Empire Earth II Review

Empire Earth sent ripples through the gaming community back in 2001. Mad Doc Software and VU Games combined to bring out an amazing real time strategy game that was incredibly in depth and full of unique and innovative features. The sequel, Empire Earth II, has now hit stores and apparently Mad Doc is indeed crazy because they took an already deep game and turned it into a seemingly bottomless pit of features that hardcore strategy fans will go crazy over. The main new addition to the Empire Earth sequel is the massive overhaul of the interface. Never before has an RTS game been so intricate in how it handles the game. As far as resources go, getting your citizens in check and working with maximum potential is as easy as opening up a screen and allocating how many you want gathering what kind of resource. Want to have an ally help you attack somebody? Just draw up a battle scheme and send it off. These simplified and streamlined features in the interface are just a few of the ways that Mad Doc has tried to make the game as in depth yet as easy as possible to control.Graphically, Empire Earth II is a fairly pretty game. It isn't overly gorgeous by any means, but then again few RTS titles are. However, it does have the ability to hold a lot of units on screen at once and animate large scale battles, which is definitely a plus. The environments are decently detailed and modeled, units are well drawn and animated, and buildings are unique to each race and well thought out. Although the problem is that the designers did not seem to really change the look of the units or buildings that much in between each new epoch (age of time) in the game, which gives the game a very generic and overused feel. So, while the game does have some good effects, it is obvious the graphical engine is quite dated and not where it could be.Like the visuals, the audio tends to be quite repetitive and boring. The music isn't overly good and is overplayed, but even worse are the unit acknowledgments which are overplayed so much it will probably drive you absolutely insane. The game just feels too repetitive like you have heard everything before.As mentioned earlier, there are a few multi player modes and the three single player campaign modes offer some quality game time. Gamers who really enjoy the game play, those hardcore RTS fans, will love to take the game online and skirmish against others. However, few others will probably venture into the same scenario.While Empire Earth II is a solid and fun RTS title, it just ends up feeling fairly weak at times. The game play may be a little overstretched and the graphics and audio are a little too dated and repetitive. However, if you can look past these faults then Empire Earth II may just be the perfect RTS title for you. It is recommended as a try before you buy game.