Rise of Legends is an interesting one. The game stays clear of its original setting, and opts a new style where fantasy clashes with sci-fi. It doesn’t necessary work well, but it is part of the game’s charm. There are three distinct races in the game that live in the world completely different from one another. The Vinci are pretty much inventors who focus their fights with science and mechanics, such as tin robots, steam cannons and helicopters. The second, the Alin, are a desert race whose society is built off magic. While the Cuotl are an alien race hoping to enslave the inhabits of the world with their alien technology and flying saucers. It all sounds terribly weird, but in a gameplay sense it does prove to be successful.
Each race is so varied in style that RTS fans will eventually gel with a race that suits their playing style. The Cuotl rely on gamers to swiftly move, proving to be the team that suits fast moving gamers, with their units being most effective in smaller numbers. The Alin have a lot more cheaper and disposable units at hand, so large armies are a key for them. While the Vinci is focused more on base building and is the most balanced side of them all. Building each of these armies is a bit different too. Structures are completely different from team to team, however the core of unit and resource gathering remains the same with each team. For instance the Cuotl can build their infantry buildings, with their secondary use being a transport pod to relocate units to different areas on the map. Half the fun is trying to understand the unique differences of each and every race.
Open the flood gates.
Rise of Legends maintains a lot of what was seen from the original. Army building is virtually the same, and the game maintains the border system that only allows gamers to build structures within their zone. While there are some minor deductions and inclusions, the core gameplay feels very similar to Rise of Nations, which can be seen as a positive or negative depending on how you liked the original.
The game includes a fairly length campaign mode too, which is unfortunately poorly executed. The mode remains similar to Rise of Nations, with the conquer the world mode still intact. You’ll move your forces from one area of the map to another where you’ll fight in typical RTS fashion to hopefully conquer that zone, and eventually meeting your ideal goal. The unfortunate thing about this structure is that it is unbelievably repetitive and there’s very little flow to it at all. You will always be doing virtually the same thing in the majority of the maps – build a base, gather resources, build an army and finally accomplish your goal. It’s unfortunate that you never get to carry over any of your technologies or troops over from previous maps, meaning the game unnecessary drags on. The story is fairly weak too. You’re the Vinci who are trying to stop the powerful Doge from turning the world upside down and their attempt to destroy every city on their way. The premise of why you actual want to fight them doesn’t really make sense at all, and the continuing flow of how the story progresses is very dry. And thanks to this conquer the world mode; it can prove to make the story flow even worse. If for instance the enemy recaptures one of the zones you took off them, you’ll have to recapture that yourself – leaving you to do that scenario all over again. Not fun. Overall, the campaign mode is just one massive hit and miss. Some of the missions are quite enjoyable, but soon become unnecessary due to the poor structure.
The game also includes skirmish and multiplayer modes that ensure for a bit more fun. The skirmish mode boasts quite a few maps to play on, however, the AI is far from prefect, and completely neglects the fun in RTS games. The game suffers from silly AI issues such as poor use of their team, sends troops in small forces and can often be fairly defensive. This wasn’t all; there were countless times where the AI wouldn’t even react to our moves. Sending in a few flying troops on the opponents city the enemy units wouldn’t react, and there were a number of occasions where we would simple shoot at the enemy with little or no retaliation. All of the AI problems witnessed are fairly primitive in RTS standards, and it’s something that baffles the mind when games still suffer from this. The multiplayer modes aren’t a great deal better either. You have the option to choose from LAN or Online play, with both being very similar in design. At the moment the online mode seems to have quite a few flaws in its design, with constant lag and dropouts being quite common. However, the set-up and interface of online games is quite appealing.
The potentially good conquer the world mode in action
Graphical Rise of Legends is yet another hit and miss. The landscape in the game is stunning, with the environments being a real treat on the eyes. Unfortunately though, everything else is a complete mess. The models of units are very basic and lack any sort of detail, the textures can be a little blurry and the shadowing is a mixed bag of who knows what. The in game cut scenes are even worse. The animation is dreadful, and things just seem a little dated. Being a game that warrants large-scale battles it isn’t exactly reassuring when you play a large map with hundreds upon hundreds of troops fighting to only have the game drop in frame rate considerably. We had to resign from a map because things just wouldn’t move. The game does introduce a number of cool graphical effects such as buildings crumbling when hit on impact. However, this is also poorly executed and is something Age of Empires III accomplished so well several months earlier. And boy, the sound is no better. The voice acting is really uninspiring, lacking any sort of impact, and the soundtrack and sound effects are dreadful. A lot of sound effects seem to be missing, and the ones that are there seem to be recycled. A fairly average attempt in terms of presentation.
Sequels aren’t always guaranteed to be more successful than their original counterparts, and Rise of Legends is a perfect example of this. Rise of Legends is a case of putting together all these neat ideas from other games, but to only find out that the result isn’t as good. While Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends isn’t a bad game; it isn’t a terribly good one when other RTS games do a far better job. Fans of the series may find something to love from this game, as well as casual RTS fans, but Rise of Legends isn’t a game that will hold your attention for long since the problems persist throughout the entire game - ending in a rather flat experience.
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