Review: Age of Empires II: Age of Kings (Nintendo DS)

It has been 7 years since the original Age of Empires II: Age of Kings came out for the PC. So it’s a little odd that Majesco decided to name its latest Nintendo DS game the same title, seeing that Age of Empires III just hit store shelves for the 2005 Holiday season. Other than the same name, however, AoE is entirely different than the real-time strategies its PC counterparts are.

You still build bases and produce military units, but it’s all done in turns. Every unit can be moved a certain amount of squares (the maps have grids) and then attack – however, they cannot attack then move. It takes an entire turn to build any structure with a builder and you cannot stack builders on the same project to finish it quicker, like in the RTS versions. Battles are pre-empted with a report that will tell you whether or not your military strategist thinks you will win – a good way to keep yourself from getting slaughtered by facing the wrong type of enemy. You see, the game’s battle mechanics can be strip down to a basic rock-paper-scissors game: swordsmen beat pike men, who beat horsemen, who beat swordsmen. Then you throw in long range attackers like archers or catapults that can wipe out units from afar but get slaughtered in a close-range battle.


The game features 5 civilizations to fight for: Britons, Franks, Mongols, Japanese, and Saracens. Each feature their own unit sets, although they are usually based off the swordsmen/pike men/horsemen trio in some fashion. Each civilization has their own special units as well, from Britain’s Knights of the Round to… Swiss pike men? To the review!
(Review Explanation)

Graphics: Everything but the combat looks fine for the handheld system. Skirmishes and the character models used in them look all muddy and under-detailed. Each technology you can research has a nifty picture with it along with info about the bonuses you will get on the top screen, and the top screen overall is used to display info in an orderly fashion. Most of the different troop types for the different civilizations or simple palette-swaps. 4/10

Sound: Well, it was pretty good, although you wouldn’t miss a damn thing if you had it turned off. I like sounds that hint bonuses or strategies for you to employ. Here we have some simple music and screams or grunts whenever some nameless guy is killed in a battle. 4/10

Enjoyability: Turns don’t work for AoE. This is a good example why the series is RTS. Just about every mission will dumb down to pumping out more units than the other guy can to overrun them. In RTS games, it was about how fast you could put together your network and start making elite units to rush your opponent with. The turns in this game allow players to slowly think out their decisions but don’t reward quick thinking or good choices, as the computer can do this just as fast as you can – although it will take its sweet time and you get to watch every second of it moving their units around and building stuff. Seriously when it’s the computers turn late in a mission, you can go grab a drink watch some TV… you get the idea. Missions also take forever to finish since it’s basically barreling nameless bodies into one another until one side gets the edge. Some early missions take over 100 turns to finish and by then you’ve gotten every tech and mined out the surrounding area. Fun at the beginning but quickly becomes mind-numbing. 3/10

Value: There is a ton of missions and they all take a long time to finish, so you’ll be very busy. Throw in some multiplayer, including a hot-seat game as well as single map games at the price of $30 and you can’t go wrong, if you enjoy the turn-based styled. 6/10

Overall Score: I’m sure quite a few strategy buffs will enjoy the game but honestly the system just doesn’t work for the type of game. Still, if you have the time to invest or enjoy the AoE series, it’s worth your $30. Final Score: 4/10 (Slighty Below Average)

-Casey