Rating: 
Summary: Short and Tall, Nuke 'em all! Great game.
Review: This a great empire building game. I love how it tends to end in total nuclear war! Blow it to hell, baby! A lot of funny. It is going for $39.95, wait a year and it will be down to under $20.
Wyatt Kaldenberg
Rating:
Summary: Great New RTS
Review: I love RTS games. And this game is no different. It is one of the most challenging I have played and that is saying a lot. The graphics in this game are great because you can actually see what each of your civilians is doing.
A cool feature that it has is rare resources. When you find these resources on the map you can send a merchant to go collect them to give you bonuses in different areas of your civilization.
Another cool feature of this game is the addition of national borders. Each city you build has a certain range and allows your borders to expand, you can't however build cities in other people's countries, which makes sense.
When you build a university you have to actually create the scholars inside of it in order for it to be useful, this is just an example of how indepth this game really is.
I find the most fun to be during the WWII period, even though medieval period is my favorite in History.
The battles are massive at times and are always fun. This is a definite must have for any RTS fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Great game!
Review: I must say that RoN is one of the best RTS games I have ever played! The gameplay is well-paced, the units are plentiful and balanced, great music and top notch animation to boot.My chief and only complaint is that nuclear weapons dominate the late game too much, and any game ending in the modern nuclear ages suffers from an inevitable nuke-tossing fest. Some may love this, but I prefer a unit to unit duke-out by non-nuke means. Even with this in mind, I must say that overall this game is an absolute must-have for any self-proclaimed RTS gamer!!
Rating: 
Summary: BORING!!!!!!!
Review: You can't judge a book by its cover and you can't judge a computer game by its box. Granted the game looks cool, but its sooo confusing! The instruction booklet is like 2 pages and just gives credits for who made the game- who would want to take credit for this awful game? The game is way to boring and takes a Harvard graduate to understand. If you want a real game get Age of Empires or Empire Earth.
Rating:
Summary: Rise Above the Rest!
Review: This game blows every RTS since out the water. The graphics and earthly details about this game are AWESOME! The naval and air units play a cruical part in the game. Playing online with a group of friends is the ideal way to play this game. I also agree that intellect is a must in the strategic and tactical output durring battles against the AI or human players.
Rating:
Summary: A good game
Review: I really like the risk like single player campaign. I would love to see that part of the game for multiplayer. This is a great solo game but I am more of a multiplayer kind of gamer. Unfortunately, this game doesn't have a big multiplayer following so finding good games on the net is kind of hard.
Rating:
Summary: Nice graphics but same ol thing
Review: The game *looks* nice. But it's just a click fest like the other hundred games in this genre. If you enjoy mousing around faster than your opponent, you'll dig it. If you enjoy more strategy then get Civ III.
Rating:
Summary: Rise of the Sequel!
Review: If you liked the other Age of Empires games, you'll love this game. It is nearly identical to the previous games, with updated graphics and a few minor improvements. I thought the whole series rather boring and uninspired, hence the poor review.
Rating:
Summary: Hardcore Civ Fan a Wee Bit Disappointed
Review: I'm a huge fan of the Civilization series, and my significant opinion is that Civ II was the pinnacle of the series. It didn't have the great interface of III, or some of the great and important technical features of III, but the balance and engagement of II is superior. I'm not typically an RTS fan, but was looking forward to playing this game based on the other reviews and the Civ history of the creator. The Civ influence is large in this game in terms of play concepts, which are well-executed. However, the mythic engagement of the Civ franchise is totally gone. Cities have no character and you view them purely from a production standpoint. Wonders aren't very exciting as they are cheap and totally odd choices, and they are built with no fanfare. I don't ever feel like I'm building a civilization. I only ever feel like I'm building an army. Which I find to be pretty adolescent, though enjoyable on its own level. My most significant complaint is that even within this limited context of the game as a war scenario, I go whole ages without using my units in battle (since ages last about 30 min or less), which completely robs me of the joy of using them. In Conquer the World setup, an age last 3-4 turns! WTF! Why bother having ages at all if you're going to skip over them like a stone on water? The tactical use of your units when you do get to use them is well-developed and fun. However, I have to note that whenever I start playing this game after dinner, the next time I look at the clock is always around 2:30 AM. I'll play this game, but I can't help playing it with a sense of missed opportunities for the great mythos involved in building and defending a civilization.
Rating:
Summary: Best Realtime Strategy Game, Ever
Review: I find it hard to believe that several people on here thinks Rise of Nations is just another strategy game. It is not. It's better than Age of Empire, it's better than all of strategy games i have played. You get to control a nation with special attributes (there are 18 nations total). You can play from any age to any age (i.e. from ancient to enlightenment or to information technology or to medieval, whatever you want). This is not a game where you can win by throwing everything at your opponent. Most strategy games can be won this way, but not this one. I have beaten opponents with much smaller army,than theirs (at least in the enlightenment age) using good strategy in combat. Multiplayer games are a blast. This is where it really shines (the computer AI is also much more intelligent than most games - it finds the weakest part of your overall strategy and tries to exploit it. It does decoy attacks and launches its main attack elsewhere, brilliant). National borders is also a really nice feature, as it is far more strategic now to place your cities, than AoE ever was. The graphics are incredible, though you may experience compatiblity problem with older video cards. And you really do need a fast computer for the game to shine. You should at least try their trial version -- goto http://www.bighugegames.com, and play it for a while.
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