Age of Empires: The Age of Kings (DS)

Reviewed by Kit

This isn't your everyday Age of Empires. For one thing it's on a DS. For another, it's it now turn based. Do these changes work? Let's find out, shall we?

Graphics: Age of Empires has never been known for its outstanding graphics, and this one is no different. The characters look small and you have trouble seeing them at times. Basically shrink the computer screen to the size of the DS screen and that's your pic. Character art is mediocre. 2/5

Audio: The battle music is not particularly interesting, but it's not that important to the game. There are the noises of combat when you pit your army against opponents, and these are reasonable. Nothing particularly impressive though. 3/5

Gameplay: It's very simple. You start with a villager, a hero, and a weakling melee. You move the villager to either build a mill on some wheat, a mine on some gold, or a town center wherever you want. Most buildings must be built directly next to the town center, so you will eventually need to build another one or two. Farms can be built next to mills. You will need these to increase food production. Each turn characters can do one thing (build a farm, attack an enemy, walk around aimlessly). All buildings take one turn to produce. All characters take one turn to "create". Of course there are different types of warriors for your army, and as you progress through the ages, more become available. Spearmen are good against cavalry, archers are good against everything (and weak to everything) and cavalry is good....well against the weak non spearmen. If all else fails, send the cavalry out to scout for you. You can create seige weapons eventually, and these take one whole turn to load up, so don't move them if you want them to attack that turn. All in all, it's simple to master, and then tedious. 3/5

Story: There are mission modes to play through that give you stories of the various heroes from the 5 armies of choice, but none of these are particularly interesting. If you pick up the game, you will most likely use campaign mode, where you choose your enemies and their difficulty level. 2/5

Replay: It's fun to play multiple times. It consumes time, and you get to conquer the world over and over again. However, things become boring after a while. The maps aren't particularly large, and after a while there's nothing to do but slowly destroy all those around you. 4/5

Overall: It's not a bad game. It does its job by keeping you busy, but it's not the computer game. It lacks something the the PC versions have. Still if you like tactical games, feel free to pick this up. 3/5