Age of Empires II Mobile

Considering how much cool stuff happened in England's history, it was a continual disappointment to be bludgeoned over the head with lessons on the Corn Laws at school.

Where was Braveheart? Where was King Arthur? Where were the knights in their castles, riding noble ponies and slaying each other?

Well they weren't in the GCSE history curriculum but they sure are here, in Age of Empires II. Maybe not Mel Gibson and semi-mythical King of English folklore, true, but lots of knights in shining armour, foreboding castles, blacksmiths, archers and fighting – surely the vital ingredients for any worthy exercise in historical argy-bargy.

And so you're dropped into the saddle as a general in the Middle Ages, controlling the destiny of a kingdom in a far off land. Starting out with little more than a landscape rich in natural resources, it's up to you to found a village, grow it into a town, and develop technologies and systems such as iron-working, feudalism and archery. Along the way you'll learn how to mine for gold, train horsemen and fend off rival kingdoms, as you and your neighbours squabble over the ever-precious timber, stone and precious metals that your (and their) economy is based on.

This is all carried out through a remarkably straightforward interface. You move a cursor around the screen (roll on eight-way thumbpads – you'll need to use the keypad to progress) and are able to recruit villagers and soldiers or build structures with the * and # keys. For a game that manages to fit so much in (necessitating a three-mission tutorial), it's quite a feat that it's so easy to control for most of the time.

With seven missions in Age of Empire II's campaign mode to undertake, there's enough ancient action here to fill up several lessons on the Tudor reformation. The objectives that each mission is based around are nicely varied, ranging from protecting fleeing villagers to pillaging an enemy's castle and town, and the underlying economic game, whereby you mine the local resources for buildings, food and scientific research, is very compelling.

But the strategy part of the game, where you're put in command of pikemen, archers, knights and catapults, is a travesty. It's also the one area where the control system falls down.

Firstly, you can't rely on your troops to accurately follow your orders. While you can select them and then direct them to move to a particular part of the land, whether they get there or not is a whole other matter.

It's indicative of a problem with Age of Empire II's artificial intelligence. Your troops are easily confused by obstacles in the landscape and will regularly be bamboozled, wandering aimlessly in circles as they struggle to find a route around a rocky outcrop or through a forest.

They're also too eager to attack the enemy, to the point of distraction, denying you the chance to plan and execute a tactical strike – they'll simply pile into the nearest enemy unit or structure!

This really spoils a game that otherwise meets its lofty ambitions. While the visuals and sounds aren't great, there's a great deal of depth to the non-combat portions of the title, and it's almost a shame that there's no peaceful way of completing the game by trading or negotiating with the other side.

Age of Empire's reliance on combat is like leaning backwards on two legs on your dodgy chair in GSCE history class: it's exhilarating to begin with, and then it gives way beneath you, leaving you frustrated, mildly embarrassed, and looking for something else to occupy your attention.