[VIDEO GAMES][REVIEW] RISE OF NATIONS - RISE OF LEGENDS (PC)

A game that helped me become a fanatic of Real Time Strategy games is “Rise Nations” from Big Huge Games (published by Microsoft). Definitely an awesome game that still ranks on one of my favorite strategy games of all time, it was a no brainer that I had to try out “RISE OF NATIONNS: RISE OF LEGENDS” from Brian Reynolds (lead designer for “Alpha Centauri”, “Civilization 2″, “Colonization” and “Rise of Nations”).

Where “RISE OF NATIONS” focused on building a village, commerce and overcoming rivaling neighbors that want to go to war for land, “RISE OF LEGENDS” follows a storyline that is broken into three parts.

The main premise is that you lead an inventor turned leader of the Vinci named Giacomo. A person who will lead the Vinci after his brother is killed in battle because of the Doge, ruler of Venucci. Needless to say, the campaign is a campaign of revenge but along the way you meet characters willing to join you and add to your arsenal.

Taking place during a steampunk era and utilizing ideas of aircraft and war machines that Leonardo DaVinci has thought up, where “RISE OF NATIONS” featured growing with technology, with “RISE OF LEGENDS”, the technology is there and the technology imagined for this game is pretty cool.

Imagine the a “Clockwork Man”, a large towering robot or “Clockwork Spider”, a robot that looks like a Spider but full of power and durable in battle. Then there is “Sawu”, the powerful geni, the “heartseeker” a demonic looking archer and much more.

As mentioned earlier, the storyline is broken up into three parts. Each part features a map of country which you must win each state and build its defenses and technology. The first part takes place in Vinci and you take on the Venucci which you battle in villages and grassy terrain. The second part is which you must go against the Alin and battle in desert terrain. The final part takes place in Cuotl and this is where you take on enemies with supernatural powers in jungle terrain.

GAMEPLAY:

Similar to most RTS (Real Time Strategy), mine for Timonium, make money and build your military and vehicles and create commerce. At times, you have less than an army and you have to outwit the opponent by using what you have to beat them. Other matches have you in one area and having to fly and ambush an army in another area.

I found the game very enjoyable and the fact that it had a storyline that features revenge, a love triangle and your typical “I am not sure I can do this…” and everyone supporting the newly made leader to fight for his cause. But despite the cliches, its the overall gameplay and atmosphere of the game. The characters and the vehicles they ride or the robots in your possession, it’s just something new and enjoyable.

I did find the second part a drag because once you beat several areas of the map, the Saw (Dark Alin) comes and destroys what you have worked hard to beat. So, you end up backtracking to build the defense and the military of that area over again. Also, some areas feel repeated (even dialogue by Giacomo is repeated) and that sucked.

But despite those minor disgruntled comments, the game is still enjoyable and will definitely test your RTS skills.

Most of all, I was able to run this on my Compaq laptop (single core, 1 GB of RAM) with no problems at all.

As for multiplayer or skirmish mode, I just played the single player mode so far, so can’t comment on these modes at all.

GRAPHICS/SOUND:

Because I do not use a dekstop for PC gaming, I’m limited to my graphics card and equipment. So, I played things on low setting but did put things on high to see how things looked and it looked great but it was taxing and thus played it on low graphic settings. So, can’t comment on the high graphical settings.

I felt that the music and voice acting was done on the cut scenes and the graphics were pretty cool. Not the best but it was fine. Dialogue was alright and it’s long but not long like “The Longest Journey” 10+ mintes of dialogue type of long.

Overall, the look of futuristic towers, prison areas or enemy headquarters placed in high cliff mountain areas combined with the unique characters and weaponry/vehicles adds to the enjoyment of the game.

JUDGEMENT:

“RISE OF LEGENDS” is an interesting game that brings together a steampunk futuristic outlook combined with mythological type of atmosphere. It’s a beautiful game and the gameplay is enjoyable. I really enjoyed this game.

As far as negatives are concern, again probably the backtracking to retake a country or hearing Giacomo saying the same things with each pre-battle sucked.

Also, I found updating my game to the latest patch to be frustrating than any game I had tried to update for a PC game ever. I ran into a problem of updating and then an error at 80%. Looking at the forums, people had similar problems which had you delete a file and re-uploading. Nope, never worked but my game worked fine and so, I said screw it with the update.

But the positives outweigh the negatives by a long margin. Most reviews on this game praised the multiplayer and some felt the single player was not all that great for them. I’ve only played single-player and enjoyed it immensely.

Anyway, “RISE OF LEGENDS” is cheap at $29.99 and you can find it at a Target store or online. And if you haven’t played “RISE OF NATIONS”, definitely pick that up as well.