Standard TBS with a bit of sparkle.
Featuring dozens of buildings, units and technologies, The Age of Empires: The Age of Kings is a turn from the obvious and takes advantages of opportunities more mainstream handheld strategy games have not utilized. It may not be up to par with its PC counterparts and it is not an RTS like the title usually implies, but its gameplay is surprisingly solid and could even be considered addicting.
The problem with designing a turn-based strategy game for the DS is that Advance Wars has already conquered the genre. Fortunately Majesco took the Age of Empires world design and turned it into a game completely unlike its competition, utilizing strategy elements AW never will utilize.
Building constructs is the first and foremost of these. The player can build mines, barracks, town centers, towers, and dozens of other buildings around a diverse map. Many of these buildings can deploy units, give a defensive aura to nearby buildings/units, or even enable new technologies to be able to be researched.
Technologies is yet another twist. Every day, a player can choose to spend gold/lumber on a technology that, when completed the next day, will give the player a desirable bonus. These effects range from making units inexpensive to increasing the power of certain buildings. Building certain constructs enables new technologies to be used.
Heroes and races are the most obvious differences in Age of Empires and others in the handheld strategy scene. Age of Empires has numerous different races that support unique and famous heroes (ex: Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Richard the Lionhearted). These heroes have special magics and abilities that will sway the game indefinitely.
The music is bland and, overall, hardly noticeable, but that's not much of a problem either.
Other than the campaign missions, the only available options are to either play a freestyle game or to read up on your history. A lack of other options and only a couple dozen maps may be a bit of a let down (taking into account many of the maps are very similar), but the experience is still an enjoyable one.
Age of Kings' campaign can be challenging at times, but for the most part nothing TBS fans won't be able to conquer by a second try. Free battles against the computer are extremely easy; to be challenged, I had to go on against 3 hard computer opponents. But by that point it was challenging and enjoyable. Do what you have do to get the right experience for your favorable level of difficulty.
Age of Kings may disappoint actual Age of Empires fans, but the game is a solid strategy turn based game and is relatively underappreciated as such. It does not have Wifi and multiplayer is restricted to hotseat or multi-card gameplay, but it has successes in numerous areas where other titles do not. Any TBS fans should definitely check it out as well as its sequel, which is coming out later in 2008.
