Empire Earth II Review

Empire Earth was the first in a long string of hybrid games to combine the fast thinking of real-time strategy with the depth of play found in a turn-based game like Civilization. It was a unique idea at the time. This idea was quickly seized upon and perfected by games such as Rise of Nations, and more recently, both Knights of Honor and the Total War games. Gamers looking for a real-time way to raise empires from the Stone Age to the Information Age will find that any of these games will do a far better job than this second installment of the Empire Earth series. In nearly every facet of it reflects poor design and sloppy execution. It's either a direct rip-off of better games or a useless and frustrating modification that isn't needed in the first place.

Gameplay: 3
Empire Earth II adheres to the same RTS formula that has served the genre so well since the original Age of Empires. Crank out resource gatherers; haul in stone, wood, gold, food, and a host of other raw materials; build cities (or, in this case, globs of buildings scattered about the map); raise armies; and eventually, after painstakingly researching every technology available, stomp your opponents into a fine dust. Empire Earth makes a pathetic, half-hearted attempt to be more than a mere clone of this gameplay, but ultimately this is the same old thing you've seen before, albeit a little worse.

The attempt to seem different takes a number of forms. On the actual game, map, the landmasses are divided into provinces that players must lay claim to (most often by simply building a town center). Each province supports a specific number of buildings (a single university, two fortresses, several houses, a barracks, etc) and the player cannot build beyond that amount. This makes the building of key structures, like the University (which is the only way to advance through the ages) dependent on continually acquiring new territory. In practice, it really doesn't matter since the player can acquire enough territory early-on to support enough buildings to last him the entire game. And, after all the territories are claimed, it becomes tedious and sometimes nearly impossible to make them change hands, given the game's horrible combat system.

There is also a strategic-level map that shows all of the player's territories and all of the territories that he can see. Here, particularly during multiplayer games, allies can coordinate battle strategies and actually draw arrows and circles and all kinds of fancy symbols to plan an attack. Also, armies can be commanded from this screen to follow the plan, though most often it isn't the best strategy that wins, but the general with the most peons under his command.

In fact, it's always the general with the most peons.

There's also a weather system that not only cycles through the seasons but also includes various inclement weather events: snowstorms in the winter, thunderstorms in the spring and generally nice weather in the summer and autumn. This weather has absolutely no effect on the game. Defying the natural cycle, the aspiring emperor can plant farms whenever he wants to, regardless of the actual season. Units move nearly uninhibited across the landscape, regardless of the weather conditions or the season (to be fair, there is an effect to fighting and moving in the rain and snow, but it's so miniscule that it hardly matters). Ships sail on in any direction they choose--without damage--during blistering blizzards and raging rainstorms. Why the programmers and artists would waste time on a pointless feature (and why marketing would waste time promoting it as a major addition) that has such an insignificant effect on the gameplay is quite a mystery.

There are a few other cosmetic improvements, most notably an ‘improved' interface over the first game and a picture-in picture feature, which is, given the fact that players can zoom to any point on the map instantaneously (given a mini-map, a feature that's been standard since the beginning of the RTS genre), possibly the most useless thing I've ever encountered in a computer game. This advancement is, sadly, all too typical of this game; improvements are made that are either simply annoying or have no effect on the game at all.

Combat is mind-numbing, repetitive, and frustrating. In order to win, players have to break the left mouse button churning out new units and throwing them at the enemy's fortifications and soldiers until the either the enemy or the player is crushed under an onrushing wave of tanks, pikemen, riflemen or even mechs, depending on the Epoch. There is no strategy, and on most maps there's not much room to maneuver anyway. Every battle simply devolves into a slugfest of explosions, flying debris, and the comically overdramatic screams of the wounded and dead. In such a brain-dead system, attrition becomes the name of the game, and it's common to experience 50% casualties in a single skirmish, because there's no thought given to skill, experience, tactics, morale, or really anything other than numbers.

The campaigns are also worth noting in that most of them are rather poor experiences--not that the blame rests exclusively with the level designers, as they didn't have much of a compelling game to work with in the first place. There are three campaigns: American, Korean, and German, which I'm sure was the result of drawing three names from a hat, given that there are far more interesting stories to be told with other nations, particularly the Romans, British, Japanese, or even the Russians (whom, for whatever reason, are not present in the game). There are some moments of brilliance. For instance, one of the last German scenarios involves Napoleons' march back from Russia through Germany is a tense and interesting challenge, during which the player has to build an army in secret and prepare to ambush Napoleon when the time is right. The moment when my cannons opened up on the French regulars in the Black Forest was probably the best time I had with the game. The other campaigns, especially the Korean one, are utterly formulaic and boring. According to Empire Earth II, the whole of Korea 's early history consisted of building bases. Typical American scenarios include the Spanish-American war on Cuba (straight-ahead clobbering for thirty minutes), and a bizarre hunt (build base, attack enemy) for a rogue mech commander in the Amazon jungle a hundred years or so in the future.

Graphics: 5
Personally, I prefer sharp and smooth 2d graphics to blocky and choppy 3d (and, while we're at it, I much prefer good gameplay to good graphics). On the highest detail settings, Empire Earth II certainly doesn't look bad--it competes with Ensemble's three-year-old Age of Mythology--even if some of the effects--like the storm clouds--are far too overdone and others--like waterfalls, shorelines and grass--are rather threadbare. But my real problem with these graphics is that they require a beefy rig- too beefy, for the quality of graphics that this game provides. On the test system, the game slowed to a stuttering crawl within the first twenty minutes of starting a game. What's more, the only real solution to this problem was to play on a smaller map with fewer players. Changing the graphics setting had absolutely no effect on the speed of the game, which doesn't make a lot of sense, and, especially for a strategy game, is a crippling blow. I was never able to experience a smooth game above four players, despite numerous attempts and even updating video drivers.

Another thing that is annoying is the units' scale--transport helicopters are slightly larger that the soldiers they transport. Attack helicopters are smaller than riflemen, tanks are about the same size, and ‘leaders' (special units gained for achieving ‘crowns') are roughly twice the size of foot soldiers, despite the fact that they are supposed to be soldiers as well. The juxtaposition of these different sizes doesn't really aid identification of units (or performance, as we saw earlier) it just looks ridiculous.

Sound: 4
Honestly, I got tired of the standard music and ambience of the game early-on. Like most games, it's nothing special. But, added to the other aggravations that this game provides, I found myself booting up WinAmp in the background after the first ten minutes. I must take care to mention, however, that every villager, regardless of civilization, always greets the player in American English. At least Age of Empires II went to the effort to record (some) foreign voices- but in this game I had the disorienting experience of Japanese peasants cheerfully responding “Hello!” when being clicked on.

Multiplayer: 5
Getting online provides a stimulating challenge because you can get away from the AI, which on lower difficulty levels never attacks and on higher difficulty levels plays at a crack-addled pace- both extremes being rather uncomfortable. Sadly but not at all surprisingly, there are few people playing online, so finding a match at all but peak times of the day was very difficult.

Replay Value: 2
There is a lot to do; multiplayer has several modes, there are three campaigns, a scenario editor, a random map generator, and fourteen civilizations, along with numerous options to tweak for each map and game. The problem isn't the options available or the sheer amount of features in this game, it's the quality of the gameplay upon which all this is built. This game just isn't fun or engrossing enough to hold one's attention for too long.

Miscellaneous:
The simple fact is that there are far better experiences to be had with strategy gaming than Empire Earth II. Rise of Nations perfected the kind of gameplay that Empire Earth II has two years ago, and gamers looking for a reasonably fun real-time empire-building game would still do best to turn to Big Huge Games. A few years ago, Empire Earth II might have made the cut for fresh and innovative gameplay. Sadly, today it's simply a retread--and a poorly executed, tedious one at that.