Rating: 
Summary: A Thinking Person's RTS
Review: This is game is made for someone who loves both the quick pacing of an RTS and the deeper thought of a turn-based strategy game. I have played Starcraft and Empire Earth, and while it's great fun to play a quick game of "make an army and send them into battle," it does get to be repetitive. That's not true with Rise of Nations. Why is this? With most RTS games there is a specific build order. You memorize the build order, build an army and send them into battle. Only when you make contact with the enemy does the game start taking on a life of its own. With Rise of Nations a standard build order will get you at most 1 or 2 minutes into the game, long before your army makes contact with your opponent. This means you have to start thinking earlier than with any other RTS I've ever played. For those from the turn-based games like Civilization or Alpha Centauri, this will seem much more like an RTS and less like what they're used to. It's fast paced and there's a lot of clicking unless you're playing the computer, where the pause button can be used to make the game virtually turn-based. For someone used to Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires or Empire Earth, though, this game will be less of a click fest (except for battles, where good micro can still make or break you). Do a good job of setting up your economy and it'll mostly run itself. Workers will find their own jobs to do, and if you set up your city well you can queue up 10 or more of them and forget about micromanaging. They'll begin harvesting food, timber, and metal, and can even construct buildings on their own. Instead of being hassled with economic micromanagement, you can spend more time out-thinking your opponent. To sum it up, if you're a fan of both turn-based strategy and real-time strategy games, this game is a great blend of the two. If you're a real-time strategy fan who's tired of doing the same thing for the first 5 minutes of every game or who would rather spend more time thinking rather than clicking the mouse, this game is for you. Finally, if you enjoy playing against the computer, the pause feature in this game can make it enjoyable even for a die-hard turn-based fan who hates clicking the mouse.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Support
Review: I just want to mention the support for this fun game. They helped me on the phone for an hour to get the game working. My computer is somewhat old and messed up.
Rating: 
Summary: Civilization Meets Real Time Strategy
Review: Let me begin by telling you that I'm not a big fan of real-time strategy (RTS) games. Other than the first month I played Age of Empires, the Blizzard games (Warcraft and Starcraft) are probably the only RTS games I've found enjoyable as it seems that most RTS titles are the same thing with different options. Even Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have their own RTS games these days with jedis and hobbits replacing archers, musketeers, or whatever else the most recent RTS has decided to include in its game. So with all this said, you can imagine that I was hesitant to purchase Rise of Nations. But darnit, I couldn't resist after reading some summaries of the game. I'll give the game credit where credit is due, it's definitely an improvement over other recent RTS rehases and is probably the most complicated RTS to date. You'll need to play this one quite a bit before you get used to the many technology trees your society can choose. Speaking of technology trees, Rise of Nations is really nothing more than a real-time strategy answer for fans of the turn-based strategy game, Civilization. If you're like me and sick of the RTS genre, you probably won't find anything to last you more than a week. On the other hand, if you're an RTS junkie, you need to grab this game quickly because it's one of the best RTS titles out there!
Rating: 
Summary: this game stinks
Review: I really did not lke this game becuase all the grafics were terrible and the plot was pahetic.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece- Not Alpha Centuari, but the AC of the RTS
Review: First I'd like to refute what many have stated- I have run this game on low, albeit not bare-bones resolutions with a very small slowdown. That, on a PIII 500 MHz Win 98SE system with a 32 MB Riva TNT 2 card. So this is a great game for those with both new and older systems. And trust me, with the gameplay that is in this game you wont be sorry for shelling out 35 bucks.
The Plethora of nations, units, buildings, resources, all amount to a breathtaking game. I have played AOE, SC, AOK, AOM, WCIII, and many, many more RTS games. Personally my favorite game of all time is Alpha Centauri, and this game blends the best elements of the 4X turn based strategy games with the frentic pace and cinematic feel of an RTS. I could go on an on, but in sum this game is worth your money- it is complex, deep, enjoyable, fast (most games last under an hour), and it runs well on even a 1999 system. Need I really say more?
Try the game out- its worth the price. Kudos to Microsoft for a relatively bug-free, unbotched game that is thouroughly enjoyable. Enjoy, wether you like Ancient History, Medieval History, Napoleonic, WWI, WWII, or today- even the casual gamer will get a lot out of this one. As an experienced strategy gamer, I highly reccomend this title.
Rating:
Summary: The game is smart!
Review: I really love this game! I have all of the Age of Empires games and have always loved those, but this one is one step up. My favorite difference between this and the Age of... games is the increased intelligence of laborers. If they have nothing to do, they'll find a job nearby and start doing it. That leaves me free to concentrate less on workers and more on the game at hand. If you get this game, be prepared to memorize the quick-keys. I'm still working on that aspect, but they save a lot of time. Great game!!
Rating:
Summary: Iiiiiiiiiii'm Goooona Get It!!!
Review: I really like age of empires, but this as twice the action, twice the civilizations, twice the history, and twice the excitement! I looove to build up huge armies in age of empires and slice the enemy up. But in this game, i can shoot 'em up, nuke 'em 'til they cook, but I can also slice 'em up in this game too. Anyways, this game is going to be very cool. I rccomend this highly- VERY HIGHLY!
Rating:
Summary: This Game Rocks!
Review: This is an awsome game! It is like Age of Empires but you gan go farther into history, and do much more! BUY THIS GAME! IT ROCKS!
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Phenominal Game
Review: My fiance and I are both HUGE fans of RTS (real time strategy) games - we love Empire Earth, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, all those games. We got this one and it is one of our favorites by far! Basically in Rise of Nations you control a country from the ancient age through the information age, spanning about 6000 years. You go from basically cave men to flying stealth bombers.. it's great! One neat new feature is that they added borders .. so through different means you can expand your borders and other countries can't build there unless they take over one of your cities. They also have an interesting nuclear weapon implementation that I don't recall seeing before - where you can use a certain number of nukes .. and if you exceed that number, you automatically lose. So there is a real strategy involved in getting nukes quickly and trying to use a certain number before the enemy in order to prevent them from using nukes on you! One of the best features that I have used alot with my fiance is that when you are playing multiplayer, you can not only be on the same team, but be controlling the same country if you want. So it's not you and your friend just on the same team, you REALLY have to work together to manage resources since you are using the exact same guys. I am doing a poor job of explaining it, but its a fun feature. Overall, I have really enjoyed this game. It's top-rate and deserves the five stars I am giving it. The bottom line is that games should be FUN, and this game definitely is!
Rating:
Summary: A true Age of Empires replacement
Review: This is it. I decided not to buy Age of Mythology, and a friend showed me Rise of Nations before it came out. It was soon on my wish list. This game is everything they advertise and MORE! It has an incredible number of units, although most of them are unique to a certain nation (so you don't have that many in one game) The graphics are astounding and par to todays standerds. Beautiful animations and MASSIVE armies due to the fact that you get 3 foot soldiers per infantry unit, so armies are at least 3 times the size of AOE. Its possible to win without a fight too. You can actually DEMAND tribute and propose alliances (REALLY hard to do or impossible in AOE). Your resource collection points never run out of resources (never need to resow farms) and your citizens are super-smart. No more micromanagement. If you build your nation right in the first parts of the game, you can focus all your attention on armies later in the game. It has improved controls, sweet units (love the realistic airplanes) and an awesome 3d look. At 40-50 dollars, you won't be disapointed. A perfect gift too! The *very* few cons -poor scenario designer. Also, you have to learn their scripting language to make triggers. This is much more powerful but much much harder to learn than Age of Empires -Can't play as Americans; This is not so bad, considering you start out in ancient times when america hadn't even been settled, but once you get to the information age with aircraft carriers and nukes, you miss the USA. -Manual not very good, but anyone who knows anything about strategy games should be able to figure it out just fine. I didn't even need the manual.
|
