[2] It is a sequel to Empire Earth, which was developed by the now-defunct Stainless Steel Studios.

The game received a positive reaction, earning a 79% average rating on GameRankings.

[4] Empire Earth II has several new gameplay features from the original gameplay of Empire Earth, such as the Picture-in-Picture window, a small window within the game interface which allows the player to control activities such as unit and building construction.

The War Planner is another new addition, which is a map of the game that the player can display and use to coordinate attacks with allies.

The crown system grants strategic bonuses to players who are first to master an epoch's military, economic, or imperial paths at the cost of losing a faster age progression.

However, when research is no longer used (at the highest epoch specified before starting a game), the garrisoned units will become idle.

Like many games before it in the same genre, Empire Earth II has civilizations for players to lead to greatness.

The Greek Hoplite, for instance, is a more effective heavy infantry than the other tribes' counterparts.

The final scenario is about the war with Denmark, Austria and France and the unification of Germany under Otto von Bismarck.

The scenarios are about World War II, featuring the North African Campaign and a fictionalized version of the Ardennes Offensive.

The next scenarios are fictionalized, about an attempted coup led by a disillusioned General Charles Blackworth against the US government; the player is charged with stopping this coup, eventually engaging Blackworth and his followers in the Amazon Rainforest.

When the player wins the last scenario in this campaign, there is a short film about mankind and the Earth.

There are four special scenarios in Empire Earth II called turning points.

The Normandy scenario takes place during the D-Day invasion, where the player can play as the Allies to repeat the success of Operation Overlord, or play as the Germans to stop the Allied invasion force from breaching the Atlantic Wall.

[6] Among other things, the unofficial patch supports all possible screen resolutions, fixes maximization problems on Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 and enabled DirectX 9 support to fix problems with only integrated graphics card being detected on Nvidia Optimus laptop under Windows 10.

Empire Earth II garnered generally positive reviews, and holds an average of 79% on aggregate web site GameRankings.

"[3] Criticisms of the game included high system requirements, issues with unit pathfinding, modest graphics, a poor unit counter system, a clunky, complicated, almost non-existent mission editor, and the increased complexity caused by the new game features.