Rise of Nations

"Ask about our descriptive title contest"

With no filler, in bitter earnest:

Gameplay: 25/24
Gameplay is very good on Rise of Nations. It has a near-perfect balance of ecnomic management and combat. Resources never run out so it involves less economic worrying than most RTS games, plus you can set how much technologies cost i.e. very cheap, cheap, normal, expensive, very expensive, etc. When you build an infantry unit you get three but its only commanded as one letting you field armies that look large but you only actually have to command a few units. The Conquer the World campaign (the TBS/RTS hybrid) gets repetitive sometimes but for the most part its very interesting and good. The system for conquering cities is closer to the TBS style of assimilation but it makes it more realistic. Anotehr thing I like is the way it uses increasing marginal costs in order to force the player to use combined arms. ie a tank might cost a total of 140 resources but the 2nd one you buiild will cost 145 or so and the 3rd 150 and the 4th 155 etc. just an example. Well-balanced it gets an extra point.

Graphics: 15/18
Rise of Nations is all about hybrids and the graphics is a 2d/3d hybrid engine. There are four levels of zoom which I will call Detailed, Tactical, Operational, and Strategic from lowest to highest. I perfer the Tactical level personally. The units look incredibly good and the random civilian gender determiner from AoE II: AoK is also very good. After all, it's the little things that make Rise of Nations such a good game. Everything looks good and reasonably realistic. Unfortunately, the framerate is pretty bad unless you have a truly top of hte line graphics card. Normally I get 30 something framerates but I've had as low as 10 FPS and choppy performance when I've played an 8-player quick battle on the biggest map size.

Sound: 8/9
Isn't much to talk about. No voices other than deathcries but the weapon sound pretty realistic. Sounds are crisp.

Story: 9/9
Ah, but there's no story you say!? Well, history is all about making your own story and this game is no exception. What is it Churchill once said, ''History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.'' In other words the story is what you make it out to be (AKA anything) and therefore I am obliged to give it full points.

Replay Value: 20/20
18 different civs to conquer the world with is good plus the scenario editor is very good. It's hard to use at first but you should be able to get the hang of it after a few hours use. I havent yet but the epic scope of the game makes the scenario editor great for lots of different things ranging from Ancient Greek city states to World War II and just about any other map type you can think of. Within reason of course. Goes up to space age.

Interface: 9/10
The interface seems complicated but its actually rather intuitive. However the complexity makes it run rather slowly sometimes and occasionally I have to pause or turn the speed lower to send orders which I don't like to do.

Difficulty: 5/5
Easiest is well... easy. I'm guessing the game won't significantly frustrate until maybe tougher, the second highest. Also depends on the mode. Like Conquer the World on easy is pretty simple whereas an 8-player megagame on easy with expensive teching might be somewhat challenging.

System Requirements: 3/5
Normally I dont do this but I am for new games... The system reqs are pretty reasonable (not the listed ones I mean the actual ones, I'd say oh 800MHz, 256 RAM) but you need alot better. I have a decent 2.5GHz, 512 RAM and it runs pretty well but teh biggest problem by far is that this game is a virtual memory hog. I mean I've had to restart the game in the middle of the Conquer the World campaign after every other battle because of abnormal game termination related to virtual memory problems.

Overall Rating: 9.4/10
I round my ratings up so this translates into a 10/10.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/03, Updated 05/25/03