We especially liked the intense array of challenges always pressing in on our fledging world. Empire Earth II is a real-time strategy game on steroids.
A deep and satisfying real-time strategy game. The campaigns are great, the multiplayer is super fun, and skirmish allows for tons of single player satisfaction thanks to some terrific AI that'll give you fits.
One of the best RTS i played years ago as a child.
This game is simply a masterpiece. I love the huge amount of "epochs" - each has different units and building types.
To be honest graphics could be better even for 2005 game.
This game is simply one of the greatest.
If i had to desribe it in one sentence its a unknown brother of W3,AoE and SC.
9/10
While Empire Earth II may not have the sense of character that a more era-focused RTS brings to the party, it scores big for its naked ambition. If you've got the staying power, it will reward you with months of sabre-rattling goodness. [PC Gamer UK]
Relies too much on its gameplay (taken from Age of Empires and made obsolete by the Total War games). There are fresh ideas in the multiplayer mode, though, such as shared war plans. [July 05]
Sequel to one of the best RTS in history, which improves everything comparing to the first one.
Visuals and sound design was very good back then.
MP fun to play as hell - especially with friends.
One of the bets game I have ever played. Played 6 hours a day for a long time...I got my life back.
It lagged a **** machines couldn't handle the unit masses. Multiplayer was sooo good. Learned about history from this game....loved the expansion of it Art of Supremacy.
While the original game plays it very safe with the actual gameplay, the sequel is much more interesting in terms of concept.
Graphics are improved, but not very markedly - the textures are still bland, units still move around by floating.
The gameplay, however, has multiple elements that are more common in 4X or Grand Strategy games rather than RTS ones. The map is divided into terittories, which are claimed by building a City Center in them, which is important for your population cap since you can only build a few houses (further, buildings are built much slower in unclaimed teritory). Diplomacy involves making possibly quite complicated alliance agreements (to the point of determining a specific period of real time during which players are allies). To aid team play, a feature called "War Plans" was introduced, where one can lay out specific routes on the map to help coordinate players' army movements. Periodically, "crowns" are given out to players for achieving top scores in a certain category (Military, Economic, etc.), which allows players to activate special bonuses related to the field (for instance, Military crown allows you to boost your infantry units). However, the most interesting feature by far is having a second screen. Along with your primary display that takes up most of the screen, you can also set a smaller screen to keep watch on a certain location at the bottom of your screen, essentially acting as a second pair of eyes on you, which is a feature I've personally haven't seen in other many other strategy games - certainly not RTS games.
However, the game still has issues. While the era bloat has been reduced, it's been replaced with resource bloat, because along with the four classic resources (Food, wood, stone and gold), you now also have Tin, Iron, Saltpeter, Oil and Uranium, resources that also rotate in and out depending on the age you're in (for instance, Tin only appears in eras 1-6) - an unnecessary complication to say the least. Combat is still uninteresting, mostly revolving around direct counters, and techs are mostly just stats bonuses, which are also era-locked - you can't get techs from era 1 if you're from era 2.
Overall, it's an RTS with novel concepts that's worth checking out for the curious, at least in the numerous campaigns, though it hasn't aged very well, much like the other EE games.
One sentence: "Way to miss the point."
You know Empire Earth as a whole was a great game and Steel Studios progressed far beyond it, even simplifying their games as they went along. Whoever was behind the pseudo sequel went all out, they nauseated players with a barbaric and ancient bloated resource system that did not make things simpler, it did not make things more fun and along with a brutally unfair or completely stupid AI, the game is hardly playable. First off, its visuals are very good, even considering its age, second off, this has nothing to do with the core gameplay mechanics being a chore, even for RTS genre standards. It gets nothing right in the economic aspects, it tacks on several new resources that absolutely HAVE to be used to construct different units. It does away with a simple Epoch upgrade system as well. Instead you must now send villagers into a building to gather "tech points" to upgrade different facets of your civilization before actually progressing to the next age. I've never even bothered trying to play that long, you know, the end game when you've tech'd all the way up? Nope. Not even gonna bother. The game moves at a snails pace, half the time you are simply waiting to have the resources to do something. Did I mention the wood gathering? Do I really need thirty villagers gathering wood? Why would you choose to emulate such a tedious thing from the original game developer? Why? The combat is horrid, even goofy, you can build up an army, but somehow the AI knows what you're up to and usually out builds whatever force you've been desperately trying to build up. Combat is not the focus here, its resource management and micro resource management and it is a chore. The whole game is a chore. Who cares if it rains or snows? Those weather cycles are simply eye-candy, icing on the games engine and they don't cover up the terrifyingly bad dialogue or sound effects. The music isn't memorable, the ambiance is just what it is, "ambient" and has no bearing on anything your doing. Even I liked the background music in Empire Earth. I guess between the really weird ideas, like building "roads" or "pathways" to facilitate faster unit movement, the naval combat is kind of lax as well, and how about the territories? Oh yeah, those are just great. Be the first one to build a settlement there and its yours. Guess what the AI does in most matches? If you're answer was A. Make muffins and twiddle their thumbs while you enjoy their delicious sugary treat you were unfortunately wrong. It was B. Out build your sorry ass and take territories faster than you could even get your piddly "economy" going. The game has niche appeal in the worst way, it travels to the lands of "slow paced" RTS genre, it takes the boring things from Empire Earth and just tosses them back in to be made even more tedious. Not one thing has ever made it out of this game and into another RTS title since. The miniature camera, you know the one that took up way too much of the interface, which was also a goddamn mess of a UI, has never been seen outside of this game. It lacks scope, it claims to have it in spades, but who wants to sit around waiting for a war? When I think of games like Age of Empires, though it has aged a bit, I recall never having to wait for too long before a skirmish would break out. Either over a gold mine, or a forage patch and yet, in Empire Earth II, you are literally waiting forever just to assemble some kind of an army. And even though their are some great features in the actual game, they add NOTHING to it. Walls in my territories? Pretty cool. Oh they just get knocked down pretty quick and are kind of useless. Citizen manager? Oh hey that's not really that useful as their is still a mini map and its pretty easy to figure out what's going on even on some of the larger maps. But that user interface should get the most flack out of any "feature" here. Its just a mess, an utter incoherent and tedious mess. Their is not that much to worry about here, this is an RTS, not a grand strategy game. Last time I checked, this wasn't Crusader Kings, or Port Royale, or Rome Total War. It does a lousy job of letting you know what you can do, it merely hints that it must have some higher purpose somewhere far from your keyboard and mouse. What surprises me the most, is that even "Empires: Dawn of the Modern World," is an improvement over this game and most aspects of its predecessor. What's even worse is that games like Steel Studios swan song, Rise and Fall, a game that they WENT OUT OF BUSINESS WHILE MAKING and was handed over to Midway for completion, turned out better than this game.
SummaryPrepare to serve up worldwide conquest on an epic scale once again with Empire Earth 2. Become the greatest conqueror of all time by creating, building and forging the grandest of all empires as you progress through 15 epochs that span more than 10,000 years of history. Introducing new units, powers and leaders through 3 expansive campai...