izigame.me

It's... Age of Empires II.
It's good.
I have unreasonable nostalgia for this game. Unironically, one of the best tutorials in all of video games, the campaign. I love a good single-player mode in any game, and this one is great. plus there's so much expression of skill, through what gets micromanaged and how well, how robust the economy and positioning is throughout the map - this game has a lot of refinement, is what I'm trying to see. It's a very complex game, and learning the ins and outs, perfecting your craft, all that stuff - it's a challenge to learn it all and implement it into gameplay. It's a challenge to get good at it.
Then again I never played competitively, I'm afraid of interacting with people. so I'm not that good at the game lol.
still. I love the atmosphere, the music is iconic, and I get a fresh hit of dopamine when i hear that melee clanging sound. this is a big comfort game for me, maybe the biggest. all the other ones I know, my old pokemon games, and zelda, and the whole library of super nintendo games my older brother pirated when i was younger, all of those are. just. not in my hands anymore. Nintendo's squeezed pokemon so hard it feels completely different from when i was little, and hell, the new Link and Zelda are their own characters. I even like them, that's the thing. And all the assorted snes games are packaged behind nintendo's own shop. there's this... ugly membrane of choices that all make engaging with them feel... bitter. hollow.
Age of Empires 2 changed a little too. not much. not so dramatically. the meta seems to have shifted? I hear? but at its core, this is still that same game. It feels like a place beyond time, beyond age and death and worry. I'm a nervous lady. change makes me nervous. the whole world feels like it's changing for the worse, all the time, and every little detail that I don't like about new things in those old franchises... feels wrong. Age of Empires, it's always there. still the same solid stone, still telling these old tales and serving the same beer.
That's the feeling i have for this game. A warm welcome from old friends and neighbors, in a cozy inn with a roaring fire. It tastes like mom's cooking, it smells like my childhood room, it feels like being home again.
That said, I really think this isn't a game for everyone. I think that if you don't have the inclination to micromanage things, handle pressure and respond fast in a fight, you might not like this game. If you don't like forgetting what you wanted to do because you got distracted (like i do sometimes), you might not have fun. it's not the most forgiving game in the world, and there's a lot to learn. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, i don't blame you.
but with all that said.
if you do wanna give the game a try, I'll be there with a warm welcome for our newest member of the community. no pressure!
alexa how do i end speeches