Been playing AOE since the beginning. My buddy had a copy, and neither of us had played an RTS before or had any idea what we were getting into when we dove into this world. Long story short, we immediately fell in love with everything about this game series, from beginning to end. We’ve played almost exclusively multiplayer co-op against the A.I. on each entry in the series. I did play through all the official Age of Mythology campaigns, since that entry is near and dear to my heart. But the aforementioned mode is life for us. We also got real good and deep into the mind-blowingly complex creation modes of AoE2 and AoM.

Guilty pleasure: The cheat codes on these games. Hilarious! I could fill a book with commentary on this point, so I’ll stop there.

If I had to choose a favorite thing about AOE: I’d settle on the music. When we figured out you could put all the game CD’s into a CD player and play all the music…WOW!!! I still listen to all the game soundtracks, in all their iterations, to this day. Pro tip: Try mowing your lawn with the first game and expansion soundtracks on your headphones. Game changer.

I do enjoy the history behind it all, and a pinch of the strategy. Overall, though, I just like racing to max age, maxing army, research every tech (even the stuff I don’t use), and the lamenting of the enemy as me and my buddy march on their civ in full force after their constant poking failed to stop us.