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Not as good as Zeus

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is an inferior version of Zeus. Although both games share the same basic principles of agriculture, housing, industry, distribution, religion, and arts, Zeus had a much lighter touch and thus was more entertaining. Emperor does not have as rich a voice acting portfolio as Zeus and instead of humorous voice portrayals like the John Wayne cavalry and New Yorker inspectors in Zeus, you get very tedious, borderline offensive Chinese accents in English. (Additionally, pronunciations of Chinese words are almost always wrong outside of the main intros.)

Like Zeus, combat has many bugs, which sometimes threaten to frustrate the player into giving up. For example, if you launch an invasion, an opponent will sometimes see this as a great opportunity to attack you. Fair enough, but what's stupid is when said invader is the city you are going to attack! And the two armies blithely cross pathes and you get defeated because (ha ha) you have no military. Or worse, the tendency for a defeated city to IMMEDIATELY and repeatedly rebel. Sometimes they will rebel, presumably because you are "weak," when you are returning from conquering them. Just awful and tedious. Also, the computer controlled cannons are like incredibly virtuosos with pinpoint accuracy, but your own cannons seem to be completely ineffectual. Also, sometimes your invasions will fail for no reason, and the program gives you mounds of weapons. I can only imagine that this is because for plot reasons the programmers don't want you to win yet, but they don't want the rigged outcome to damage you too badly.

The same factors that led me to become obsessed with Zeus way back when, the fun challenges of figuring out optimal housing and distribution, etc., are in play here, so all is not lost. However, the distribution system is so dumb sometimes, it boggles the mind. Suggestion for future games: provide different settings for accepting goods from industry and other warehouses, and for distributing to industry and other warehouses.

As a stand-alone game, Emperor would be quite commendable. But as a successor to Zeus, it is a step backwards.

Love that Feng Shui

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game plays almost exactly like Zeus and Ceasar, which is fine by me. I love the city managaing type of Sim game.

The Gods are fun, if you don't anger them. The graphics are good. The soundtrack is good enough to be a CD. I've had hours of fun with this game. In addition to trade, crops and appeasing the Gods, the added challenge of making sure your city follows the principals of Feng Shui was a nice twist. It added a bit of extra need for planning. The only thing I ask, (as I do with Zeus and Ceasar as well) is that there be more types of crops, and more types available in each city at a time.

Emperor: Rise of Kingdoms

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Emperor is a real-time game in which you must fulfill stated criteria for each scenario. It has many levels of difficulty and if you start with the tutorial it allows you to learn the game as you progress. I have found it highly addicting. You must either build a new city or add a monument or complete other tasks in an existing city. It also gives a bit of a history of ancient China that adds interest to the game. However, if you like controlling your armies moves personally, this game will not suffice. The fighting is limited and you have little control. Your villagers do, however, get to build the Great Wall, and the Terra Cotta Army, among other things.

Terrific Game for the Micromanaging Person

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The Good:
Anyone who's detail-oriented or a longtime real-time strategy player will love the extent to which you can manage your town. Breakaway's game spares no aspect from religion to industry to getting every morsel of food from the farm to your citizens.

The depth and realism of all the variables that must be managed will prove challenging to even the most elite of players and intellectuals. What's more, the ambience of the game, your town, and its citizens is visually and mentally engrossing keeping you hooked for weeks.

The Bad:
While there are some improvements in the gameplay over the previous city-building games by Impressions, more development could have been taken on the multiplayer feature which is very basic. An expansion of this game would have also been superb but most players can delight themselves with the dozens of custom missions made by fellow players.

The Ugly:
Those who are not detail-oriented will not like this game. One mistake can often make or break the well-being of your city, especially on higher difficulties. One game can also take hours while RTS games like Starcraft require you to sit down for an hour or so. There is no tried-and-true rule of thumb strategy, only the requirement to think on your feet and remember the game mechanics.

For some, this can be very troubling if they don't pay attention and don't realize why 1,500 citizens all left their city.

Conclusion:
Terrific game that is engrossing and addicting. Any SimCity fan will fall in love with this game as well as the ability to compete or cooperate with other players. The time and mental investment may turn off most non-strategy players or simply those who don't have the time or energy to spare.

Long Live the Emperor...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: September 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

My first game of this series was Zeus, then I got Pharaoh and Cleopatra and then it came Poseidon for Zeus. If you liked them, you will enjoy this version set in ancient China. Graphics are better than Zeus and it comes with a mission editor. It's very addictive, can't wait for the expansion.

Good, fun game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is pretty fun. I've only played Pharaoh and Emperor in the City-building series, so I may not know much, but I can give a halfway decent review.

I like how the jobs automatically get people, unlike in Pharaoh, where you have annoying people dressed in white come out from the work area and look for people. That is a nice change. I like the residential walls. Not only do they, if placed properly, block out buildings that decrease desirability, they can be built over roads and turned into gates that can be altered on who to let in or out. Well, to a point, that is; you can only control about three groups of people, which is kind of disappointing. You can place two different crops at one farm (like grain and rice, or millet and soybeans)

One thing I found annoying is the Feng Shui, You get green, yellow, and red colors for the buildings. Red means it can't be placed, green means it can be placed with no problems, and yellow means it can be placed but people will be less happy. This gets very annoying. You sometimes have to place the buildings far away from the road to get green! It gets so annoying, I ignore it.

The main reason I didn't give this game five stars is the fact that it gets boring after a while.

Beautiful but Pedantic

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: October 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have been a long time fan of the Settler series of games where you build your city and economy to conquer the world and it is perhaps because of my fondness for Settlers that I have reservations about Emporer.
Coming from the Settlers series, I do not find the commands instinctive or easy to learn. There are far more necessary elements to make your city run smoothly and it can get a bit complicated. The tutorial is awful. It loads at the beginning of the tutorial campaign but to continue you must close it and unless you've read far enough into the text, it isn't obvious how to bring the tutorial instructions back up. While it attempts to try to break the necessary learning into managable chunks, the pictures provided on where you are suggested to put houses, mills, warehouses, etc. are small and frustratingly limited. The result is that when you move on to the next section of the tutorial you can find out that you have made some significant design errors in the previous section which will prevent you from easily completing the next section. As there are many sections to the tutorial, the problems can increase greatly as you progress.
The city designs are grid oriented, everything deals with a standard square. I personally prefer the more organic layout of the Settlers series than this enforced grid pattern but that is a matter of personal taste.
There are many beautiful elements to Emporer which is primarily the reason I haven't given up on it entirely. At New Years, if you have the necessary supplies, you can permit your people to have a celebration which is fun to watch! I really enjoyed watching the New Years' dragon parade around the city.
I'd suggest that you download the demo and give the game a try before deciding to purchase it. Some will find it wonderful, others may find it beautiful but pedantic.

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdon

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: September 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have only played the demo which I downloaded and found it absolutely fascinating. I want the whole thing! It is nearly as much fun as Zeua, Pharaoh, Cleopatra and Posiden all in one! I love it!

Emperor is great, good fun!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: December 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

What could be better than creating and then controlling the world in a purely innocent way, and learning a good deal about ancient China at the same time? I am an avid adventure gamer and this sim/strategy game has captivated my attention since it was released. I find no other game all that interesting, though I have played a few during the interim. If you like the city-building series, you cannot miss this one.

I should qualify the 1-star

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 15
Date: November 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The demo version of the game is very good but be forewarned when buying the retail version: I and many other customers have had problems installing and/or playing this game! The Emperor website has a forum where users can share their experiences and many, including myself, have vented about our inability to run the game based on the minimum system requirements. Be warned: if you have the minimum system requirements for Emperor, that may still not be enough. I have more than adequate resources to run the game, but the intro movie is the only thing that will play, then my monitor goes blank and its lights all begin blinking. There do not appear to be any patches in development to address user concerns at this time. I am not the only user who has experienced this frustrating problem. I'm returning my copy of the game and will try something else.

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