Empire Earth (2001 Video Game) User Reviews

Challenging

[djspectrum · 8/10 · 14 March 2002]

Empire Earth has all the elements you need in a good strategy game.

Great graphics and sounds, good story lines and a challenge. Although the game seems too difficult at times as the computer opponent sends wave after wave of units which can often slow your progress down to much.

The added element of magic doesn't seem to work as well as it does in other games and the computer uses this to its advantage all too well, turning your empire to nothing more than rubble. Frustrating!

This high difficulty level will be welcome to those up for a good challenge.

You can choose what time period you wish to play in (Roman Empire Age, World War, Future, etc.)

All units are well designed, as is the scenery.

Gameplay is great (besides the magic elements), with many units to choose from including hero units which are becoming more popular in this style of game. (Units with more HP who automatically replenish their own life, and in this particular game, replenish the life of units nearby)

Overall a good game worth your time especially if you enjoy strategy games. Not as good as Age of Empires (an earlier game made by the same people who made this game) but still worth a look.

8/10

Great Game

[Italymd23 · 9/10 · 13 February 2007]

Great game, agree with everything about it except the zoom feature is worthless because you cannot play the game zoomed in. Also, as to what that other person said about the planes, you can upgrade the fuel capacity to allow longer flight time. The thought of having no fuel and having unlimited flight time is ridiculous because your plane would be able to go from building to building and nuke the sh1t out of them without returning to the airport to refuel. Also the game is not hard on easy. It is extremely hard on the hardest setting but it is extremely easy on the easiest setting. Try playing against 3 or more computer players on medium. I find this to be most fun and challenging. As opposed to one on one.

Simply Amazing.

[The-Flaming-Pig · 8 September 2002]

I got this game a few months ago and I haven't stopped playing it since! You pick your time period, which can be almost anytime (Stone Age, Middle Ages, WW1, WW2, Modern time, Digital Age and Nano Age, aka, the FUTURE!!) You can zoom in close to the action and see all the fightin', unlike Starcraft where you feel like you're a bird watching a war. Getting some modern Time Marines, bazookas and Tanks, close up view and watching them fight feels like you're in the war itself. The cavemen are funny. They club each other to death or throw rocks at each other. In the Nano and Digital ages (the Future), you can fight with Robots and Cyborgs and Spaceships! It's also got a map editor! YAY! AMAZING GRAPHICS AND SOUND. BUY IT JUST FOR THAT!!! My only complaints are that it's HARD. When I got it, I went to "Random Map" to play a regular game to train in, and I set the computer easy, set the time to WW2, after 5 minutes of reading the instruction manual, I was off. The Computer smoked me. So I made it I started with 20 citizens and him with 1. It still smoked me. And the only other thing is that almost all the planes have to run on fuel, so when they run out they go back to the airport. Extremely Hard when you're giving bomb raids to the enemy's base and all your planes turn around and go back! Then that gives the other planes time to build up, catch up and Blow them to BITS!!! Oh well. An Almost Perfect game. My Rating: 98%

Unbalanced, Repetitive And The Editor Is Bad

[EuropeanQoheleth · 4/10 · 4 October 2015]

The graphics are fine and so is the music plus the scale of the thing is what drew me in. 50,000 years of history in one game but even in that there's a problem; the vast majority of those years are in the first Epoch and in the first Epoch there's not much to do.

Another upside which became a downside was the campaigns; about 1/3 of the scenarios are fun but the thing is they can be historically inaccurate. During the Peninsular War scenario the Spanish attack the French in the open field when in reality they usually did guerilla attacks and at Waterloo Wellington is able to recruit troops and build towers the night before the battle; luxuries which he didn't get in real life (you can't build a tower in one night!) plus the British troops are as high quality as the French even though in the real Battle of Waterloo Napoleon had his experienced troops while Wellington was somehow stuck with raw recruits for the most part. In the game artillery and bombers are way overpowered; the fact that they were much weaker in Empire Earth II is basically admitting this. The key to winning the Peninsular War and Battle of Waterloo is to get as many bombards as you can and level them up as much as you can. In Empire Earth range is key; having the longest ranged units means you can slaughter the enemy before they can get any more than a few shots off and through usage of civ points and upgrades you can boost the range of a unit by 50%, the AI on the other hand doesn't get civ points so can spend as much civ points as possible to make the late scenarios of a campaign very one sided indeed. For example getting the range of bombards increased by 50%; splash damage and a high range is the most effortless way to cut enemy armies to pieces. The campaign missions are repetitive; for the most part it's Step 1: Build up your economy to such a strength that you can fill up your army without your resources running out and make your base so strong that the enemy attacks on your base (which are always weak) won't stand a chance, ever. Step 2: Swarm the enemy or whittle them down (you can whittle them down bit by bit since the AI doesn't rebuild its stuff in campaigns and you can always lose your whole army bar the hero(es) without your side surrendering), basically once your economy is strong it's all over for the AI. As if things weren't easy enough already you can have all of your units attack one enemy unit and kill it instantly then keep doing that until even an enemy army that outnumbers you is destroyed. Another problem is the difficulties of a number of the scenarios in the campaigns; it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the final scenarios in a campaign would be the hardest but that isn't the case in this game due to the fact that you can spend civ points on boosting the stuff that would be handy in the final scenarios of the campaign but also just the sheer difficulty of some of the scenarios in of themselves. Specifically they are the 5th mission of the German campaign, (unless you land howitzers by the enemy capitals before war breaks out, for some reason the enemy countries don't mind artillery from a foreign and hostile country being by their capitals) the 4th mission of the English campaign, the 4th mission of the Russian campaign (the 2nd mission of said campaign is also a nightmare with any strategy other than nuking the enemy capitals) and in the Greek campaign the 2nd mission is the hardest, not the 8th one as you would expect! In fact in the 7th scenario of the Greek campaign the battles of Issus and Granicus River can be won simply by having a small force go ahead of the main body and lure some enemies back to your main force where they'll be instantly swarmed and with fully upgraded troops that have as many civ points as possible used on them you can lose only 2 troops in total, 1 troop per battle is ridiculous, like it's the Battle of Blood River or something only in these battles both sides have equal technology.

The scenario editor is also bad; it claims to be easy but I didn't find it so. I wish scenario editors in games were like the one in Stronghold Crusader (just point and click, although admittedly that editor was bad too since enemies that spawned often wouldn't attack). I made a Battle of Bosworth scenario and the men would just go all over the place in groups of 2 or 3, if they weren't wandering around by themselves and immediately the starting positions didn't mean anything. On another map that I built the AI did nothing whatsoever even though I did give it resources to start with.

Playing against the AI outside of campaigns or custom scenarios isn't good either; the AI seems to have unlimited resources and can find your best even when starting locations aren't revealed.