Empire Earth 2 is the squeal to Empire Earth, a RTS game released in 2001. Empire Earth 2 attempts to revitalize the genre by adding a series of new innovative features. These features include the citizen manger, the war planner and territories. For most part Empire Earth 2 is successful, these features add quite a terrific amount to the RTS genre. The only problem is that to enjoy these new innovations you have to play Empire Earth 2. Mad Doc, the creators of The Art of Conquest, the expansion pack for the original Empire Earth, are largely successful with the innovative features that they have added to Empire Earth 2; where Mad Doc has completely failed is in regards to the basic components of a RTS game.
The most glaring problem that permeates throughout the entire game is perhaps the most basic component of any RTS game, unit control. Empire Earth 2 has the worst system of unit control that I have ever encountered in an RTS game. Units are sluggish, unresponsive, and quite frequently fail to respond to even the most simple of commands. Units can be given a series of stances, such as aggressive, defensive, etc... The ability to give units stances is a basic feature that has been a part of almost every RTS game that I can recall. Empire Earth 2 might as well do away with stances altogether as none of the units in this game respond to any of the stances that they are given. Empire Earth 2, like many other RTS games has an attack move option. In keeping with Empire Earth 2’s incredibly odd hot key system, attack-move is combination of shift + E + left mouse click. When it works, the attack move feature is quite effective. But the feature seems to work sporadically at best. Units after being given an attack-move command will often just stay where they are, this as it is not hard to imagine can be incredibly frustrating. Path finding, is not that bad, units will sometimes take the less than logical route, but in comparison to other contemporary RTS games the path finding is acceptable.
Another basic component of any RTS game, or any game for that matter is the graphics. The graphics in Empire Earth 2 are, for the most part, mediocre at best and absolutely horrific at their worst. This is not to say that Empire Earth 2 is completely devoid of neat graphical effects, the explosions in the modern and postmodern ages look quite nice. Especially impressive are the tank explosions, in which you can actually see the turret fly up in the air. But, besides these few gems Empire Earth 2 sports some really ugly graphics. Most of the textures in the game look blurry when looking at them up close and distorted when looking at them from afar. Unit animations are fairly choppy and even crude in some instances.
Empire Earth 2 also sports a great number of graphical flaws. Occasionally livestock will get back up and walk on the spot after all the food has been harvested from, and then sink back into the ground. This looks incredibly odd, and can be somewhat annoying, as it can, for a short period of time look like a living animal. I have on numerous occasions tried to slaughter these ghost animals, only to find that they are already dead. Other strange graphical problems include the Epoch 10 city centre, in which the flag has been placed too low on the object, so it sticks out the side of the dome of the building and one of the future 2-barrel tanks, in which the projectile comes from between the two barrels.
The graphical faults of Empire Earth 2 could be over looked if the game had stellar game play, but this is not the case. Empire Earth 2’s game play is rather frustrating, though every once and a while you will be treated to a glimmer of hope that gives the suggestion that you are playing a good RTS game. The unit relations in Empire Earth 2 are rather poor. Almost every unit, with the exception of heavy artillery, feels rather useless against every other unit. If there was some sort of RPS system in this game, it is so weak that it is barely noticeable. Another frustrating element is the fact that siege weapons do not outrange fortifications. I mentioned this problem in my initial criticisms of the Empire Earth 2 demo, and it remains just as big an oversight in the retail game as it was in the demo.
Empire Earth 2 features, a new innovation to the RTS genre, roads. If a unit is traveling across a road, they walk faster. This sounds like a good idea, however roads over any distance other then two roads titles are essentially useless. Roads can be employed at the start of the game between a city centre and a resource pile; citizens will walk across them to drop their resources off at the city centre. However, units will not specifically make use of a road unless it lies on the direct path between two points. Roads can even detrimental effect later on in the game. If you build a road to close to where oil or uranium can be mined from, you will not be able to build the necessary buildings on those resource patches, as the road will block them. Since you cannot delete roads, your only option in this instance is to get a unit that attack the ground and bombard the spot where the road it.
The AI in Empire Earth 2 is passable, but nothing to write home about. The AI acts just like every other RTS AI and spreads across the map in a seemingly random fashion constructing a strange systems of roads and walls that often look detrimental to the AI’s progress. The AI in the game can be difficult to play against not by its use of armies or skill, but by the sheer amount of fortifications it builds. Since siege weapons do not outrange towers and other fortification what would be a simple process of knocking down walls and towers, is often made more difficult as attacking anything will normally result in the loss of a siege engine. Siege weapons often do not fire upon fortifications from the safest distance possible, so even if you have a crown that increases the range of your weapons, your siege weapons when to commanded to attack a fortification will probably walk into range of the fortification anyway.
Empire Earth 2 does have some great features that really help to make this game feel like the first RTS game where you really get to build an Empire. The feature that contributes to this feeling the most is the territory system. It can be a lot of fun to seize territories erect fortifications and built road networks between city centres. However, with all these great innovations and all these obvious flaws, I have been constantly thinking to myself what it would be like to see some of these innovations in another RTS game like Age of Kings or Empires: Dawn of the Modern World.
Another serious problem with Empire Earth 2 is that of lag. This game, in single player mode, can really start to lag if you have over 3 computer players in a game. With all these innovative features, the thing that would probably be the most fun would be to create a game with 10 or so computer players and battle it out on a giant map. However, this is completely impossible, as the game will slow down to a crawl no matter what your graphical settings are. Empire Earth 2 also has a mouse lag problem that seems to be completely independent of graphical settings.
Empire Earth 2 apparently has a multiplayer component, but I have been unable to try this out yet as no matter what I do router wise, outside of activating DMZ, I cannot join any games. Empire Earth 2 also has an editor that was advertised, prior to release, by Mad Doc’s studio leader as the best scenario editor he had ever used. Apparently this scenario editor did not make the final cut, as what has been shipped with Empire Earth 2 is buggy and incomplete.
Overall Empire Earth 2 has great innovative features, but I would much rather have those features on another RTS game, as the game play present in Empire Earth 2 is abysmal. Though behind all the game play, graphical and engine problems there is a fun game and if Mad Doc was truly dedicated to patching this game they might be able to bring the element of fun that exists in this game to the light of day. But, at the moment Empire Earth 2 is a buggy poorly designed RTS game that I cannot in good conscience recommend to even the most hardcore RTS enthusiast. If you were considering purchasing Empire Earth 2, I would recommend waiting until some patches come out to fix the blatantly obvious flaws that plague this game.
[This message has been edited by Intrepid (edited 05-11-2005 @ 02:32 PM).]
| EE: | | Europe Under Fire (rate me) | |Day of Defeat (rate me) | | Stalingrad (4.8) | | DMDT (4.8) |
| AoM: | | Europe Under Fire 2 (4.8) |
| Empires: | | Europe Under Fire 3 (4.8) | | The Siege of Vienna (4.6) | | Halfaya Pass (4.6) | | 1837 – 1947 (4.8) | | A City on the Hill (4.4) |