Age of Empires II: HD Edition Review (Gnocchizeme)
There was a time in the late 90s and early 2000s when PC games were dominated by RTS. Titles such as Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation, and StarCraft set the gold standard for this genre. Unless you enjoy the lifestyle of a subterranean troglodyte, you’ve probably also played Age of Empires II, the crowning achievement of Ensemble Studios. 20 years after AoE2’s release, the torch has passed to Forgotten Empires to deliver a modern remaster. With such gargantuan shoes to fill, how could an underdog developer lacking even a Wikipedia article hope to succeed? To make a long story short, Forgotten Empires banished all doubt and delivered the finest RTS on the market today.
The sheer amount of content in Definitive Edition is staggering. There are 27 base campaigns including the originals for nostalgic fans and the DLC campaigns from HD edition. While it would have been easy to simply port the HD campaigns over, the developers took feedback regarding the less favorable missions and remade them. The result is better paced campaigns for multiple civilizations.
For the competitive crowd, DE features great matchmaking and an active PvP community. One of the finest additions to the game is the Art of War. Based off Sun Tzu’s famous book, these missions teach players foundational knowledge of the multiplayer meta-game and help instill skills to reduce the entry barrier. The game even requires you to pass a PC benchmark test before playing ranked, a feature that should be industry standard in multiplayer games.
With new civilizations and campaigns arriving on a nearly annual basis, Definitive Edition is the best way to experience AoE2. The only issue that remains is inaccurate unit pathfinding in large armies, but if someone can solve that, they can probably solve world hunger.