Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends

The Good
In one word: aesthetics. In terms of design, this game is sublime. Presenting us three radically different, yet equally fascinating races: the steampunk Vinci, the arabesque Alin and the mysterious Cuotl. The first are a blend of Renaissance and Industrial themes, vomiting steam all over. They are followed by a race whose main inspiration comes from the Arabian Nights tales. While the first were science and technology all over, the latter rely on magic and manipulation of natural elements: glass, sand and fire. The third are, ideologically speaking, a mixture: a Mayan-like civilisation which is based on the tyrannical worship of its gods. What appears to be religious magic turns out to be the work of aliens who, after crashing in this strange world, became the bulk of the Cuotl pantheon.

As you can guess, gameplay is far from boring. Adopting the same philosophy from Rise of Nations, with resource caps and based around cities and borders, Rise of Legends is a bit more fast paced. It does not rely on ages, but rather on city size. As your main city grows with districts you build, new technologies become available.

The music is impressive, and you will recognise many of the tracks if you played Rise of Nations - musics which now sport a more classical and baroque, but nevertheless spectacular, theme.

The Bad
The single-player campaign, mainly. A confusing and badly-developed story which revolves around a Risk-like strategic map. It can be entertaining at times, and it certainly is not short, but you will feel that something was lacking when you finally beat the game.

The Bottom Line
For those who enjoyed Rise of Nations, this is a must-have. For those who did not, or were not able to, this is your opportunity to fetch a great-looking, impressive and addictive real-time strategy game.

The Good
It is almost a work of art. The attention to detail in the landscape and units and the meshing of the music to the atmosphere lent the game a good epic impression. I also liked the highly challenging AI. The game lets you choose many levels of AI from easy to extremely hard. At moderate and above the AI will act to surprise and fight hard to the end.

The Bad
I usually like random maps and this game doesn't have completely random maps. However, it does have a great many maps if you ask it to select randomly it will, out of various types of maps (2v2, 3v3 etc). There's enough maps to make it feel quite random. Also, this is a suspicion, but I think the buildings and units and bonuses on each map change with each play. The number of maps and their variety provide a strong random feeling.

The Bottom Line
Good fantasy RTSes are hard to come by. Rise of Legends is a very useful addition which guarantees you a very challenging and epic game each time. You can expect to feel dejected when the AI beats you easily and to feel satisfied when you beat the AI. You can also expect some degree of immersion in the beautifully animated and detailed realms of steampunk, magic and quasi-Egyptian science. It really is a good way to dream and live in a different world. Maybe that's what games really are about? If so, then yes this is a very good addition to your library.