Empire Earth II has a lot of good points, but it's no friend to the casual real-time strategy gamer. While developer Mad Doc Software has improved on Stainless Steel's 2001 blockbuster, increased depth and additional options have turned a huge game into an absolutely colossal one. This sequel remains a standard historical RTS, but it's also a grab bag crammed so full of new features, interface amenities, and complexities that it's bursting at the seams. Still, if you can commit a great many hours to familiarizing yourself with all the game's nooks and crannies, expect to be rewarded with an enjoyable addiction that will cost you weeks, if not months, of your life.
Cunning artificial intelligence provides you with good competition no matter how you tweak the customization options. Computer enemies build their cities smartly, with well-thought-out fortifications. They set up outposts and walls, stud coastal areas with catapults, cannons, and missile launchers, and construct a hell of a lot of fortresses. Weak points are there to be exploited, but you have to scout or spy pretty hard to find them. So while there may be a beachhead in the enemy's rear that's perfect for the landing of an invading army, you usually have to endure the withering fire of a half-dozen surface-to-sea gun batteries to get there.
This is a terrible, terrible game. Let's examine this car wreck one piece at a time. First, the interface is good on ideas lousy on execution. The picture in picture idea is interesting, but in practice feels more l... Read Full Review
This is a very wide game. Thus, game isn't that old, many things are reminding me, that it's from very begging of strategies. But it's not. The concept of this game is absolutely the same as in EE original game. Your ... Read Full Review
