Age of Empires II: The Conquerors, dat is de naam van de nieuwe uitbreiding van Age of Empires: Age of Kings. IGN heeft hier een preview van geschreven. Eigenlijk zijn ze hier zelfs nog mee bezig. Er zitten namelijk 4 nieuwe campaigns in de uitbreiding, en IGN gaat ze apart bespreken. En nu hebben ze de eerste alvast onder de loep genomen.We kicked off the Age of Kings expansion pack with a long list of famous conquerors, all of whom could support great campaigns. As we whittled this list down, we focused on those conflicts that would best show off the new civilizations, and which conquerors players would most want to portray. In the end, we came up with three great names: Montezuma of the Aztecs, El Cid of the Spanish, and Attila the Hun. As a fourth campaign, we brought to light an idea that had been kicking around since AOK: what to do with all those famous battles that were important in history, but not robust enough to support an entire campaign. Thus, we have the Battles of the Conquerors--eight scenarios spotlighting battles such as Agincourt, Lepanto and Manzikert. I think that players will find all four campaigns to be better than those in Age of Kings. We have learned a lot about storytelling, using triggers and difficulty level. I particularly want to mention difficulty level, because we came to the conclusion that the AOK campaigns were probably too hard for many players. The new difficulty level system in the Conquerors Expansion will ensure that casual gamers can finish any scenario in an hour or so, while hardcore fans should face some pretty titanic struggles. In some cases the differences in a scenario played on the easiest and most difficult settings are so extreme that it is almost worth playing the scenario both ways to see all the differences.Age of Empires: Age of Kings was één van de weinige RTS games die mij kon boeien (ik weet het, ben altijd een apart geval geweest), dus ik kijk zeker uit naar dit nieuwe speeltje van Microsoft.