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Rise of Nations (PC)

Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along
I started playing this game on Wednesday 30 November, 2005  //  I stopped playing this game on: Monday 23 August, 2010
Current opinion of this game
Ver interesting. I need to play some more to understand it better.

November 23, 2007 02:15:47 PM
It's strange to admit that I haven't played ANY of the campaign missions. None.
I messed around a bit with the tutorial and then straight into multiplayer.

It's been fun, but I haven't been able to find the "sweet spot" in terms of challenge. A friend and I play as a team and when we play against 2 AI opponents on "Easy" we walk all over them. Then we set it on "Moderate" and we get thrashed. It seems that so much of the game depends on those first 10-15 minutes... if you don't have a decent army by then and haven't taken out an opponent's cities...you'll get wiped.

Oh well. Like I said, we still have fun. :-)


May 2, 2007 12:25:24 PM
A friend and I have been talking about playing a few matches of this to unwind (it's the end of the term). So, I've unpacked and re-installed because I need to get up to speed quickly...

I played a few more tutorials and I feel a lot less overwhelmed than when I first started. It does seem that this is more a game of economy/territory and production rather than military might. That's not a bad thing necessarily.

The tutorials are brilliant. By far the best I've seen/played in as far as I can remember. They're truly outstanding because not only do they explain what you need/might want to do, but they also offer options! I played one where suddenly I there was a popup that asked me if I was having fun or not and would I like the "ramp things up a bit" by introducing some combat. Brilliant!


March 7, 2006 04:25:45 PM
I should have typed this a looong time ago. Like, 2005!

Anyways, I played a couple of hours in the open/campaign/tutorial mode. As you can see I'm not entirely sure what mode I played in, but there was definitely some tutorial thing going on, though it was also an open level in the sense that I played for a looong time.

My overall feeling could be summarized as overwhelmed, but in a good way! I'm not blaming the game for this at all. I jumped in without knowing what I was doing, had fun, but felt that I had only barely scratched the surface of all the things this game has to offer. I really want to go back to this game and take it a little bit slower..sort of ease my way into the wide variety of things there are to try out.

I also think that the national borders thing is real cool, I've always thought that it's a shame that most RTS don't account for supply lines and the logistics that make war so complicated to manage. I think that this little innovation is definitely a step in the right direction.

So when will I play it again? I don't know. These sorts of games almost require that you dedicate a lot of time to playing them. I mean, you can't really get anything done if you play for less than 3 hours in a row. Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but nonetheless...I...need...more..time!


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria