Rating: 
Summary: Might be good.......
Review: This game might be a good one.... If I could play it on my laptop. If your like me and 1 million others that only have an 8MB of memory on a laptop, DON'T get this- it won't work on your computer. I was looking forward to playing this too, don't fall into the same trap I did.
Rating: 
Summary: Great!!
Review: I haven't gotten the full version of the game yet but the demo is just so good. The A.I. is very challenging, even on easy mode with codes I had a hard time beating them.
There are some very good things on quick battle (by quick battle they mean a couple of hours) first are the wonders that range from the pyramids to the space project. Each one gives you very useful upgrades like being immune to the Armageddon problem (see later) and full map view. The next thing is that now you build cities to extend your territory.
There is one problem with playing early eras, you spend about an hour before anybody dies in combat. But there is one other very annoying problem they put in to add realism, after launching 10 nuclear weapons the world becomes a barren wasteland and everybody dies and loses.
The system requirements are a lot more than what you need to play, I'm running a P.II 233mhz and a 32mb video card and I have had almost NO slowdowns.
When I finally get the full version of this game I will probably never be heard from again. Go out. Buy the game. And See how great this game really is!
Rating:
Summary: This game is awesome!
Review: It's cool! You can build your own army, whether it's a tribe of indians, a herd of cowboys, or a unit of soldiers. You advance through different ages like the ancient age, the medieval age, or the modern age. you have different resources you have to collect like timber, metal, food, wealth, and knowledge. Once you get to the industrial age you have to collect oil. You can buy buildings and army bases such as lumber mill(to increase your timber income) a granary, an air base and barracks for your soldiers.and a stable for your mounted soldiers. It's really pretty cool!! The rating shouldn't be M because it's not even close to bad. Trust me!
Rating: 
Summary: Not too shabby
Review: I cant say that I was dissapointed with this game when I played it. I had been following it's progress for several months before it's arrival on the store shelves, and couldn't wait for it to come out. It looked great. For the most part, it lived up to my expectations. It has very nice graphics (example: the awesome looking waves in the water!) and I love some of the aspects in the game that I've never seen before, like the cities and borders. Another thing that I am impressed with, is how smoothe it can run. I played it on a computer with very low end specs in relation to the minimum system requirements of the game: I played it on a P3 600 Mhz, 128 RAM, 16 mb graphics card...and it still played decently for me, although I did have to put most of the graphics settings on low, and those still looked pretty good! I can only imagine how well it plays with a new computer. Anyway, the gameplay itself is great...it is much more in-depth than Age of Empires, where you just build a clump of buildings all across the map and attack and attack and attack. (Not that AOE is bad or anything...but Rise of Nations certainly is an improvement, in my opinion) Unfortunately, I was dissapointed with one aspect of the game. You advance through the ages so quickly. I found myself in the later ages (like the Gunpowder and Enlightenment Ages) and I hadn't even had a battle yet! I find this annoying, because I would think that you should spend a little time per age, having a battle or two before advancing to the Modern Age! I didn't even get to see how most of the different military units in some of the earlier ages, like the medevil age, performed in battle because of the speed of the age advancment. However, I realize that some people like it that way, and despite that, I found that you can play a complete random map game in little less than an hour and a half, which can be a useful feature when you dont have all the time in the world. To sum it up, I would buy this game over again, if I needed to. It is very well designed, and much more realistic than games like Age of Empires II, but remaining a blast to play at the same time!
Rating:
Summary: It fixes everything from the previous strategy games
Review: This is the best strategy game yet. It mixes RISK, Age of Empires, and Civilization III into a single, fun game.It allows you to set up your borders, establish new cities, and build your army of destruction. A Personal best buy from me. You can choose from many of the great nations and fight to your liking. You can command the Red Armys of Russia, or the raiding Mongols... and many more. It has a deep political system and you can do what you wish to conquer the world.
Rating:
Summary: It's a good thing I like this game..............
Review: This game raises the bar for RTS games. It is not a revolutionary improvement, but certainly a major step forward in the evolution of this genre. While similar to Empire Earth on the surface, gameplay is more sophisticated. Each nation has its own unique units and building architecture, there is a simple but real diplomacy engine, there are national borders, generals, spies, more realistic warfare, economic considerations and consequences for nuking your opponent! Best of all, it corrects one of the things that REALLY bugs me about Empire Earth. Unlike EE, Rise of Nations allows you to pit countries of YOUR choice against each other in single player mode, so you don't have Americans versus British in World War II! Graphics are nice, and the zoom modes are useful in all three modes depending on the situation, and are not there just for "gee whiz" reasons. The technology tree is sensible and easy to understand. I also like the "conquer the world" mode, where you have a turn based strategic game played on a map of the world, where individual battles are settled in real time mode with varying missions depending on what territory you are attacking/defending. Though not as sophisticated as the "Total War" strategic mode, it still works. Rise of Nations is just very well thought out overall with a lot of neat little innnovations that make for a fun game.
Now for the downside. Something was lacking in the testing of this game before it hit the shelves. Worst problem is in conquer the world mode. When you go from strategic view to an individual battle, the game crashes depending if you are in 16 bit or 32 bit color mode. This was a big problem and there was a lot of chatter about it on the bulletin boards. Patch 1.02 fixed the problem. There is also a workaround if you don't have the patch. Depending on the kind of system you have, change your display settings in Windows control panel to 32 bit true color. If that doesn't work, try 16 bit high color.
If your system tends towards the low end of the specification range for Rise of Nations as does mine( 700 MHZ PIII processor, 32MB Nvidia TNT2 video card) be prepared for a low frame rate, even with reduced graphics levels running with a "clean boot". It does not make the game completely unplayable, but it is annoying. I can't see how this game is playable at the minimum spec published on the box.
One last quibble.....why no United States? Yes I know, the US is an offshoot of Great Britain and a conglomeration of many cultures and doesn't have roots in prehistory like other countries, but how about a compromise and include the US but have it not be available any earlier than the age of enlightenment? Probably a future for RON II.........
Rating:
Summary: Great Game!....... for awhile
Review: Well first off, its just a plain good game. Although a little like empire earth in some ways it has a a ton of differences that make this game great. The gameplay is great and the AI is excellent. Its gonna take alot of memory and a good graphics card would be nice. But if you don't have all that junk you can play but sometimes when theres alot of guys on the map it slows down and thats no fun at all. There are basicly 2 games to play besides the learning mode. The conquer the world campaign is uniqe and real fun; And the quick battle. Quick battle can be customized like adge of empires with deathmatches andinfinate resorces but its basicly the same thing everytime you play that makes it boring. theres no campaigns, really. So all yuor doin is the same thing no changes. basicly theres no motive to play more. = No new levels. only one type of game (ctw and qb) are really the same just with the map like risk. iF your looking for a real stratagy and not a thriller or action this is it but stay away if you mind putting long hours to beat a single game and then doing the same thing over a hundred more times.
Either way you go microsoft did a good job with this game!
Rating:
Summary: Good Extension of an Old Theme
Review: I bought this because i was getting tired of AOE/AOC after 3 years of playing. Hard to believe that these games hold on to playability so well. I think RON is a good extension of the AOE/AOC theme and I am still getting used to it as a game on it's own merits. RON vs. AOE/AOC
Good:
Economy micromanagement is less
Graphics enchancements
Range and depth of race/equipment/victory options
Bad:
System requirements
Exitement level
No USA (in a game that touts itself to be about great nations) Some explanations, the resources such as wood and minerals don't deplete. This means you don't have to constantly allocate villagers to tasks. Also, villagers will "auto-deploy" to the most needed tasks, (which is actually an adjustable setting). The system requirements are tough, I don't remember the minimum system requirement data from the box but my PIII, 500 Mhz, 524 MB SDRAM, Nvidia GE force II GTS system could barely put out 15 FPS max, 5 or so min. The game "feels" more deliberate and less panicky. I can't explain it more right now. It's just my impression. I also like the way the territories are defined and how players cannot build cities on NME territory.
Rating:
Summary: BLOWS AGE OF EMPIRES OUT OF THE WATER!
Review: This game is one of the best RTS games I have ever played! You can choose one of 18 nations, Aztecs, Bantu, British, Chinese, Egyptians, French, Germans, Greeks, Inca, Japanese, Korean, Maya, Mongols, Nubians, Romans, Russians, Spanish, and Turks, all with different strenght's and abilities. You start off in the Acient age, with slingers (rock throwers) and finish in the Information age, with Nuclear bombs an Artificial Intellegence.
This game is very fast paced, as in, battles and wars. It is not easy to invade an enemy's territory, which is realistic. If you come with a huge assembly of soldiers, you won't have many left by the end of the battle because their reinforements keep on coming. For example, I wanted to take over the French city of Marsielles (bare with me on the spelling), and it took me nearly four epochs just to take over that city. It was frustrating, but, hey, welcome to the real world. The graphics are also superb. The battles are not extrodinary, but are fun to watch. When you drop a nuclear bomb, anything, or anyone for that matter, is destroyed within the explosion radius. You have to worry about radiation, too. After you drop your fist Nuke, a little sign comes up and says: Armaggedon-15. After you drop another Nuke, the number drops to 14. I think that when the number gets to zero, the world is destroyed and it is game over for everyone. I just wish that if you dropped a Nuke, it would destroy more that three buildings. his may not matter much to you, but it matters alot to me. The people in this game actually walk FAST! This takes away the long waiting time if you want to move a person all the way across the map. It also can come in handy if you are in a large battle or your city is being attacked, and the reinforcments are a long way's away. The conquer the world campainge is also a lot of fun. You begin with a map, very similar to Medieval: Total War. You do the same thing as Total War-move your army around the map trying to conquer the world, one terrritory at a time. When ou try to conquer the territory, sometimes there are missions: defend your city for 15 minutes, or, the usual: capture the enemy capital in 90 minutes or less. I have just begun the conquer the world campaigne, and it is very enjoyable. The gameplay is bassically the same as Age of Empires-you start out with your capital, build farms & mines &woodcutters camps. But this game goes way beyond Age of Empires. If you liked the Age of Empires series, BUY THIS GAME! Again, this game is highly enjoyable and very addictive.On easy, I beat the computer in about 3 hours, but that was on easy. This game is a great way to spend your spare time, and is definatly worth the price. This game needs a top of the line computer in order to function right. I had a NVIDIA 64mb video card, and it needed to be updated. I called the people at Microsft, and they were very helpful. The walked me through how to update the graphics card driver and were ver nice. If you have anything less that a 64mb video card, you cannot play this game. Go out and buy a new video card. This game is very fun and very addictive. It is well worth the price. BUY IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: The best game ever, if you...
Review: 1. Can play it. 2. Have above 15 frames a second at all times. 3. Slightly like Civilization/Risk. 4. Slightly like Age of Empire/Empire Earth 5. Don't hate people who take ideas out of other things and combine them. 6. Have both MP/SP capabilities. 7. Hate losing. 8. Hate winning.
When I first tryed out the game in the trial, I wasn't too thrilled. The battles that happened were amazing at first site, but after a while got a little boring. There was about 5 hours of fun though. Then when I hit the Multi it got awesome. Huge battles where I would line up my troops of Pikemen with 2 other peoples Jav throwers and LongBows and we take on piles of African guys with shields. And the crazy thing was that we kept juking out more and more units. Wild stuff if you ask me, and even better with the incredible battles. Sooner or later when I had the real game I figured out that right off the start you could start attacking the computer in single player right off the bat and the whole game was a brawlfest. I would push my forces into their land, then they would counter my units, push me back, then I would start attacking them from different sides until I won or agreed to have peace with them. One review I saw on here was someone saying that they thought that it was [odd] that everyone would rush to the gunpowder age and never midievil fight. Don't advance to the gunpowder age and the computer won't either. Now you must be thinking, "Oh! That's why I always got to the gunpowder age first!" You can set it up so the computer does get there faster then you, but with the right settings you can just fight midevil ...the whole game. Plain and simple. The game is built the way YOU want it to be. You just have to look for it.
And another review I saw was that it was boring. Uh, if you would please just check the setting and click the button that makes you gather resources faster and you can do what I do, brawl the whole time.
From the reviews I've read, it seems like most of these people just love to say that new breeds in the gaming industry [are bad].
I noticed another person said this game was 2d... It isn't, or at least half of it isn't. I'm not sure if things like the buildings are 3d, but the units definately are, you can zoom in and out on this too.
This game may or may not work for you- but you have better chances if you 1-8 at the beginning of this review.
Things that I would improve on this would be walls that you could put up(The borders are almost enough, almost.) And perhaps more settings(which Big Huge did pretty well on) on stuff like how much units effect buildings and so on.
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