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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!!!

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.

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.

This is a good game for $20...no more.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 16
Date: June 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a fan of the Rise of Nations game...in fact, if you have never played the game, don't buy this game...buy Rise of Nations & the expansion pack for nothing...MUCH BETTER GAME.

Graphics mean something the first 10 seconds...after that, game play is imo the most important thing and this game just did not do much for me.

In fact, after the first 3 levels I felt like I got ripped off and the this game was simply marketed to be bought by suckers like myself that love Rise of Nations and would buy this game just because.

Wait until the price goes down if you really want the game...the only thing you will be missing is the extra $$$ in your wallet that you will be missing after playing the game.

Pales in comparison to RON

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: July 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Gone are the nations from RON and the VAST number of different nationalities, each with different specializations. Gone is the CTW play that pits not only brute strength but also wits against the AI.

ROL starts off on the right foot, with impressive graphics, and new races to discover. However, there are only 3 main races and gone are the individualised races (like the Brits, or Americans in RON)... and this seriously damages the replayability factor for the single player campaign.

The single player campaign lacks in depth and is fairly shallow, with the plot as thin as a 20GSM piece of paper and is fairly linear as compared to RON in which you could choose which country to battle against and plot to over throw others. The in-game cutscenes come in at the wrong time and are fairly silly, with cheesy lines. The animation during the cut-scenes also disappoint.

This game also lacks the depth of RON, which has many different game types, such as sieges or raids etc...

It's simply too bad that this game is compared against its predecessor, but sadly it lacks in a lot of aspects compared to RON and it's expansion. Sadly, it's not worth the hype and disappoints... 2 Stars from me.

Very disappointed.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 17
Date: July 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Microsoft Games has proven they can make excellent RTS games. My two favorite RTSes, Age of Empires 2 and Rise of Nations, were built by them.
Like many, I bought this game because I adored Rise of Nations. I knew it'd be different, but, wow, I did not expect this. The gameplay is completely different. The removal of gathering different types of resources is discouraging. The three teams are relatively uninspired. Graphically, it's beautiful, but great gameplay is infinitely superior to good graphics.
The game is not inherently bad, but it isn't very good, especially considering all of Microsoft Game's potential and the high expectations for this game.

The single player campaign is atrocious.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: November 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Rise of Legends has three unique, visually spectacular factions, and each one differs substantially in concept from the others and from other real time strategy games.

The gameplay in single skirmish battles is reasonably good. I play strategy games for fun, and if I need to hotkey between units and select special abilities three times a second in battle, it's too much work. Each faction in Rise of Legends have hero units with a number of special abilities. Most of the other units do not have special abilities, or the abilities are automatic. This makes control much easier. Each side has several hero units they may recruit, between 10 and 15 (maybe more) combat unit types, and a number of special abilities.

But writing a convincing or interesting story with Aztec Stargate on one side, Ali Baba, Aladdin, Sinbad, and Arabian Nights on the second, and Leonardo DaVinci steampunk/steamtech on the third is tough. Big Huge Games obviously didn't try. The campaign is boring, repetitive, and predictable with terrible voice acting.

If you're the type to play an RTS in a versus mode against the computer AI or your friends, this could be a great buy. If you're looking for a nice single player campaign, it is the worst game I've ever bought in that regard.

Should have waited on this one.....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 20
Date: January 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is a waste of time, the graphics are lame and the story line sucks.

Microsoft, It's Time To Move On

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: March 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to give this game a chance. I really did. It looked very nice visually in the screenshots released. But unfortunately there was an utter failure to deliver. The concept of one single linked city was nice. I'll give it that. However, the core mechanics of the game (units etc) were horrible. I would have to say they were even less creative than those of some of microsofts older games such as Age of Empires etc. So in addition to the game mechanics feeling clunky, they also felt outdated.

Basically, overall, the story wasn't that good, the units were uninteresting to say the least, and given the multitude of other options, and I really wish I could have had those hours back.

I paid for this!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: May 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Rise Of Nations: Rise of Legends is suppose to be a remake of the glorious rise of nations but Big Huge games failed. Basically the game comes down to moving your one army around to defeat the enemy.Almost every territory you invade is capture or destroy the enemy capital.Unit A.I. in my opinion is horrible some units get stuck or scatter when you ask them to move around mountain or city.There is not much strategy to the game either it merely consist of building a large army and attacking the enemy.In some cases you don't even have to do that each time you invade a territory you have a certain amount of units you start with, and in the beginning it is easy to destroy your enemy.The games graphics may b the only thing thats saves it. I do enjoy the building animations and the mist that occurs when you go to the top of a mountain.But this can only be viewed by med-To high end graphics cards. Anything below a geforce 5700 or ati 9550 may not be able to experience the full depth of the game.
The sound is average as with most games don't expect explosions to sound as if they were happening were your sitting.
In closing statements if you buy a game based on its looks then it is for you if you buy a game based on gameplay and looks buy something else.

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