Empire Earth Gold Edition

Be warned, this game hates newer computers. People have issues with their graphics card and drivers being too new to run it.

Empire earth: gold edition is probably one of the most ambitious (for its time) project that truly tries to give a complete experience on human warfare (at least in its gameplay, since the story, although faithful historically, is narrated in a way that's almost comical). Or at the very least, that was the idea. Unfortunately, what came out of that idea is a mediocre RPG with a bad AI and confusing overlays. That doesn't mean the game is bad... it has some good qualities, but not enough. So, yup. You can play it and found joy in it, if you look past its failings.

What seemed like a slightly unpolished version of Age of Empires at first, quickly became a terrible disappointment. It's not the awful UI, not the dated graphics, not even a boring campaign but the god damned unit AI. Units running away from the target when I tell them to attack, soldiers hitting peasants while being slaughtered by the enemy and simply unexplainable path-finding makes this game a micro-management horror. Sorry, I just can't see the appeal others seem to have found in this title, and I don't think it's an "awesome battle" when your soldiers attack a wall in stead of a nearby tower that is decimating them with projectiles (and yes, I did order them to attack the tower several times). It's just painful to watch. Also, how can this be so much less streamlined and enjoyable than Warcraft 2 (six years older game!)?

As of the most recent update (2.0?), the game is working on my Windows 10 PC pretty smoothly. Whether it's objectively the best RPG of its era, I'm not so sure. But I played it a ton as a kid and love finally being able to revisit it.

For those of you that are having Graphic glitches check the post "How to Fix Graphic Glitches on Windows 10 for EE1" on the forums. This is my favorite game of all time. Still got my physical copy.