Age of Empires II combines the best elements of a war game and a business game to create a entertaining strategic experience. The amount of research behind this game is admirable, and the game even provides pages of historical context that the player can just spend hours reading if they so wished. Instead of creating a few significantly different playable races like in StarCraft, Age of Empires provides many different armies, each of which is vastly similar on the surface but with a few unique units. This allows the player to predict their opponent's moves and act tactically. Age of Empires II's biggest flaw is a few levels which drop in quality greatly, but fortunately the game as a whole still stands strong.