Rise of Nations

Review - This certainly is one Big Huge and actually rather good Game...

First off, let me explain something to you.. I am a snob.. a full-out over-the-top strategy snob. I cut my teeth on hex-based wargames, throw in a healthy dose of turn based strategy and top it off with computer chess. This is why, in the past, I have been guilty of scoffing at the "strategy" in real-time strategy games.. after all, where's the strategy in building heaps and heaps of units and throwing them haphazardly at your opponent?

Imagine my surprise, then, when after only a few games of Big Huge Games' newest addition to the RTS Genre - Rise of Nations, I found myself totally and utterly hooked.

Now, I am not saying that Rise of Nations (now and forever more referred to as RoN) is anything new, as far as RTS goes, most of the features and gameplay ideas will be very familiar to any RTS fan. Where RoN really knocks it out of the park is in terms of how well these existing ideas are sculpted on to a very solid engine.

RoN takes players from the Ancient Age, complete with Spear Chuckers, Slingers and blokes with Pointy Sticks, through the Medieval Ages with Knights and Catapults, past the Gunpowder Age all the way through to Modern Day with Stealth Bombers, Cruise Missiles and Flamethrowers and pretty much everything in between. Needless to say, this isn't anything revolutionary, but RoN is so polished, so flawless in its approach that you may be forgiven thinking that this is the first time. I felt like an RTS virgin all over again.

Players have the option of leading one of 18 nations through the history books in the quest for ultimate dominance, and each nation has its own distinctive units as well as special strengths, or powers. BHG (Big Huge Games) have taken extreme care in balancing all of these nations, so playing each one not only helps the player understand their opponents, but also dramatically increases the replayability - a frequent let down in other titles of the genre.

Players have the option of fighting on a myriad of maps, against 1-7 computer opponents as part of the "quick battle" scenario, and there is a veritable host of options and game styles from the traditional free for all, deathmatch, to more unusual play styles like "Assassin" and "Musical Chairs". Assassin is my personal favourite as the player is assigned a target nation to strike against, and is at huge penalties if he should try to attack another nation not on his hit list. It may sound a little unusual, but when you play it for yourself, you’ll see exactly what I mean.

The campaign in Rise of Nations is almost a game within a game. Called "Conquer the World", it places all of the 18 nations on the world map and the player must decide whether to use diplomatic, monetary wealth or military power to conquer each of the 50-odd territories. If he chooses to opt for a military solution, it spawns a real-time scenario, and I feel this works excellently to flesh out the bridge between a scope more akin to a turn-based game, to the ferocious face-off that is the real-time portion of the game.

As one would expect, there are a number of difficulty settings versus the AI, and in my long (very) years of experience, I have not seen AI this polished before. The computer plays smart, and aggressively and on most of the settings, does not "cheat". Muchos kudos to BHG - the AI routines used in RoN should be a standard all future strategy games need to aspire to.