth 2 loves to have millions of characters all doing things en masse. What that means to you is simple- for all intents and purposes, you will end up managing hundreds and hundreds of civilians, soldiers, boats, siege weapons, and basically anything you pump out. To somewhat counterbalance this, the game features a “Citizen Manager” that allows you to assign citizens to different resources without actually clicking on them, and a “War Planner”, which similarly allows you to build and execute complex war strategy plans, done much like a football plan. Thankfully, the above features really do cut down on the overwhelming problem of your growing population, but in all respects, the problem is still there.

Speaking of features, as I mentioned Empire Earth 2 was partly theft, it also features an era system to account for the advance in technology. Teamed with the technology, a small bar chronicles your progression through 15 eras- taking you from the very basic privative era to technologically superior futures. While many faster paced games inevitably end way before era 15, longer games reach there quite quickly- and, much like Civilization, can last much longer before they conclude. Yes, this has been done in virtually every strategy game on the planet- but I'm not going to deny it's fun.

The real meat of Empire Earth 2 is obviously what Age of Empires places in high regard- war. Unlike Civilization, both of the aforementioned games really put more focus on the war between countries rather than the building thereof, and thus Empire Earth 2 features a huge array of weapons for any country who wants to cause problems. For the most part, this is what the average game of Empire Earth 2 really IS- building weapons and throwing them at any given country, hoping to overtake them and destroy them

This can be fun or boring, depending on what you expect from this game. In comparison to some strategy games (such as Civilization or any Sim game), this means that Empire Earth 2 ends up being rather warmongering and lacking when it comes to anything but war. However, to strategy gamers who are fans of games like Command and Conquer, Empire Earth 2 will fit in perfectly, being that perfect mix of little building/planning and a whole lot of action. This is sometimes why I feel the need to break up the genre of “Strategy” up, but you get the idea- you will either enjoy or be very confused by this game.



Where Empire Earth really ends up being bad and NOT like games like Command and Conquer is the actual engine itself. Empire Earth 2 can be rather fast and a little unforgiving at times due to the somewhat irritating GUI, and the lack of some commonly featured abilities (such as the ability to see/control units OTHER than Civilians, the ability to stop your units from running amok, the like), and other miscellany like that. Compared to the quick-to-use GUI of Age of Empires or the very basic yet powerful system in Civilization, Empire Earth 2 still somewhat fails. To put it bluntly, I could not play the game like I wanted to purely because I was so irritated by this system- be it just a fluke user error on my part, or just complete failure on Mad Doc Software's.

There is one thing Empire Earth 2 DID have on it's side, and that is the 3D engine, which holds up surprisingly well considering the amount of action on the screen. The graphics are nowhere near pretty to look at, but they do the job well, and even the low end computer gamers will be able to enjoy the game just like those of us with gaming rigs. Some choices however, such as the use of uncompressed full 3D picture-in-picture, will lag any system after a while- so, while I do say the game is lag free, only if you fix what should never be there in the first place. The realm of sound is unfortunately somewhat mediocre, but it gets the job done- the kind of sound you hear, but never catches your ears any more than the hum of a computer fan.

So, at the end of the day, Empire Earth 2 lacks in a lot of places, which generally makes it a mediocre game. It's nice to see some advanced eras featured in a strategy game, but when they are teamed with a confusing interface and somewhat stupid concept, it all boils down into a very mediocre game. When there are so many phenomenal strategy games out there, Empire Earth 2 pales and begs to be placed in the bargain bin, which is why it deserves the score it gets. Buyer beware- you can do better than this.

2.5 star(s) out of 5

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