Age of Empires II: HD Edition

 PC
User Score
7.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 688 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 495 out of 688
  2. Mixed: 120 out of 688
  3. Negative: 73 out of 688

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  1. killerman64
    Jan 1, 2021
    0
    This game is the best RTS game for Nostalgia. You can enjoy 8 player civilization matches from the middle ages in various range.
  2. Valgeth
    Oct 3, 2020
    0
    By far the most shameless re-release I've ever seen, there's nothing of value they changed, absolutely nothing.
  3. Vectis99
    Sep 5, 2019
    0
    More than anything else, Age of Empires II HD (or "2013" these days) caters to nostalgia. The games core design principles come straight out of the era the original was released in, with all of the oddities and quality of life shortcomings foreign to more modern real time strategies. That being said, thanks to modern internet speeds and development practice, the game has been heavilyMore than anything else, Age of Empires II HD (or "2013" these days) caters to nostalgia. The games core design principles come straight out of the era the original was released in, with all of the oddities and quality of life shortcomings foreign to more modern real time strategies. That being said, thanks to modern internet speeds and development practice, the game has been heavily patched to have even finer-tuned balance and smoother multiplayer than ever before (without heavy use of 3rd party tools). It is even compatible with some of the DLC releases.
    For those coming to Age of Empires II from outside the series, there are definitely quite a few low quality-of-life design elements which introduce a steep learning curve and tedious micromanagement tasks. But if you can look past it, the game's thriving community, extremely refined balance, and comprehensive mechanical unity make it a solid title.

    I can't fathom why this is marketed so heavily on the graphical overhauls, but I suppose that is a personal thing. I would definitely not consider the graphics of this game much revolutionized compared to the original. I much prefer the very archaic graphic style myself, so this doesn't bug me too much. If you are *really* looking for an aesthetic overhaul, the upcoming "definitive edition" of the game promises that.

    At the time of writing, it is hard to predict what the impact of AoE II: Definitive Edition will have on the playerbase, but it is booming and not troublesome to me at all. No matter the speedbumps, this game is showing no signs of fading away.    … Expand
  4. Migasuke
    Mar 6, 2017
    0
    Age of Empires 2: HD edition is very similar to previous AoE2, with several bonus features. Obviously one of the features is to play in HD, but only the pixels are managed, the graphics remains basically same like in the previous old AoE2.
  5. genghis
    Dec 29, 2016
    1
    When the Steam release of this classic RTS game was announced, I couldn't have been happier. Now soon 4 years later, it turns out that Microsoft abused the AoE series to make some quick and easy cash. AOE2HD still runs worse (lag, stuttering, crashing) than the original from 16 years ago. For the best online experience, get userpatch or use voobly.
  6. Ronivan
    Nov 14, 2016
    1
    Played a lot this game, the original version of it that is. Age of Empires II HD edition is a broken game since its launch. It may work for some, and may work terrible for others: worst game support ever, absolutely no feed back on issues; game may crash during multiplayer load without no reason, today version 4.8 three years after its release, its still happening; game desyncs for noPlayed a lot this game, the original version of it that is. Age of Empires II HD edition is a broken game since its launch. It may work for some, and may work terrible for others: worst game support ever, absolutely no feed back on issues; game may crash during multiplayer load without no reason, today version 4.8 three years after its release, its still happening; game desyncs for no internet problem, it just shut you off its horrible servers for no reason, even game like Tibia have better servers; game could not be restore, even after save, if you got desync, game over for you. The game everyone already knows how it is, so I don't need to give score for that, my score is based upon how broken the game is and how the Developers do nothing to solve its problem. Please don't buy this game.… Expand
  7. RoadToSomewhere
    Sep 25, 2016
    2
    The developers of this game have not made enough changes to AOE2 to warrant a $20 pricetag, and they certainly haven't done enough to warrant it being called "HD". In fact, one of the major selling points of this game - the multiplayer - has been broken for almost a year.

    If you want to buy it, wait until it goes on sale, or just simply buy the original version.
  8. Cioby
    Dec 24, 2015
    0
    Overrated game, I barely liked it in the past, why would I like it now. They added HD to the name, which means they added slightly higher resolution textures which still look like **** Besides the fact that you can make unique units for every faction, I don't see anything good about this game. You want an actual strategy game where units aren't completely retarded, play Stronghold CrusaderOverrated game, I barely liked it in the past, why would I like it now. They added HD to the name, which means they added slightly higher resolution textures which still look like **** Besides the fact that you can make unique units for every faction, I don't see anything good about this game. You want an actual strategy game where units aren't completely retarded, play Stronghold Crusader for RTS and TotalWar series for RTS/actual empire/cities management.

    I really tried to like this game, but I couldn't. Seeing units run after enemy cavalry like idiots, just makes you wanna burn your PC or switch to consoles, to play idiotic games, on an idiotic platform.    … Expand
  9. Peeto
    Oct 16, 2015
    2
    Its really insulting. Buy old AOE /some collector version with 1+2 and datadasics/ and forget about this cash grab. It looks worse than the original, music is weirdly increasing volume when it wants. With better resolution it just look bad, blurred or something. Old version is crisp, still great looking game even at 1024x768 resolution. I just uninstalled it from my steam and install oldIts really insulting. Buy old AOE /some collector version with 1+2 and datadasics/ and forget about this cash grab. It looks worse than the original, music is weirdly increasing volume when it wants. With better resolution it just look bad, blurred or something. Old version is crisp, still great looking game even at 1024x768 resolution. I just uninstalled it from my steam and install old original. Its working fantastic on W10, much satisfied than with this "hd" rerelease. Very sad, I even bough this hd datadisc, which is another insult of releasing some old mod.… Expand
  10. singaboutthongs
    Sep 17, 2014
    2
    Buggy mess. Pathfinding is by far its biggest issue (most obvious with villagers and rams), but there are plenty of others. In single-player, some maps may not unlock (and "Reign of Blood" can't even be won sometimes, must restart) and the visuals are barely any improvement. Trebuchets sometimes deploy before reaching their targets, game speed setting isn't remembered properly anymoreBuggy mess. Pathfinding is by far its biggest issue (most obvious with villagers and rams), but there are plenty of others. In single-player, some maps may not unlock (and "Reign of Blood" can't even be won sometimes, must restart) and the visuals are barely any improvement. Trebuchets sometimes deploy before reaching their targets, game speed setting isn't remembered properly anymore (defaults always to normal) and villagers keep getting in each other's way. Units sometimes stagger, and performance is very poor.
    I got this in hopes that I'd have no more compatibility issues, but didn't expect a such a big collection of new ones.    … Expand
  11. bigman
    Jun 12, 2014
    0
    Just overrated game, there is nothing HD in this game, its purely hoax and a big lie. it only zooms out that you cant even see any units and call it HD
  12. proteuss2585
    Jan 6, 2014
    0
    Its exactly the same old Age of Empires, NOTHING new besides the horrible multiplayer with tons of bugs, lag (sometimes about 2 seconds of delay) and connection problems. A lot of people cant play because 10 seconds after the game starts, every player get disconnected because someone is "out of sinc".

    Dont buy it, just play the old Age of Empires with hamachi, there are not dedicated    Its exactly the same old Age of Empires, NOTHING new besides the horrible multiplayer with tons of bugs, lag (sometimes about 2 seconds of delay) and connection problems. A lot of people cant play because 10 seconds after the game starts, every player get disconnected because someone is "out of sinc".

    Dont buy it, just play the old Age of Empires with hamachi, there are not dedicated servers, so its really the same.    … Expand
  13. orctown-troll
    Dec 31, 2013
    2
    One of the weaker 'HD upgrades' out there. Certainly not worth the $20 asking price, and reasonable only when at $5 on Steam sale. It's the original game with bare-bones graphical adjustments for new monitors, but no real graphic enhancements to speak of. Basically a lazy product designed to milk money out of nostalgia. The game itself is fine. The enhancements are a joke.

    Orctowngrot
  14. flatmush
    Dec 22, 2013
    0
    Can't even set the resolution

    If you own a 1280x1024 monitor then this game will not even run at the native resolution and will run at a lower (and much blurrier) resolution than the orignal game did. As such this fails at the first hurdle. There is no support for the game and it's little more than a hacked binary and some with some previously free mods stacked on top. As others have    Can't even set the resolution

    If you own a 1280x1024 monitor then this game will not even run at the native resolution and will run at a lower (and much blurrier) resolution than the orignal game did. As such this fails at the first hurdle. There is no support for the game and it's little more than a hacked binary and some with some previously free mods stacked on top.

    As others have stated, even if you put aside the fact that the game is actually less stable than the original there are no beneficial changes, this is literally a just very lazy cash grab.

    The real icing on the cake is that whenever you launch the game it will load a launcher app containing an embedded Internet Explorer window with many invalid links and a script error that you have to cancel before you can actually play the game. Avoid this at all costs.    … Expand
  15. BlitzStein
    Dec 2, 2013
    1
    Probably the worst HD edition ever. Don't waste your money on this. Obtain the original game with the patch.

    The main menu displaces objects. The music is near the worst. The videos are not new nor better. The textures are not real HD.

    Congratulations Microsoft.
  16. jakerfv
    Nov 8, 2013
    2
    This was my favorite RTS until I played starcraft 2.

    This game is not worth it in its current state, EVEN 7 MONTHS AFTER RELEASE IT STILL DOES NOT WORK!! Broken online mode means it's a lag fest, am I playing on a dial-up modem? Game has almost no changes from the original, no resolution options or anything like that or graphics options. Well why would it need graphics options? Well    This was my favorite RTS until I played starcraft 2.

    This game is not worth it in its current state, EVEN 7 MONTHS AFTER RELEASE IT STILL DOES NOT WORK!!

    Broken online mode means it's a lag fest, am I playing on a dial-up modem? Game has almost no changes from the original, no resolution options or anything like that or graphics options. Well why would it need graphics options? Well f*** me but they managed to botch the port so bad I get 20 FPS online WITH AN ATI 7950 AND A CORE I7 3.5GHZ, CRYSIS 3 RUNS BETTER THAN YOUR GAME, HOW THE HELL.

    Last but not least, it's 20 dollars, and 10 dollars for the dlc. Yeah, how about you instead by yourselves starcraft 2 for 10 dollars more mkay? The developers of the DLC should be commended but we paid 20 DOLLARS ALREADY, WHY NOT GIVE THEM SOME OF THAT MONEY AND MAKE THE DLC FREE, MICROSOFT. You know I love you guys under all this awful PR lately but COME ON.

    I have never seen, a more botched port of an old game in my life, at least with a lot of ports today it makes sense because they are just larger games, but this, there is no excuse...

    This game gets a 2 because of how much they make you pay for a broken game. A game that you can pirate guilt freely and get the FREE MODDED DLC TO WORK WITH YOUR SYSTEM. Also, the new update, CHANGED THE MUSIC AND BROKE MY SAVE FILES. The only thing this game has is that when it is fixed and lets me choose the original freaking music, than it will be a fun game, but guess what, SEVEN MONTHS WE HAVE BEEN WAITING aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the new update added more crashing issues.

    Now I came to this games defense when it was coming out, people were going on about how you can get forgotten empires (the now 10 dollar dlc for HD) for free to work on modern systems and an original copy of the game for a small price (free if you pirate, which you probably would because you probably bought the game anyway if you were defending it so who cares?.) I defended the game saying that the online and the HD port is the reason why..... Yeah I feel pretty stupid now.

    Also, it isn't out on mac or linux, despite the original being on mac. Which I find hilarious.

    So to recap:
    Broken Multiplayer (after the new update to ready for the DLC, it actually adds crashes to everything)
    Changed audio
    Horrid performance
    Lack of options
    Overpriced

    Do I sound angry? Yeah I am, because microsoft botched my childhood almost as much as they botched this game.    … Expand
  17. pinoybboy2004
    Oct 25, 2013
    4
    As much as I would love to give a positive rating I can't! I grew up playing this game and have logged several thousand hours over the years. When I saw that it was remade for steam as an HD game I figured that they would have made some other important changes and added more to it. It's simply a repackaged game with the SAME coding as the original. The only positives are that the onlineAs much as I would love to give a positive rating I can't! I grew up playing this game and have logged several thousand hours over the years. When I saw that it was remade for steam as an HD game I figured that they would have made some other important changes and added more to it. It's simply a repackaged game with the SAME coding as the original. The only positives are that the online matchmaking is simplified and that I can tab alt or play in windowed mode. Other than that this game is a slap in the face to anyone expecting changes. The multi-player engine still lags with that 1999 style (even with cable modem and quad core) and the game still freezes at wait screen before and during game. It also still goes out of sync...If you're a first time player I'd save your money for something else instead of paying for a repackaged game from 1999.… Expand
  18. MaxTolenaar
    Oct 10, 2013
    2
    Uh, I know... there will soon be Donkey Kong HD and Super Mario HD. Should those microsoft guys think about Age of Empires 4 instead of raising the dead?
  19. Azill
    Sep 17, 2013
    0
    5 months later and the game is STILL BROKEN! I STILL get choppy fps (i'm on a gtx 670 by the way),the steam workshop with the game is totally borked most of the time and they never fixed any of the problems that the vanilla version of AOE 2 had. I will NEVER buy another game from hidden path again in my life.
  20. Alekso
    Sep 6, 2013
    0
    The game is excellent and graphics awesome, but it is SUCH a shame there is no Mac version. Come on, the game is on Steam, what is it it cannot be shipped to Mac
  21. Yoshan
    Aug 7, 2013
    0
    I bought this remake to play it with friends online, but the game starts to lag after about 10 minutes and is unplayable. I thought it would have better graphics, but the only thing that changed is that it has a higher FOV.. and all this for only 20€
  22. anr96
    Jul 28, 2013
    0
    I pre-ordered the game, but never able to run it. I following the forums, read the reviews etc. but still no solution for me, and I'm not alone with this problem. This game is simply an unfinished patchwork. This game is ready when the Community is finishing it, until then avoid it, and buy the original.
  23. oso
    Jul 18, 2013
    0
    This is just another attempt to squeeze money from a dead series. The title 'HD' is a joke cause its the same scaled up textures also it doesn't offer any new gameplay featuresat all. We quickly stopped playing it because of the serious performance issues it has. By that i mean constant desync and lag problems during multiplayer gaming.
  24. SX_Predator
    Jun 29, 2013
    1
    This is literally the exact same game as age of empires 2. LITERALLY. They didn't change anything except the graphics, which look the same anyway. Don't spend 20 dollars buying a texture pack.
  25. proto91
    Jun 28, 2013
    0
    AOE fans probably own two copes of AOE II: AOE II and Age of Kings. Then we get charged $20 for something that has already been done by the community? This is a joke. Dont waste your money, you can get resolution increases for free without the extra bugs.
  26. Dzyann
    Jun 15, 2013
    0
    I love AoE2! This HD version after so many years should have been way better.
    As another user on Steam said:
    Adding "official" 1080p support HD and does not demand a price of 20 euros. Even people that loves this version of the game and is playing it happily had huge problems to make it run. For example, one of them told me on one of my posts at Steam about how he downloaded the game    I love AoE2! This HD version after so many years should have been way better.
    As another user on Steam said:
    Adding "official" 1080p support HD and does not demand a price of 20 euros.

    Even people that loves this version of the game and is playing it happily had huge problems to make it run. For example, one of them told me on one of my posts at Steam about how he downloaded the game like 5 times over 6 hours while he was troubleshooting it.

    To be able to change the resolution you have to change the resolution of the computer. And if you have some problem in your eyes, forget it! the Texture/image of the units is so bad that that or you have your computer on 800x600 or you will get a headache. Is that really an improvement to put the game up to date with newer systems?

    The "start" screen where you can select what to do (play, change options, etc) looks worse than the "start" screen of the original game. That such a basic thing hasn't improve tells you what the general state of the game is.
    I actually sent an email to the developers and so far the only thing I got is an email of them telling me they were told to resend all feedback to Microsoft.

    The only thing they put up to date with this game was their pockets. This is a franchise that has a huge fan base, they realized that if they tried to revive the game lots of people would buy it out of nostalgia and in hopes of having a gaming better experience than with the original one. And they have used the community as beta testers.
    It is an insult to the consumers and other Studios that make a point of releasing quality games but don't have such big fan base to profit from.    … Expand
  27. colossalcarl
    Jun 9, 2013
    2
    The original AOE2 was amazing in that it had very historical campaigns that made me enjoy learning about history. The graphics and gameplay were up to date for the time and it was one of the best games I ever played. I and my eight year old son moved on to AOE3 long ago and have enjoyed playing that together a lot. I thought I'd try to get this AOE2 HD version so that he could learnThe original AOE2 was amazing in that it had very historical campaigns that made me enjoy learning about history. The graphics and gameplay were up to date for the time and it was one of the best games I ever played. I and my eight year old son moved on to AOE3 long ago and have enjoyed playing that together a lot. I thought I'd try to get this AOE2 HD version so that he could learn more about actual history as opposed to the "history lite" in AOE3.

    Well I fire it up and my son says, "That looks terrible". The graphics really are not good. The interface stinks, just like the original AOE2. I was reminded of all the annoying micromanaging things that you had to do in AOE2 like create mining camps. The bottom line is that AOE2 HD seems just as dated as AOE2 does today. Will Microsoft please wise up and either create AOE4 or sell the rights to the franchise so someone else can? The fact that people are buying this polished turd is testament to how much latent demand is out there for this franchise.    … Expand
  28. willkzhang
    May 18, 2013
    0
    It's a really bad game in comparison with both the original game and modern competitors. It introduced plenty of new bugs and the graphic quality is not improved at all.
  29. paketep
    May 15, 2013
    0
    They added a resolution fix, a couple of textures and a load of achievements, and they completely removed proper LAN support. Way to go!. Another kick in the nuts for AoE fans after AoEO.
  30. miektwo
    May 13, 2013
    0
    Now I don't usually write reviews but i wanted to make it clear to potential buyers of the big issues this release has. The game is great but the lack of support the developers give to the game is shocking. Multiplayer is practically unplayable after 15mins due to lag/stutturing/desync and the support forum is ignored.

    I would stay away till they give the game some love if they ever do.
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Awards & Rankings

53
#53 Most Discussed PC Game of 2013
25
#25 Most Shared PC Game of 2013

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
68

Mixed or average reviews - based on 20 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 20
  3. Negative: 1 out of 20
  1. PC Master (Greece)
    Jun 5, 2013
    65
    Mixed emotions, overall. On the one hand we have the same graphics, not at all improved. On the other, Steam offers functional multiplayer and workshop support, that breathe life into an old game. [May 2013]
  2. CD-Action
    May 13, 2013
    55
    Let me make a list of all the changes introduced in the HD version of Age of Empires II - higher resolution. [CD-Action 06/2013, p.77]
  3. Gamer.nl
    May 5, 2013
    60
    Unfortunately Age of Empires II HD isn't a very impressive update. It disappoints graphically and not much has been done to improve or modernize it. The gameplay is still strong though, and Age of Empires II still shows how balanced and detailed strategy games can be. With the addition of the Steam Workshop there's enough potential here for the game to be given a new look. Too bad this is left up to the players though.
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