Let's Play Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings #14 | Saladin 1: An Arabian Knight
We moving from freeing the Franks to fighting the Franks. Special thanks goes to Ciwi for the voice acting. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999, it is the second main game in Age of Empires series. An expansion, The Conquerors, was released in 2000. The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically based campaigns, which constrict the player to specialized and story-backed conditions. Overall, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, retains the core gameplay of its predecessor, but includes main quality of life changes in tune with the development of real-time strategy at the time. There are three additional single-player game modes, and multiplayer is supported. Despite using the same game engine and similar code to its predecessor, development of The Age of Kings took a year longer than expected, and Ensemble Studios released Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome in 1998 instead. Reception of The Age of Kings was highly positive. The significant number of new features was praised, as were the gameplay improvements. The game won multiple awards and is today considered a classic of its type, having had a significant impact on future games in its genre. In April 2013, Age of Empires II: HD Edition was released on the Steam digital distribution platform for Windows operating systems. The HD Edition includes both the original game and the expansion The Conquerors, as well as updated graphics for high-resolution displays. It also supports user-generated content through the Steam Workshop and multiplayer games provided through the Steam servers. Three expansions have been released for the HD Edition: The Forgotten in 2013, The African Kingdoms in 2015, and Rise of the Rajas in 2016.
