An amazing and well-crafted RTS that features an incredible amount of depth and unlimited gameplay value.
BAD: Still too much resource micromanagement; terrible voice acting; campaigns drag on at times and don't sustain your interest
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is an amazing game. It consumed a large portion of my life a few years ago. It is a very well-crafted, deep, strategic game, truly a masterpiece of the RTS genre.
Age of Empires II opens with a cool opening cinematic and nice main menu. The theme song is well-suited to the medieval time period. You can either jump right into the campaign or you can test yourself with a random game. Although the campaigns are well-made, detailed, strategic, and fun, they can be very hard and generally don't sustain your interest throughout the whole campaign. The voice acting is terrible and the storylines are based off of real events, so don't expect any surprises (unless you REALLY don't know world history). There is lots of content to be had in the campaign, however.
The real gem in this game is the random map (or standard map). The Age of Empires series is renowned for its amazing random generation abilities. The maps that come up are incredibly fun to play on and are never unbalanced. There's several types of maps you can play on, as well, such as "Mediterranean" (big lake in the middle), the reverse, "Continental" (you're all on a big continent surrounded by water), "Coastal" (good, even mix of water and land), "Highlands" (lots of cliffs and grassland, but little water), and many more. There are plenty of game types as well, including Death Match, where you start with tons of resources and can focus on just eliminating the enemy. You can also choose what age to start in.
About the ages (which is where the "Age" in the title comes from), you start in the Dark Ages and advance through the Feudal Age, Castle Age, and Imperial Age, with the technology, strategy, tactics, variety, etc all advance between the ages. Resource gathering is a very large part of the early game. There are four resources (food, gold, wood, and stone), and you must create an "army" of villagers to sustain your empire on a standard map, where you start with limited resources. One of the most challenging parts of the game is getting off to a good start. There are five difficulty levels to choose from, but there's huge gaps between the difficulty of each difficulty level, and advancing up even one difficulty level takes a lot of work and can be frustrating, especially when the level below is too easy. The AI is amazing for an RTS made in 1999. They know how to wage combat relatively well, learn your vulnerabilities and weak points, and play off of the strengths of their civilization. There are 13 civilizations to choose from in the game and each one excels in certain areas (the Britons in archery, the Persians in cavalry, the Goths in infantry, etc). Each one has one unique unit and for each civilization, several units and advancements are unavailable for production to emphasize the uniqueness of each one. Each civ really does have a unique feel and differences in playing styles, and even each age has its own playing style (which, accordingly, changes for each civ as well).
The game is truly satisfying when it comes to combat, as well. Completely comquering a rival empire is not only satisfying, but also fun and often time-consuming. The satisfaction and power you feel after crushing each and every one of your rivals is unmatched by any game. There are many types of units and many ways to use them. Unlike other strategy games of the era, there is no "super unit" that you can build a ton of and conquer the world. This system is a complex series of checks and balances, but serves to add amazing strategic depth to the game. There are a variety of researches to get, as well, and all of them are useful. The graphics were revolutionary for the time, and still look decent today. It was one of the first RTS's to feature nearly to-scale structures, and not soon after this game was released, 3d strategy games began emerging en masse. The sounds of battle are satisfying and realistic, and each civilization's units more or less speak their native tongue when you give them orders (although speech is limited). However, voice acting in the campaign is terrible. That is one of the few complaints for sound. There is no in-game music, but that only amplifies the atmosphere, and the title music is awesome.
Overall, Age of Empires II is an excellent, well-rounded, deep, strategic, immersive, and fun game. The 13 civilizations are all unique and have a unique feel, and different strategies, mostly revolving around the importance of resource gathering, evolve for different eras. There is a ton of variety and depth to this game, and I reccommend it to any fan of the RTS genre. It is a true classic.