Age of Empires is real time Strategy game, meaning that everyone is going at once. Since this is the first Age of Empires game the graphics are low quality but fun none the less. You get your pick from a few different early Civilizations. A few of these have their own specialized units.

The major drawback to this game is the population limit of 50. On the bright side, every unit does counts as one unlike in some games where a cavalry unit might count as 2 or 3 of population. A way around the population limit is to create over population. To do this set a few buildings to produce 5 units that way once your population drops below 50 these builds start building troops. By doing this you can quickly double the amount of units you have on the field.

There is a campaign in this game. I’m not much of a fan of it though. It’s more of a few side missions then a whole campaign. So you are on your own for that part.

What make this game really fun though are the custom games and scenarios you can play and build. You get to play against different civilizations on about 6 different types of maps. If you have the expansion pack for this game you have twice the amount of civilizations to play against.

When it comes to building your own scenarios you start with creating a map. You can create forests, rivers, lakes, oceans, seas and etc. The other option you have is to take a pre-created map and make changes to it. Adding different elements to make it your own and at the same time creating your own challenge.

One of my favorite parts of this game is the multi player. There are still those out there that play this game online or on our own personal networks. If you every get a few copies of this game I recommend playing a few games with friends. You’ll love it.

Another drawback this game is if you run this game on any operation system later than vista you’re going to have issues with colors, mostly with the color of water (I know right vista is still good for something). The water tends to go blood red; it’s cool at first but gets annoying fast. The color issue is because Microsoft changed the way they do colors on their operation systems. There is a way around it, by creating a batch file and running that. You’ll have to get that somewhere else since I don’t have it anymore (my laptop runs vista). Sometimes the batch file works other times it doesn’t, mostly depends on your settings.

Play this game once and if you don’t love it go on to Age of Empires II, it gets a hell of a lot better. For the year and how this game runs on almost any computer I give it a 3 out 5.

By the way if you are playing Age of Empires II, you’ll still have the color issue if your operating system is newer then vista.