AVault

“The new nationalities are great, but what impacts the game
even more are their unique technologies, which influence the ways in which a
civilization is played. For instance, when the Spanish learn Supremacy, their
peasants’ fighting skills increase such that they can survive longer as front
line builders. There are also new units and technologies that almost everyone
can get, such as the Hussars–the ultimate light cavalry.” …

AVault

“This is a rock-solid real-time strategy offering from folks
that have a proven track record for providing historically accurate and fun
strategy games. Its depth and long list of features will keep even the best
empire builders and military strategists busy for months.” …

Computer Games Magazine [Link no longer available]

“Make no mistake, folks, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings is
the current RTS monarch, reaching superlative heights of quality and fun. It
accomplishes what almost every sequel sets out to do: keeps the fun stuff from
its predecessor while fixing any problems and adding new stuff that doesn’t
make the game too complicated.” …

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Game Revolution

“In almost all ways, Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings
expands and nearly perfects the already proven AOE formula. A few remaining AI
and path-finding glitches are a bother, but overall there are very, very few
things that one can fault AOE 2 for. This is easily the best RTS game to come
out this year, far surpassing the original, and destined to immensely entertain
eager RTS fans for a very long time.” …

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GameSpot

“[To] build up your civilization to its strongest potential is
by no means a simple feat, despite whatever luxuries the game’s elegant
interface provides. The original Age of Empires was criticized for combining
the pretensions of a complicated turn-based strategy game like Civilization
with real-time gameplay mechanics that were borrowed from Warcraft II. But
Age of Kings makes good on the original’s promises by providing a huge,
branching technology tree and a correspondingly profound depth of gameplay
that rivals virtually all similarly themed turn-based games.” …

IGN

“One thing that disturbed me for a quite a little while about
Age of Empires II is that, despite numerous complaints from… well everyone,
each of the included 13 races are, on the face of things, pretty much the same.
Fortunately, once I got into the game, I realized that this just isn’t true
anymore.” …