There are a handful of video games that feel foundational to the medium, seminal releases that drastically changed the course of gaming history. Age of Empires 2 is part of that Mount Rushmore of games, a strategy game that’s still inspiring the genre 25 years later. But its influence extends well beyond just strategy games, as Age of Empires 2 was a prime example of how to use history in a meaningful way. Even all these years later, there’s nothing that’s been able to match it.
To properly explain why Age of Empires 2 is so impactful I want to get a bit personal. Age of Empires 2 is truly one of the only games ever made that I’d say has a “timeless” quality — meaning if you played it today versus someone 25 years ago, you could enjoy it every bit the same.
When I was in high school, I had a group of friends that met up every weekend, usually to play games all night and not sleep a wink. Over the years, we cycled through a wide array of different strategy games — but Age of Empires 2 was the constant. Every month, for years, we’d have an Age of Empires weekend, playing hours upon hours of matches. To this day so many elements of the game are burned into my mind: I know every detail of how the Japanese civilization will grow over the ages, I know the best way to counter the British, and the best resources spots on a handful of maps.
Over the years I’ve met dozens of strategy fans that have had almost that exact same experience with Age of Empires 2, and I could jump into a match this moment and feel perfectly at home. While the 2019 Definitive Edition remaster provided some modern updates to Age of Empires 2, the reason it remains so easy to jump into is because of the game’s downright ingenious design.
Age of Empires 2 practically perfected the formula for real-time strategy games, alongside the original StarCraft. The game’s wealth of civilizations all feel distinct but are near perfectly balanced, and the whole formula of gathering resources and constructing armies was impeccably tuned. Age of Empires 2 doesn’t bog you down underneath a wealth of complex mechanics or resources — it’s easy to pick up, and difficult to master.
You have your four main resources to collect and a population cap to manage, but past that everything you need to focus on is unit production, army composition, and research. As your civilizations grows, you also only have four “Ages” to advance through, meaning big changes and additions are handed out slowly, and you don’t have a ton of ages to make your way through.
Every civilization uses the same basic formula of gathering resources, but their variations are layered in with unit types and research. This means that players can easily pick up the game and learn the basics, but the more you dig into specific civilizations the more you can start to formulate unique strategies.
That simplicity with hidden depth is what kept me playing Age of Empires 2 for two decades, but it’s also the first video game that kickstarted my obsession with history. Of course, all of Age of Empires 2 is vaguely “medieval” themed, but the game’s campaigns are a brilliant way of teaching you how to play the game while touching on real historical battles. Across over a half dozen campaigns you can experience real conflicts that focus on legendary figures like Joan of Arc, William the Conqueror, and Genghis Khan.
By today’s standards it might sound trite, but in the 90’s Age of Empires provided a fun way to experience history, a way of learning about pivotal moments in time through the lends of strategy. While the campaigns are nicely detailed I simply wanted more, and after playing Age of Empires 2, I found myself suddenly buying books and doing my own research to try and learn even more, to see what happened after the battles on my screen ended. It’s fair to say that Age of Empires 2 was what kickstarted a lifelong interest in history for myself, one that endures to this day.
For me, Age of Empires 2 is a game that I’ll boot up every few months to play a match or two — it’s a kind of comfort food that I can go back to anytime I need a boost. But it’s simultaneously a game that I’d recommend to anyone and everyone with zero caveats, and no worries about it not aging well. Whether you’re playing the Definitive Edition or the original Age of Empires 2 is a blast, and one of those games that comes dangerously close to being perfect.
