Metareview - Rise of Legends
by Alan Rose 
{ May 22nd 2006 at 10:58PM }
The double-edged sword of success must have weighed heavily on the minds of Brian Reynolds and his creative team at Big Huge Games. In developing Rise of Legends, they were faced with the challenging, yet unenviable task of following up the game's hit predecessor, Rise of Nations. So what do you do for an encore? First, retain Nations' user-friendly interface, and then overcompensate for some poor audio choices by introducing three oddly original, and exceptionally balanced races. Those looking for a unique twist on traditional RTS civilizations will appreciate Legends' blend of classic fantasy, myth, and technology, as well as the visual quality Big Huge has become known for.
- 1UP (90/100) gives kudos for balance and diversity among the Vinci, Alin, and Coutl races: "Whereas Rise of Nations had a bunch of historic civilizations with relatively minor distinctions in their units and technology, Rise of Legends throws only three races into the fury, but they're both unique and incredibly well balanced."
- IGN (82/100) likes a good fight in campaign mode: "The AI is generally very good. The enemy knows how to use its hero units and, though it still suffers from the trickle tactics of most RTS' AI, it can still manage to put together a sizable enough force to make you break a sweat. If the challenge level isn't just right, you can actually adjust the game's difficultly at any point during the campaign."
- Gamespot (76/100) warns of a potentially difficult transition from standard RTS fare: "Each of the civilizations is so offbeat that there are no reference points, no similarities to RTS conventions that you can latch onto and use to dip a toe into the weirdness. The story in the campaign is decidedly convoluted, as well."
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Amos @ May 22nd 2006 11:09PM
I love that Gamespot quote in comparison with what they say is "good" about the game in their little intro-summart, "The Good: Very similar to Rise of Nations; interesting, offbeat races and units; great art design." I hate gamespot.
Andir @ May 22nd 2006 11:29PM
I played it, and wasn't impressed at all, which is unfortunate since it had potential.
Clay @ May 22nd 2006 11:29PM
I'd side more with 1UP and IGN on this one; it's a solid game, much better than Gamespot described. Any fan of Rise of Nations should check it out, but it's a great game for pretty much anybody.
Morgon @ May 23rd 2006 12:14AM
I still think they need to port this, or another Strategy game like Civ to the Xbox 360.
Battle for Middle Earth counts, I suppose, but I really want something like this, or Civ, or even Age of Empires.
Something engaging that takes some time and thought!
Gavin @ May 23rd 2006 1:48AM
I'm currently addicted to this, but I was a huge RON fan as well.
Alkaiser @ May 23rd 2006 2:44AM
I'm not liking this nearly as much as I liked Rise of Nations. I liked playing actual countries, especially since the voice acting is so stiff and wooden.
I mean, the Vinci are supposed to be these pseudo-Italians, so, you have people trying to hold this Italian accent while talking about made up concepts and countries, and the emphasis keeps getting placed on different syllables for these words throughout the game.
Then the fact that there are 3 different races in the game, I've fought something like 15 battles, and as the humans I've only fought 2 against non-human races. I guess the designers decided that the single player game should be some kind of multiplayer primer, where you're just getting hammered with tactics to use in single player missions or something.
I don't think this game would work too well on a 360 without a mouse, (No, it wouldn't work on a Wii, either.) but I do agree console gamers do need to get something that makes you think a bit more than your stock RPG. I remember loving Nobunaga's Ambition as a kid. Something like that on a new console would be really cool.
Ard-righ @ May 23rd 2006 3:15AM
Unfortunetly I disagree with people thinking this game can appeal to anyone. It is an extremely complicated game in comparison to just about any other RTS. You have 2 resources, research, dominances (of which there are 4 individual bars to watch), and if your Vinci, prototypeing to manage. Also, the campaign actually doesn't prepare someone for multiplayer at all. The single player game uses a completely different system to upgrade your units or gain access to new units than the multiplayer game. Because of all this I think the game is unsuited for casual players who also want to play the multiplayer portion.
On the other hand, I absolutely love this game and think it's a wonderful game for the hardcore gamer. If you can handle multitasking your various abilities this game amply rewards you.
Oh and the voice acting sucks chunks, just like 90% of all the other games out there.
Osirls @ May 23rd 2006 4:59AM
Argh but Why should it have poor voice acting?
How hard is it to find a decent actor? No, how hard it is to realise that the voice acting you just recorded is utter shite??
Chiablo @ May 23rd 2006 10:55AM
Remember Rise of Nations? Where you could zoom out really far away. So far that your peasants were only about 5 pixels high. RTS game designers... please let us zoom out further. I know you want to force us to look at your pretty 3d graphics, but strategy gamers don't care about graphics as much as seeing more of the battleground.
Case in point: Rise of Legends. I can barely zoom out enough to see beyond the city I've built up. The zoom seems like it's about the same as RoN3... which is a pathetic amount.
insertnamehere @ May 23rd 2006 1:05PM
My impressions, having only played the demo, echo Andir's. The game had a lot of potential. The civs were new and interesting, and the game seemed to be a streamliend version of the convuloted mess that was RoN. But in the end, the game seemed plain weak sauce. It was a simple hollow game coasting on its uniqueness. It cut away a lot of the crap from RoN, but added no true depth. It also retained a lot of RoN's artificial fixes that made the game so unfun and maddeningly repetitive (punishing people for making many units, attrition, etc.). I have complained that RoN was a mile wide but an inch deep, but RoL seems to be merely a foot wide and still an inch deep.
Maybe BHG's games aren't meant for people like me.
Shawn Oster @ May 23rd 2006 1:13PM
Seems that what GameSpot considers a negative I'd consider a positive, that there are "no reference points, no similarities to RTS conventions that you can latch onto..."
If you could fire up the game and mentally map it's mechanics to common RTS elements then why even bother making a new RTS in the first place? Seems the RTS field is already choked full of similiar style games. Any game that attempts to that make you rethink a genre is a plus, even if it does feel a little weird at first.
icelight @ May 24th 2006 6:27AM
I'd have to agree with 10. "No reference points" is essentially the same thing as "innovative", and it seems rather counter-intuitive to be criticizing innovation. (Especially at a time when people decry the lack thereof, where every came is a sequel of a clone of another.) They do a good job of labeling what units can do what (and even what you should use against specific enemy units) and there are certainly recognizable classes of units. Just to take the obvious example, what game still gets watched on South Korean tv? It's not yet another game with standard modern military tanks and infantry, it's Starcraft, which with three completely different races and all sorts of radical units certainly left new players few "reference points".
For #7's gripes about complexity, I'd have to say that I've certainly played RTS games that got waaay more bogged down. The original spellforce had something like 6 resources (plus an RPG character) to control (and was horrible because of that). RoN on the other hand had exactly the same type of research tree, plus the same juxtiposition between aquiring units in the campaign and in quick battles. Quite frankly, every good single player experience limits the types of units you can get initially, and it's just so a new player doesn't get overwhelmed with options.
Sure, I'd agree that zooming out more would be nice, and there are plenty of other little things that bug me. 76/100 just seems shockingly low.