Ensemble's Age of Empires 2 released in 1999, and I know of at least one person who thinks gaming never got better than this. They're clearly not alone, either, as this game has proven to have an enormously long tail and, after being supported by the community for most of its existence, got the full-fat remaster treatment it deserved with 2019's Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition (developed by Forgotten Worlds under the aegis of the AoE-focused World's Edge studio).
We thought the Definitive Edition was rather good, with PCG's strategy king Fraser Brown saying that though it "wavers between remaster and remake" it's "the best version of the best Age of Empires game by a wide margin." And while that may have been expected, what came next wasn't: Forgotten Worlds set a relatively rip-roaring pace of expansions, with the game receiving five so far (probably the most impressive being last year's Return of Rome, which brought over every civilization from the original AoE). And it's not slowing down.
