You hear stories about games being supported over a decade after release, but it’s not often that they get a swath of new content.
That’s not been the case with Age of Empires 2 though. After being touched up for a HD remake a few years ago, the game received one official expansion — and earlier today, the developers behind the project pushed out a second.
Hidden Path Entertainment earlier today pushed out The African Kingdoms, the second official expansion for the classic RTS “in over 16 years”. It features four extra civilisations, four campaigns, as well as new technologies, ships and units.
It’s currently on sale for US$8, while the fan expansion The Forgotten is available for a measly US$2. A bundle featuring the HD re-release and the two expansions is available for US$12.25 for the next few days, although if you just want to run through the original campaigns with widescreen support and all the other trimmings then you can jump in for just US$4.
For those who played through the AoE series, where would you hold up AoE 2’s campaign against all the other RTS games? I always enjoyed how steeped in history it was — despite the liberties that were taken — although as a gaming experience Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne are probably my heights. What’s yours?
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16 responses to “Age Of Empires 2 Is Getting Another Expansion”
Oh I thought you meant another expansion after the African Kingdoms. 🙁
Indeed.
AOE has a special place in my young gaming heart. I still don’t think I would have heard of civilisations like Byzantine and Magyar if it hadn’t been for AOE. Still, in terms of a history lesson, Assassins Creed has probably taken the mantle.
I own AOE2HD (because I have an inability to show restraint when it comes to Steam purchases), but haven’t really played it beyond a ‘dabble’ to see how it held up over time. I rarely buy DLC on its own, I’m a bundle buyer, so I probably won’t go out of my way for this one.
I’ll still send them a warm and fuzzy vibe though, just for giving a good game some ongoing support.
I much preferred C&C and Dune RTS, couldn’t get into AOE or Warcraft, nor Starcraft for that matter. Even Red Alert at the time seemed too farfetched with all its crazy time travels and invulnerabilities and was lost on me. I went back and played C&C3 on x360 a few years back and loved it, felt true to the original C&C and the interface changes they made to work with the controller were fantastic.
Gee, C&C would have to be up there for me too, actually. I never found the gameplay particularly solid (I’m fairly sure I used cheat codes the entire way through), but I could watch those live action cutscenes for hours 😀
You really should check out OpenRA. Relive playing those games again!
Oooh cheers!
If there was a mac version of this i’d be all over it.
It’s an old game, will easily play in a virtual machine.
Nah I mean the HD remake. I did have a version of it previously, but I doubt this expansion would work with it, right?
Was it really sixteen years ago I loaded this up on our Pentium 4 and blew out over how improved the graphics were over the original? I always preferred the Rome/Egypt setting of the first one, but man was AoE2 and improvement in every other respect.
If you got it on a P4 you were pretty late to the party hehe.
I remember trying it out on my Pentium 2 and just playing it for days.
I got it on release, I remember getting my dad to pick it up for me after he finished work. Perhaps I am remembering the wrong computer!
Yeah, you’re right, this game released a year before the P4. Since we skipped a P3 in our household I must have been playing it on a P2 also. Makes sense actually, as I remember Windows XP being tricky with Baldurs Gate 2 and that was definitely after AoE2.
AoM had the best campaign imo. AoE3 was such a big letdown. WC3 is definitely the best campaign out of all rts.
AoE2 is actually going for USD4! Really hard to pass that price.