11- Age of Empires II
My first RTS! I’ve talked before about how when I was a teenager I and my friends used to go to cyber-cafés in order to play LAN-multiplayer PC games: AoE II was our favorite. We spent countless hours fighting and allying (and, specially, betraying) each other in its deathly medieval battles. We tried many other games, but we always ended returning to Age of Empires II: for us it always was the gold standard of RTS games.
Many years later I can still remember some of the most legendary battles we fought, like the one that my Persian elephants destroyed my best friend Teutonic knights defense or when my city was destroyed at the beginning of the match, but I was able to escape with a bunch of peasants and create a new and secret headquarter… that would end harassed in the end.
Single player was also great: I never liked a lot the campaigns (although I beat some of them), but were varied enough for anybody who wanted to play all of them, and single player Deathmatch was defying enough to play for hours. Besides, the level editor was one of the best I’ve ever seen: very easy to use and with a great range of options, that even allowed the player to create scripted events.
A four-sided battle between Chinese, Mayan (with the first expansion), Goths and Byzantines may not be historically accurate, but it can be undeniably entertaining!
