Rise of Nations – PC – Review

While attending the launch party for Age of Mythology, I talked to an
employee of Big Huge Games about the release of their new game, Rise of
Nations, and a few things that it had to offer. It sounded good in theory,
but a play test would be needed to see if this game could live up to the
ambitions that they had for it. The answer is a resounding yes! Rise of Nations
has what it takes to compete with what I call “The Big Three:” Ensemble Studios,
Blizzard, and Westwood Studios; who I consider the best Real Time Strategy game
developers. This game throws away a lot of things that have become the staple
for RTS games, and really makes you feel that you are in more control of your
mighty empire.

What makes this game so unique and fun to play? There is one main reason for
this; Rise of Nations revitalizes this genre because it blends the mechanics of
real time and turn based strategy games into one. As weird as this may sound,
the game does this flawlessly and expounds the gameplay a hundred fold. The next
question remains, how is this accomplished? If you have ever played Risk, after
you choose a nation you place your pieces on the board and than look at all the
neighboring nations and see which one is in attacking range. Once that is
decided players than proceed to attack it and hope that they can regain control
over this new region.

This is exactly how the game starts in campaign mode, players choose a
civilization and then taken to the world map to try to conquer it. Once gamers
find a territory they wish to inhabit, the game switches to real-time strategy
mode. In this mode, players will do all the normal things they would in any
other RTS such as gather resources, create an army, and take over the land. With
this new gameplay in motion, gamers have to be more tactical when they want to
invade a county. This also provides an enormous replay value, since no two games
will ever be the same. Also it takes the comforts of both genres and combines
into one. Turn-based games take day or even weeks to complete, while a real-time
game takes around an hour or more. Players get to conquer the world at a few
hours at a time.

A few other points of interest are the way towns are managed. Each town can only
have five farms. Depending on the how many resources are around that area will
obtain how many citizens will get to help players get more of that specifics
resource. For instance, if a player places a lumber camp and there are not many
trees around, than only a few people will be able to cut trees, same goes for
mines. The reason for this is that players always need to keep in mind that they
have to continue expanding their borders.

Another thing that is great about Rise of Nations is the AI of the citizens. One
of the most annoying things in any RTS is when your grunt workers just sitting
there doing nothing. If players assign a citizen to build a building than forget
about builder, after they finish they will automatically go help chop wood,
mine, or repair any building. If all of those assignments are filled, they will
remain idle until you tell them to do something.

The way that the military is handled is also very interesting. For instance, if
a player creates an archer, instead of one coming out, there will be a group of
three. This helps players build their armies faster, and have a bigger army as
well. This feature creates epic battles. Gamers might be thinking that is all
fine and dandy, but what about the population limit. I have created a ton of
citizens and an exorbitant number for my army, and I never hit the limit. This
helps put the emphasis more on having fun than worrying about some lame limit
they have to keep up with.

The game will have the players army’s fighting with sticks and stones, all the
way up to missiles and beyond. Unlike Empire Earth, players will be able to
progress to each age in a short amount of time. This brings much depth to the
field and makes it that much more enjoyable to play.