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Great Game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 20
Date: May 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It has the best parts of the first Rise of Nations and is unique compared to other fantasy games out today.

Rise Of Legends

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 15
Date: May 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Rise Of Nations: Rise Of Legend is a multiplayer strategy war game for the PC. While I wouldn't rate it as highly as War Craft or other great games, it has fairly extensive campaigns and an interesting approach in the clash of magic and technology.

Each of the many units and the three playable races requires a slightly different strategy to play and win. The scenes range from cities to deserts to frozen wastes and you battle machines as well as creatures. There's also bonus content online.

Disappointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 16
Date: May 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The graphics are very good, but by this point in game development I nearly expect great graphics from any new RTS. The game play leaves much to be desired. I have been playing RTS games for well over a decade. Usually I enjoy getting straight to game play for a few days, then studying the instructions at some later point so that I can master the game for multiplayer use. RoL however is extremely unintuitive. Hotkeys are changed from RoN, the economy is a little difficult to figure out (specifically the nearly instant economy cap necessitating "markets" at every "town" you capture), and the research is just odd.

Although I did enjoy the heroes for a little while, too many units have special powers. Further, top level units are far too powerful (a few can level cities and armies with the exercise of a single "spell.")

To avoid a completely negative review, I will say the solo campaigns are interesting enough to keep you busy for a while.

I applaud the developers at Big Huge games for their creativity and willingness to take a risk. That said, I didn't get more than a week's play before I was tired of this game. Luckily, I still have RoN to play.

Hovering Around "Average"

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 13
Date: May 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Rise of Nations was great. The gameplay was fluid and intuitive, the open-ended "Conquer the World" scenarios were great.

So, I bought Rise of Legends. Everything about it seems half-baked. They did away with the "Conquer the World" scenarios in favor of single player campaigns with "plots". Too bad the plots and characters are uninteresting.

The build system is quite unique, which is commendable - never hurts to try something different, but it's totally unintuitive and took me hours to get used to it.

I'm running on a fairly high range system (3Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6800GT 256MB) and the framerates are awful - especially in large battles. It gets so bad that it's virtually impossible to keep track of your mouse pointer around the screen. And it's not like the graphics are THAT much better than Dawn of War, which runs beautifully on my system.

All in all, not worth the $50. Maybe $20. If you really really want to play this game, wait for the price to drop and play Rise of Nations or Dawn of War or StarCraft or WarCraft 3 or Age of Empires 2 in the meantime - all these RTS games are better and much cheaper.

Crashes Every 5 minutes

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 16
Date: May 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Very dissapointed I a High level gaming box and for some reason this game crashes every 5 minutes...I am talking hard crash I have to do a full shut down. Never had a game that was so bad...even after three patches and 3 hours on the phone customer support no one has a clue. When you spend $300 on an "gaming" audio card...you expect stuff to work....WORST GAMING EXPERIENCE EVER!!!

shallow and repetitive, but not terrible

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 15
Date: May 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have played many RTS games and compared to Rise of Nations, the best ever, Rise of Legends is shallow and repetitive. I have to disagree with the other reviewers about the interface - I found it intuitive enough, and did not have to read the manual. I also did not have any problem with the frame rate. The problem with the game is that there is just not much to it. You have three races you can play, but except for different looking buildings and people/creatures you essentially play them the same. There are many different maps, but for some reason the different maps do not effect your strategy very much. The city building, tech tree, strategy, and tactics are standard for RTSs but are quite simplified compared to RON, which is not better. The games within the three campaigns are extremely (repeat - extremely) repetitive, as are the single player skirmishes. The AI is really stupid at any level, so beating it does not require any creativity or skill. On the plus side the graphics are good (these days that is expected), the different fantasy elements are cool, and there is not anything actually wrong with the game except the above. If you are new at RTSs this will probably be fun for awhile. If you are an experienced RTS player, skip it unless you are seriously bored.
There are a lot of serious bugs. The one I ran into was that a scenerio wouldn't end even though I had completed all the objectives. I called Microsoft and they downloaded a patch which worked. The patch (or patches) have not been released as of this review, so if anything goes wrong, do call them. I don't think their web site is helpful.
By the way, if you haven't played Rise of Nations, get it. I've played it probably a couple of hundred times and it is not boring yet.

Really quite good, rich and beautiful.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 48 / 55
Date: May 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've never played Rise of Nations, so I can only judge this against other RTS games I've played.

This one rocks. The AI is leagues above almost anything else I've seen -- I never end up with units just wandering aimlessly in a corner because it couldn't path around a tree.

The visuals are amazing -- my base down in a valley gets obscured by mist when I go up a hill to move troops. The detail in the units and buildings is AMAZING. I've not seen anything come close in another real time strategy.

The diversity of units is great as well - I get a sense of three distinct cultures and approaches, but it still feels well-balanced between the sides. I also appreciate that in the campaign, there are necessary solutions beyond the usual "build a big army and throw it at them" strategy most other games employ.

The UI was easy to learn - perhaps again because I never played the original Rise of Nations?

I don't know how this compares to the very acclaimed Empire Earth and Total War series, but this is definitely in-line with the great games like Warcraft/Starcraft, Age of 'x' series and Command and Conquer.

I needed a diversion from my WoW gaming, and this is it. My poor guildmates might miss me.

Very fun game with a few problems

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: May 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When it comes to sheer fun factor, this game is up with the best. The graphics are spectacular at their highest settings, with loads of special effects and detailed models. The gameplay is great, mixing the best parts of games such as Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Age of Empires, and of course, Rise of Nations. The "ultimate" units are absolutely incredible looking, the Vinci Leviathan in particular. Seeing the Leviathan and King Leviathan in action is really, really, really cool, with gigantic explosions and a shadow that envelopes units below it. The other units look and play well too, every unit having a good amount of personality. However, the issues this game has at the moment can't be ignored. Even on high-end systems the game stutters at high or sometimes even medium and low settings. The online connectivity lacks a lobby and chat channels outside of a game, which is disappointing considering multiplayer is supposed to be a big part of the game. Although I'll admit I haven't played the campaign (I've never cared for single player games), I've heard that it is somewhat underwhelming. The sound is also weak. While the music is okay, the sound effects are very sparse. Strangely, when the game is zoomed in, the sound effects aren't nearly as muted. You can't stay zoomed in all the time though, so hopefully the developers will realize this and fix the sound. Also an issue are crashes. I've tried playing multiplayer and the people I'm playing with crash out often, ruining our games. There are also some connectivity problems. Hopefully, there will be a patch soon that fixes the issues the game has, but overall the game is very fun. It just came out a bit too early.

Decents RTS game,with a good online multiplayer server

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 17
Date: May 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

For a very new game I like it. Has many options and maps, with lots of upgrades, and any strategy player will enjoy this one, MS has been good about regualr patches, the online multiplayer is good, just needs some more players.

Underwhelming

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 72 / 93
Date: June 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've been a long-time RTS player and can honestly say that I've been around the block a few times when it comes to the genre. When "Rise of Nations" came out, particularly when they added the "Thrones and Patriots" expansion, I thought I'd found one of the best all-around RTS games. The gameplay was smooth and continually interesting. The economy and research behaved in the way that seemed intuitive, and best of all, it had a fantastic Conquer the World aspect that allowed you to engage in the act that fuels the dreams of every RTS fan alive: to unite the entire world under your banner. I probably invested hundreds and hundreds of hours playing the conquer the world game.

When I heard that the same company that created such a fantastic game were creating another title that was hyped as the next step up from Rise of Nations, I was ecstatic. I waited for a year, visiting the official website religiously for screenshots and gaming articles. I purchased the game a few days ago and can sum it up in one word: uninspired.

I'll leave discussions of graphics and sound to other players, but the gameplay is somewhat tepid. Instead of Rise of Nations many different resources, RoL has narrowed the resource count to two, making me wonder whether I was playing a game from 2006, or whether I'd warped back in time to my old Starcraft days. Instead of being able to place fortresses and cities to expand my national borders, I am forced to capture neutral cities at predetermined locations. Instead of an engaging Conquer the World game where I could march numerous armies across the globe, crushing enemies, forging alliances, and betraying old friends, I found a lukewarm single-player campaign with undeniably limited replay value.

The single player campaign decidedly lacks imagination. Whereas in Rise of Nations, if you controlled a very large empire, you could enter a new battle with a decent lead on a smaller opponent, in Rise of Legends, you might enter a battle with the ability to place an oasis on the map. Cut scenes have stilted and lackluster dialogue like "An enemy is near. If an enemy stands in our way, we must eliminate them." C'mon. Is that really all the motivation the people at Big Huge Games can muster for our heroes to march our forces into a country?

As if the cut scenes weren't bad enough in terms of dialogue, the "plot" of the single player campaign is riddled with plot-holes making what might otherwise be a semi-engaging story seem more like an excuse to simply engage in a series of standard Quick-battle games.

(*Spoiler*) For instance, after you march your army (you only seem to get one, even though in RoN you could have a dozen armies) to Venucci to kill the Doge and his Doomcannon, he escapes with the Doomcannon. The Doomcannon is roughly the size of a Capital City, but somehow, despite that it must traverse overland, you are unable to catch up to it in pirata airships.

In each campaign battle, your heroes are given a few main quests to finish, like "Capture the Enemy City" or "Kill the enemy hero." Apart from these tired main quests, there are a few bonus quests that you might stumble across while completing the main quest. While that sounds interesting, they quickly lose their appeal when you realize that frequently, there are absolutely no rewards for completing the bonus quests. In fact, in some instances, completing bonus quests will actually hurt you in terms of overall productivity by wasting men and resources on something that gets you absolutely no closer to completing the main quest that will end the quick battle.

It's hard to muster a lot of enthusiasm for this game after having played it. While still a mildly entertaining game, it brings nothing particularly new to the genre apart from some of the race concepts themselves. Even the 'dominance' system in the game seems suspiciously like a copy of the 'Crowns' system from Empire Earth II. The concepts for the game are good, but I'm fully at a loss to explain why Big Huge Games threw away many of the details that made Rise of Nations such a fantastic game and put this out on the market instead.

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