A good game but is it great? Well I am a bit confused there
User Rating: 7.5 | Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends PC
1. Gameplay - For those who played Rise of Nations, some of the mechanics should be similar. Unlike other strategy games, the cities that are built cannot be destroyed. They can be captured. However, unlike Rise of Nations, you cant build cities here. There are certain neutral sites, which either have to be bought or acquired via trade or captured via force. In any of the case, the site is converted into a city. The cities can be expanded by adding districts to them. There are 4 districts and the districts are different for each race. There are 3 races - Vinci, a technologically advanced race, the Alin, a Magical race and the Cuotl, a race of advanced Aliens. The Vinci have 4 districts as the Military district, which provides protection for the city and adds to the population limit. The Merchant District which allows more Caravans to be built. The Industrial district provides you with Industry points which you can spend on powerful research or units as you see fit. Then there is the palace districts which actually grows your city in size and increases its effects on everything. There are 2 basic resources - Timonium and Wealth. Timonium can be obtained by mining it while wealth is available from trading. Besides, research laboratory can be built to get research points and perform non industrial research. The Alin have the same Military, Palace and Merchant district as the Vinci, but instead of the Industrial District, they have the magus district, which provides them with research points for performing their research. The resource mechanism is the same as the Vinci. The Cuotl have the same Military and Palace district. However, they do not trade and hence have no Merchant District. They also don't collect wealth. Instead they have Energy. This energy provides each unit with a personal shield. Energy can be gathered from the Reactor Districts, and later on from the Timonium Mines. Then we also have a Holy District. The Holy District allows the creation of Holy Arks. These Arks have the capacity to enhance production of resource or speed of building. They can be even taken to battle where any friendly unit within the radius of the Holy Ark will be healed. Construction of any district adds a research point which may be spent as wished. The resource cap mechanism still holds good. The resource cap be raised by creating Merchant or Reactor districts as the case may hold.
2. Story - The story goes by that an Alien Vessel had crashed onto a World. Technology from the vessels funneled through the ages creating three nations - The Vinci, the Alin and the Cuotl. Some say technology, some say magic and some say God - but they all agreed that these technology changed the shape of their world. The campaign starts off with an evil Vinci ruler named the Doge capturing an alien artifact that has given him immense power. The primary protagonist Giacomo is the Inventor of a Vinci city state named Miana. He and his brother were travelling very close to the territory of the Doge, when he attacked. Giacomo's brother was killed there and he vowed to kill the Doge. But soon he came to realize that the original owners of the artifact have come back to claim this world as their prize.
3. Graphics - The graphics haven't much improved from Rise of Nations. On the contrary I feel that the graphics of the original Rise of Nations was far better.
4. Sound and Music - Nothing great to mention here.
A good game no doubt. But the quirky units and races. The weird and fantastic plots and places, they beg me to ask - Is the game great? If you ask me I think the game mechanics are a tad too complicated to be called great.
