The second “Age of Empires” is a phenomenally tenacious game. Starting her journey back in 1999, she managed to survive her threequel and quadricep, first getting a modest HD re-release in 2013, then an exemplary remaster in 2019. The game is alive. And when I say she’s alive, I don’t mean just running servers and a small handful of active fans. Everything is much more convincing. Until now, regular add-ons with new civilizations, story campaigns, and many edits are being released, tournaments with hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money are held on an ongoing basis, and online is full of bloodthirsty tactical geniuses, furiously gnawing at each other’s locks for rating.
For the author of these lines, love for Age of Empires 2 stretches from childhood. If earlier I just liked to rebuild beautiful towns and fall into story adventures for Joan of Arc and Genghis Khan, then in recent years “Epoch” has opened up to me from the eSports side. Follow tournaments like Red Bull Wololo and King of Desert turned out to be surprisingly interesting. The game, like some kind of Starcraft, has almost bottomless potential for spectacular confrontations and unexpected tactical decisions. And, more importantly, a large and friendly community, always ready to provide these confrontations. After all, it’s always exciting to watch the Russian big boys (Winchester and Dark) face off against the best players on the planet.
And just like a bolt from the blue last fall, we are presented with the Xbox version … It’s not the first time I’ve encountered RTS on a gamepad. Behind already and dilogy Halo Wars, and Iron Harvest, and Spellforce 3. Even Age of Empires II itself at the very least visited the PlayStation 2 in ancient times. Then it was enough for her to just be more or less playable, but now we have the right to expect a much more serious approach to the port.
But before we get into the intricacies of gamepad control, it should be clarified that you are always free to connect a keyboard and mouse to your Xbox and play Age of Empires 2 the old-fashioned way. Many graphics settings are available in the menu, as in the PC version. They were left on purpose since we are dealing with a harsh eSports discipline. For hardcore players who intend to conquer the online battlefields, fine-tuning the visual for themselves is vital, it is often easier to turn off some bright effects and simplify the graphics for clarity. Also, professionals always put a mod where the trees look smaller to make it easier to find holes in the defense. In the Xbox version, by the way, no one took away access to modifications either.
In other words, with the transition to the Xbox, the game did not lose anything: neither the ability to play with a mouse, settings, or modifications. Even all my PC saves have been kindly moved along with the online rating. Rating, by the way, is divided. There is a separate reservation for those who want to compete exclusively on gamepads. But no one forbids you to break into the overall rating with all PC players and try to rein in all those who giggle contemptuously at the phrase “RTS on the gamepad.”
Now let’s talk about the notorious console management. Looking ahead, I note that the developers managed to create one of the most comfortable and flexible adaptations of real-time strategy for the gamepad. It’s even hard to believe that this terry computer strategy from the late 90s gets along with the gamepad no worse than the original Halo Wars. But before you make sure of this, it is advisable to go through training and dig a little into the settings.
For acclimatization, the developers have shoveled the entire training campaign for William Wallace, where you will be taught in detail all the intricacies of the new interface and controls. Surprisingly, the game has two interface options: normal and advanced. Advanced will be shown to you only in the last tutorial, then I would advise you to permanently switch to it in the settings, as it contains many useful features: from the ability to bind individual units to detailed economy settings. In addition, I became much more comfortable when I separated the unit selection and the order into different buttons in one of the settings.
The developers have prepared many ways to quickly and painlessly switch to the unit you need. You can just aim and select it on A. You can double-click to select all the same units within the screen. There is a circular frame peeped from colleagues when clamped. You can hold LT and assemble a group one at a time (the trigger here performs the same role as Shift). There are also many more advanced commands: for example, select all infantry or all siege weapons, select a pre-bonded squad, and, of course, instantly select the entire army from the entire map with one button. Of course, the control was not without an abundance of circular menus, but most of the features of them can often be used with some alternative combination of buttons.
WITH THE TRANSITION TO THE XBOX, THE GAME HAS NOT LOST ANYTHING: NEITHER THE ABILITY TO PLAY WITH A MOUSE, NOR SETTINGS, NOR MODIFICATIONS. EVEN ALL MY PC SAVES HAVE BEEN KINDLY MOVED ALONG WITH THE ONLINE RATING.
Another handy little thing peeped from Halo Wars is the use of the Y button for the most commonly used unit abilities. To identify these most commonly used abilities, the developers turned to eSports. The peasant most often builds a house (in tournaments, players are so quickly closed from enemies that suddenly appeared).
When you have an entire army selected, Y will quickly switch between split formation and phalanx formation, allowing you to dodge a hail of arrows and cannonballs. For complete happiness, I would also hang a mangonel volley around the area on Y. But alas, for now, for this ability, like for many others, you have to climb into the circular menu by holding RT.
When the Xbox version was announced, I had little idea how the developers would be able to rein in such a wild beast as the local economy for the needs of the gamepad. In some Halo Wars, all resource management comes down to building productive buildings in one of the base slots. In Age of Empires 2, you often have to control about a hundred peasants. Hard workers must hunt, fish, peel bushes with berries, knock on trees with axes, beat gold and stone mines with pickaxes, constantly build something, repair and be ready at any moment to hide in a tower or town hall from another enemy raid. This is not to mention the constant readiness to rebuild an obstacle in front of the nose of the invader. Also, trading and fishing boats go along the rivers, wagons circulate between the markets… the requirements for micro and macro control of the game are severe even within the genre,
The lifesaver was the auto-economy function, which works only with the gamepad. By clicking on the right stick, you will see several pie charts, where the parts of the circle show the proportion of workers that will be involved in the extraction of the desired resource. We choose, say, a diagram with an emphasis on food, and the peasants will be divided into their affairs without your direct participation. Gold miners will go to the nearest mine, food gatherers will sweep away all the sheep, and berry bushes, and in the absence of these, they will begin to sow the fields. If there is no wood for sowing the field, they will go to the woodcutters. The problem of indifferent loafers will disappear by itself, a hard worker who is not involved anywhere will find a job in a couple of seconds, taking into account the chosen economic course. You can always switch the chart to, say, balanced mining of everything, and with an advanced interface, you can quickly set up your version. Just do not think that your computer “deputy head of agriculture” will solve all the rear problems: you still need to order peasants, upgrade and build buildings manually.
I would not call the automatic economy a cheat or a killer feature that allows you to fight back against serious opponents online, at least in its current state. The idyll is spoiled by small annoying flaws. When switching the economic course, the peasants do not unload the loot from the inventory to the collection point, but immediately run to a new place of work, which leads to a loss of resources. The most annoying thing is that the automatic economy simply breaks down on island maps. The intellect does not want to accept the fact that the required resource is located on another island, so some peasants can simply stand like a pillar near the shore.
Despite several shortcomings, this option is by no means useless in ranked battles, but it is better to use it in a limited way. At least until the castle era, it is more useful to set up the economy manually. When you take hard workers on a hike to repair siege engines, it’s also better to turn off auto eco, because repairmen will simply dump them on prey.
But when your possessions have grown to several town halls, the number of peasants has approached a hundred, and you need to fight on several fronts, it will not be superfluous to transfer management of the economy to an artificial adjutant. I am sure that even the top players on the planet in protracted battles would not refuse such a function.
As for the game itself, there are no comments here. I’ve been trying my best to avoid the “living classics” in this text, but is there a video game in the world that fits that phrase better? Next year, Age of Empires 2 will celebrate its 25th anniversary, and age does not prevent it from remaining relevant, and, surprisingly, very beautiful. Having carried out a major redecoration in 2019, the developers managed, without losing a single gram of recognition, to turn their strategy into one of the most beautiful two-dimensional isometric games in principle. Detailing has increased many times over, animations have become smoother, and you can watch the juicy destruction of buildings forever. However, even before these improvements, the “Era” resembled the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic 3, being drawn so skillfully that the numerous 3D extensions with modern 3D didn’t come close to looking so cozy and inviting.
What hasn’t stood the test of time is the story campaigns. With all the updates, these campaigns have become large, but the elaboration of tasks in them is often not impressive. The stories of the great commanders are presented too superficially, and instead of videos, they just throw out pictures with text to us.
Frankly, during the autumn presentation, the announcement of the second part on the Xbox caused me a lot of skepticism. It was hard to believe that this obstinate horse from the wild computer fields could painlessly make friends with the gamepad. Moreover, I could not believe that the control would turn out to be so comfortable that I would start breaking into ranked battles and practically not feel the “oppressive dominance of keyboardists”. But the developers dispelled our fears and made a castle drop in the garden for all those who doubt the convenience of RTS on consoles. After such a gift, you don’t have to worry about the quality of the port of the 4th part.
