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Rise of Nations Gold

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 34
Date: February 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

OK! I am a strategy game fan. This game fell way below my expectations. The technologies you can research and create are nowhere near as good as Empire Earths's. The game is slow to load, and slow to unload compared to other PC games. I'm guessing that the organizations that picked this dog for PC game of the year were paid off. The one and only feature that this game has that I liked is that there are no priests, or wizards, to create disasters that wreak havoc on your forces. I got $2.00 when I sold this cow to a used game store and was glad to get rid of it.

Gets old

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 35
Date: June 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is awful .you might like it for the first sevral games but it gets old after awhile. Every game is about the same. After you get the later technologies you just build a thousand missle silos and nuke the enemies until they get a missle shield and nobody ever wins

Fun.... For A Bit

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 15 / 22
Date: March 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have to agree with most of the reviews in that this game is truly a masterpiece of real-time-strategy (RTS). I have played many of these types of games and I found that this game offers all of the features that I always thought would make the ultimate game in this genre. You start in the ancient age and work your way all the way up to modern times. That fact alone is amazing. It is very satisfying to watch your units upgrade through the ages, from cavalry to stealth bombers, from wooden war ships to aircraft carriers. Very cool!

What gets me is the replay value of the game. I started off with the Conquer the World Campaign, which places you on a large risk type map and allows you to move armies around and invade countries with the ultimate goal of capturing the entire world. I picked the Germans and thus started with my capital in Berlin, Germany. The first few missions were fun. I captured some territory from the locals by forming raiding parties and sweeping through and destroying everything. No building and gathering resources in these missions. I was still having fun when I declared war on Greece and began to fight my first real battles. The default objective is that if you are invading a territory held by another country you have 90 minutes to capture the enemy capital. If you are being invaded you need to hold out for 90 minutes. Sounds fun. The only problem is every battle is set up the same way. How long to the expect me to keep fighting 90 minute battles that are complete replays of the last one. You start with one city and some troops and citizens, you build up your economy, and eventually you have the resources and army to defeat your enemy. That's it! Over and over! I did it about 10 times before I had enough.

I must admit that I didn't try any of the other campaigns (I think there are 5 total such as Alexander The Great and The Cold War). I just couldn't force myself to put this game in, start gathering resources, and do the exact same thing I had done the time before. I'm sure I missed something by not playing these other campaigns, but I just couldn't force myself to play this over Call of Duty. And I am of the opinion that you should never have to force yourself to play a game to begin with.

While there is some satisfaction in building up a large army and destroying your enemy it quickly gets overshadowed by the repetition of the game. If you are thinking of buying this game in the hopes of conquering the world and are not the type of person who enjoys completing the same monotonous task over and over then I would look elsewhere. While I can see why so many people enjoy this game, I wanted to present some reasons for why you may not.

Not a patch on Civ3

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: May 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game because of the good reviews it got but i have to say i was disappointed with the overall game. At first i liked the game. it was very different to other strategy games i've played and enjoyable to play at first. the major problem i found is that every single 90 minute battle you fight against another nation is pretty much the exact same. the game becomes very boring very quickly. i can't understand how people can give this game 5 stars. there is very little variety and you can't get any long term enjoyment out of the game.

Tedious and a step backwards

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: June 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Rise of Nations is a tedious game. It plays like Age of Empires (AoE1) with regards to the structures, units created, and map scale. The game units are small which causes an eye strain. Infantry units are produced 3 at a time while cavalry units 1 at a time. Do they have any attack bonuses or strengths against different types, supposedly, but it really isn't noticeable, the player spends most of the time trying to gather ridiculous amount of resources to build the army and tech tree.

The tech tree is confusing and do not seen any real bonuses to the troops by having a high tech level, aside from being able to produce more advanced units. One has to build multiple structures and multiple cities to gather resources at a fast enough pace to keep up with the computer instead of concentrating in building an army and trying to decide how to out fight the computer. The player has to build universities to get science points for research, then there is the food, gold, metal, and wood harvesting. Oh wait, if you are mechanized, now try to find the oil. But wait, each harvesting area and city can only have a fixed number of workers gathering the resources (only 5 farms per city, etc). Now you have to build another city and build the same structures in it, each city needs a granary to get the food collection bonus for those workers, same goes for the smelter, etc. It is a waste of time bouncing back between the cities and resource gathering in an RTS.

If I wanted to play a city builder game, a turn based game like Civilization 2 would be the choice.

The game gives you a "historical leader" in the campaigns, but there is no real noticeable difference in the battles by having a general. The Generals do not fight, even the mighty Alexander just stands there immobile on a horse unit and does fight to defend himself. The game AI is also poor, when you select an Army to attack a certain unit, the soldiers will move off to fight, while the Generals and supply units remain behind instead of moving in support of the army. As a result of this glitch, the units become out of supply (suffer from attrition) and lose any command bonuses from their General.

Rise of Nations is a regression in the RTS genre to AoE1 with illogical tech trees and too much time being spent on sending merchants, and trying to gather the multiple resources in building cities. Empire Earth also suffers from having to gather multiple resources instead of focusing on strategy in defeating the opponent.

The campaign game, I played the Alexander one, is also quirky. You move your armies and fight one battle per turn, but there are no historical scenarios like in the campaigns in AoE2.

Overall, the game was not enjoyable and a waste of my time. AoE2 is much more enjoyable. Recommend Civilization 2 for turn based city empire building, AoE2, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, or Warhammer Dawn of War for an RTS game instead.

Rise of Nations: A Little Bit Too Much

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 14
Date: December 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Rise of Nations seems like a good game at face value. However, what you will soon find is that it is dreadfully hard to get a real time strategy game that can excell in all areas of civilization. Those that try, like Rise of Nations, end up packing in too much stuff that eventually makes it very repetitive and can be more work than fun. Turn based games like the Civilization Series handle this better, as the player has all the time in the world to manage their civilization. In Rise of Nations, if you go to the bathroom without pausing, you could return finding your civilization in runes. The computer players are very undiplomatic and will declare war with little cause. RON (Rise of Nations) has a very bad diplomatic system, and a poor technological one aswell. The game is also full of limits. You have to research technology before you can build a certain number of cities. That just isn't really historically accurate, and it can be very limiting for the player. Rise of Nations is between a military game and an economic-diplomacy game to the point where it does neither one well. Military conflicts are very predictable and the affects of strategic attacks are often too nominal. I would suggest going in a different direction than RON. For a more military route, try Empire Earth I (Not EEII, as it is a Rise of Nations clone) or something in the Total War series. For a diplo-economic game, try the Civilization series or a citybuilder game like the SimCity series or Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile. If you don't mind weaker graphic you could try one of the old historical citybuilder games, such as Acropolis, Caesar III, or Pharoah. Try one of these other games, but I'd keep away from Rise of Nations. If this review doesn't deter you, keep in mind that it is coming up on three years old now. If thsi game still appeals to you after all I've said, go for a newer game that plays like Rise of Nations, such as Empire Earth II.

My view

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When RON came out, it was definitely the best game of its kind: the graphics and game engine were far superior to anything that had been made before. However, there are now several better games on the market.

Summary:

Great fun to master, but once you're good - it's very tedious.

Also, there are a few critical flaws in the AI, making the game seem rather stupid at times.

Overall, it's great for a short-lived, thrill of a gaming experience, but once you've conquered the world, you've conquered it - there's nothing else to do, unless you want to conquer it again...

Fun, but lacking some features.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: May 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is great, really. However, it always feels a little like a setpiece battle because everyone is researching the exact same technologies at the exact same time, just trying to get slightly ahead of the next guy. It would have been nice if there had been a technology tree instead of a technology calendar. Still, I love playing this game, especially on the easiest level, because you can win every time. Nukes are especially entertaining. The manual could use some work explaining things - I hate learning games from pop-up instructions in the game itself.

Still, overall, it's pretty entertaining. Just don't expect it to be too brainy.

doesn't live up to age of empires, unfortunately.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: December 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

first off, the "thrones and patriots" expansion pack has noticeably better graphics.

anyway, i had enough of this game even before finishing scenarios... it just doesn't live up to age of empires. here's why. first of all, things simply move too fast. you research ages at lightning-fast speed, to where you don't even know what you're doing. you're clicking on build military units not even knowing what exactly they are, just so you can put up a fair fight. basically you're doing a bunch of things really fast that you don't appreciate because the game moves too fast. in age of empires 2, probably the best RTS game ever, you had to take your time and make sure not to run out of resources. here, it's all about EXPANSION. you have to keep expanding and expanding and expanding at lightning pace.. instead of having one city and working on it, you're supposed to create as many cities as possible!!! the idea is almost laughable. it takes so much trouble to build one city with the appropriate buildings etc., and here you're supposed to build multiple cities as fast as possible. hmm... not exactly like history, at all. not that realism is always a good thing in gaming, but it would be nice to have a sense of time and feel like your discoveries and accomplishments actually mean something, instead of just clicking "research civics," "research military" over and over.

that said, there are amazing things about rise of nations. the combat is a dream because you create and control military units as a unit... in other words you don't control just one soldier, you click and it selects all 3 archers you just created. the one thing i LOVE about rise of nations is that you can drag a box around ONLY military characters without selecting your citizens, too. obviously you don't want to send them into battle. this will surely become the standard control for RTS games from here on out.

citizens are easy to manage because they go to work at an appropriate place as soon as they're created. farms aren't a hassle like in AOE, because they're an unlimited food supply and don't go bad. with so many great things going for RON, it's a shame they didn't SIMPLIFY IT to be easier and more addictive like AOE. you have all these issues with tributes and truces and blah blah blah. oh yeah, and figure them all out while your battles are raging instead of getting to pause first. i really WANT to like this game, a lot... but it makes my head spin playing it.

Pretty, but once you beat it, why play it again?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: July 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I was hoping that this would be a game with a lot of replay-ability and what I got was a game that, once you learn it, just becomes tedious.

Once you figure out what you need to do to get your civilization going, it's a matter of building the same city the same way over and over.

And, it didn't take me long to find an approach to beating the computer that the AI couldn't cope with. I suppose this game would be a lot more fun to play against other humans, but you'd think that in this age of 2 gig and faster processors these game manufacturers would be able to build a game where the computer could really think out some challenging tactics. Not in this game.

So, for me it was fun getting up the learning curve, but now it's boring and once I win the current game I'm playing, on "tough" mode on a "big huge" map, I plan to sell it used.

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