Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

"*Drools* soooooooo pwetty..."

Note: The highest score I'd give to a game is 8, it'd be equivalent to some people's 10, I guess, but it's against my personal belief to give perfect score unless I know that it will be the very very best.

~~~
That being said.

City Building, it's my favorite type of game, so my views maybe be slightly (ONLY slightly, the tiniest bit, it's almost negligible, in fact, I'm pretty positive it's negligible, I'm not even sure why am I telling you this, but the little voice in my head tells me I should.) biased, but Emperor is among the top 3 games I had played of its genre. In the game, you play the man (or woman) who will be responsible for the growth of a Chinese settlement. Given nothing but a plot of land and some cash, you will need to put your resource management and leadership skills to build an empire every single of your little people will be proud to live in (and maybe, if you like, you can take your city online to see how you fare against other emperor-wannabes).

As everyone (well, everyone with some common knowledge) know, China has history, lots of it, and the game has selected a few as the scenarios you can play in. Witness the rise and falls of the various dynasty from Xia to Jin, if you don't care for Chinese history (you don't have to), personally, I don't think it'll affect your enjoyment of the game much.

If you had played Pharaoh or Zeus before, you should have no problem with Emperor's gameplay, since they're a lot alike. Even if you hadn't, I shouldn't think there will be any problems, since there is a very comprehensive tutorial available, and if your mouse works, you're pretty much set to go.

The game has one of the best (if not THE best) graphics I've seen of its kind. The details are awesome, and very true (well, quite, since I really haven't seen an old Chinese building up close). I was all kinds of drooling at the pretty-ness. The buildings look splendid, the people exquisite and the commodities oh-so-delicious, whee.. seriously, it just knocks me breathless.

My initial complaint (really initial, like 3 minutes into the game) is that it's a tad big (the land scale, it feels like running 800x600 on a 17'' monitor), but it ceased to be an issue right after, well, they have to compensate for the impeccable details on everything somehow.

The voice acting's kinda interesting, they all speak with a Chinese accent, and sometimes, you even get someone talking in mandarin. It's most definitely worth a laugh or two. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not one to pay too much attention to music, but in this case, I did, and I must say, I'm mighty glad. You'll love this if you like oriental instrumental stuff (flute, er-hu, qin etc). It's quite awesome, really serene and nice.

Somehow, I feel that the game deserve more praising and stuff, but regrettably, I'm not good with words, and I'm pretty much empty my supplies. The price may be a tad steep (I got it for about forty US dollars), but trust me, it's well well well well welllllllllllll worth it.

footnote: oh, if my review is bias in anyway, it wouldn't be because I love city-building type games, it'd probably be from my enthusiasm in the Chinese culture. And this game provides a lot of tidbits, be it graphically or historical facts, enough for me to gush at for a really long while.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/18/02, Updated 09/18/02