Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends

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.