Age of Empires Demo

In order to advance as a species, humans had to live in communities and learn from one another, as well as pass down knowledge from one generation to the other, in order to preserve everything they managed to acquire along the years. Hence, slowly but surely, civilization became more and more advanced, only to evolve into what it is today.

Age of Empires is as classic as it can get in the genre, since it really refined the real-time strategy formula and it added a few original elements as well. In essence, the game is heavily oriented toward history and your main purpose is to advance through the available ages, in order to unlock better units and become more efficient when it comes to gathering resources.

There are many different nations to choose from, although there are only four layouts for buildings and architecture: Asia, Western Mesopotamia, Eastern Mesopotamia, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Each one of these comes with three different factions, however, some of which have a few different units that can be used in battle to make matters more interesting and the gameplay slightly more versatile.

After you manage to reach a certain technological level, it becomes possible to build a wonder, which is basically a huge construction that requires a lot of time and resources. However, once you build it, the opponent has around ten minutes to destroy it, or you win the game without any confrontation needed. Naturally, the building can be destroyed quite easily, so you really need to protect it well.

As far as the technical aspects are concerned, you must remember that the game came out a long time ago and the visuals were kind of standard for that particular period. However, the isometric perspective is spotless and you can still have a lot of fun with the game even now, as long as you manage to run it properly on a modern PC.

Overall, even if Age of Empires is not as popular as the second part is, it is still a strong strategy game and you can definitely see where AOE II got its roots from. Hence, if you are in the mood for an old-school RTS and you do not mind the rather outdated graphics, then you can certainly give this game a try.