...use the demo. You'll see its a nice game. I bought it months ago (the gold retail version), and its very good. For an RTS it is 'complicated' as in several layers of depth when compared to recent 'action RTS' games. I find funny that sometimes people moan about EE2 not being as good as EE1, when in reality, it completely blows the 1rst one out of the water in EVERY respect. People just aren't keen on actual quality. They'll say the love the mind-stupifying spammy AI of EE1 and then bad-mouth the regional borders of EE2 'because its a RoN rippof...' (when actually RoN invented nothing). They'll ignore the awesomely usefull management tools available to the player to macor manage citizens and resource gathering (of wich there's a lot of variety now, and changes according to epoch), and pass by the lovely (if dated now) season changing on the map - as in, Winter, Spring, Summer, Outumn, sun and rain.
They'll ignore that EE2 features actual buildable roads and bridges that do make a diference in troop movement (remember Civilization and roads? I guess its RoN too :P .....).
When you choose a nation in EE2, you'll see some diferences in actuall building style according to 4 or so major styles accross epoch (this, a diference from EE1 blandness).
EE2 is also much more customizable in Skirmish mode than the pitiful EE1 ever could be.
EE2 has regions (as i've stated before), and this is very important in winning (if you set the game alike) because as opposed to EE1 you don't have to look the Giant map *again* for a goddamn missing enemy citizen that built yet another town center on a far corner of the map. You can also (when conquering these regions) change their name (and change city name too, Civ style).
The game can be so overwhelming with good stuff that it takes some good hours of play to even discover so much as half of the potential. This is good value for my money. This is what the EE1 whiners won't tell you. That EE2 surpasses EE1 and is the absolute best in the Empire Earth series.
For all i could say, i recommend Empire Earth 2 HIGHLY if you like RTS's, just go for it for long grand strategy -ish gameplay rather than RoN -style 40min win the world (...although...you can setup the game that way too! The customization is really nice).
ALso, you can have random maps, like AoE2, or actuall design maps like StarCraft - best of both skirmish worlds (that other major games rarely implementedm strangely enough)...
There's really a lot to discover and enjoy with EE2, and since you can customize games so easily, you can even tune the game to your specific game style.
Try the DEMO. I did, and got the full game 2 weeks after. One of the best legacy RTSs of the world, unfortunately overlooked.
Also, avoid the DRM, bug-filled EE3 like the cross.
EE1 = nice, ok if your tired of same old AoE2 experience, though.
EE2 = awesome upgrade of EE1. Everything that could possibly be improved and expanded, was done. :D
EE3 = just....don't invite it for the christmas party...... unless you want to laugh at the dorky cousin...
