Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
Hacker ApprovedRanked 8 of 24 real-time strategy games by recommenders
Recommended for deep strategy, long-lived balance and strong siege play. Most common caveat: multiplayer and LAN need an online Steam or Xbox account.
Recommended for deep strategy, long-lived balance and strong siege play. Most common caveat: multiplayer and LAN need an online Steam or Xbox account.
39 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 28
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 72%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 25 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 28 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Balanced play that has lasted decades
“the dominant players then are STILL the dominant players now - 27 years later”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)” “AOE2 seems to have hit the correct balance point”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Blizzard Revives 'StarCraft' Franchise with Open-World Sci-Fi Shooter” “The games from 15-25 years ago are also great”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building” - Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness”
Runs on macOS and Linux
“this 20 year-old game just got ported to macOS last week and is available on steam”
Comment from 7 Jun 2026 in “If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II” “AoE2 was probably the best Mac game ever.”
Comment from 10 Jan 2026 in “RTX 5090 and Raspberry Pi: Can It Game?” “it also works fine under Linux (Proton)”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)” Deep strategy with siege counters
“AoE2 has incredible siege and defensive emplacements (castles and bombard cannons and siege onagers) that counter deathballs”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Blizzard Revives 'StarCraft' Franchise with Open-World Sci-Fi Shooter” “Watch some Hera games. The level of play is next level.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Red Alert 2 in web browser” Ongoing updates and quality-of-life improvements
“Watch some Hera games. The level of play is next level.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Red Alert 2 in web browser” “But with lots of quality-of-life improvements.”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “Flashpoint Archive – Over 200k web games and animations preserved”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Needs online account even for LAN
“you can't even connect to each other without an internet connection and steam or Xbox account”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)” “which does not work offline in LAN unless you connect to Xbox online services first”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures” “doesn't even have LAN functionality without first connecting to their servers”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures” Multiplayer lag and desyncs
“AoE2:DE is rated gold even though multiplayer is broken for everyone, and it lags.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it” “The lag was insane because out of 8 players, there'd always be that one guy.”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “The best thing that's ever happened for multiplayer games?” “multiplayer went out of sync which ends the game”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Steam Machine game testing” Poor Linux support
“captures my microphone on ubuntu even when I toggle the in-game settings to not do so”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc” “doesn't have multiplayer support on Linux”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux”
Other real-time strategy games people recommend
The four most recommended other real-time strategy games, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beyond All Reason | 76 | 17 | 82% | 10 | 1 yr6 owners | Approved |
| Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness | 51 | 2 | 96% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Total Annihilation | 48 | 7 | 87% | 7 | — | Approved |
| StarCraft | 36 | 22 | 62% | 10 | — | — |
| Age of Empires II: Definitive EditionThis page | 28 | 11 | 72% | 9 | 25 yrs3 owners | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 46 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Ahh AoK is such an amazing game!”
“that wow effect starting the game, the hard disk clicking like crazy”
“This looks like a tremendous amount of fun.”
“AOE2 seems to have hit the correct balance point”
“AoE2 has incredible siege and defensive emplacements (castles and bombard cannons and siege onagers) that counter deathballs”
“captures my microphone on ubuntu even when I toggle the in-game settings to not do so”
“it also works fine under Linux (Proton)”
“the dominant players then are STILL the dominant players now - 27 years later”
“I think the article is way too hard on a game that really tried to be a decent simulation with 90s hardware.”
“I play this game regularly with friends and love it.”
“The lag was insane because out of 8 players, there'd always be that one guy.”
“my favorite PC game Age of Empires 2 was a CD, then when they finally remade it, it was like oh you gotta sign up for Steam first”
“found 2 annoying and couldn't get into it”
“multiplayer went out of sync which ends the game”
“It had no copy+paste function, and the window of viewable triggers was tiny.”
“doesn't even have LAN functionality without first connecting to their servers”
“Age of Empires 2 released in 1999 and is fully playable offline either as a single or multiplayer game via LAN.”
“The Definitive Edition does not work offline for multiplayer games anymore.”
“which does not work offline in LAN unless you connect to Xbox online services first”
“this 20 year-old game just got ported to macOS last week and is available on steam”
“You had me at the NAND gate in AoE II's editor.”
“The games from 15-25 years ago are also great”
“you can't even connect to each other without an internet connection and steam or Xbox account”
“AOE2 definite edition looks great on a 4k screen now”
“But with lots of quality-of-life improvements.”
“the DE was too heavy for our old computers”
“I rediscovered aoe2 a few months ago, after being addicted to Age of Mythology”
“I don't really play AoE2 anymore (though I have bought it!)”
“People are more interested in a good game than just winning.”
“DE has now reached near parity with lower resource use”
“my favorite to return to now is definitely Warcraft III (or AoE II)”
“doesn't have multiplayer support on Linux”
“AoE2 was probably the best Mac game ever.”
“my favorite game (AoE 2) works significantly better on windows than on wine”
“AoE2:DE is rated gold even though multiplayer is broken for everyone, and it lags.”
“AoE2 is still going very strong”
“the netcode is excellent now, but locked to proprietary platforms”
“there's basically a whole lot of wasted time at the start of an AoE 2 match”
“Aoe2 is consistently getting official updates, there's 3 Indian and 4 Chinese civs now.”
“Watch some Hera games. The level of play is next level.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.