Comments on: Making Of: Rise of Nations

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:41:21 +0000

Yeah, there was a BBC article where game developers lamented the number of people graduating with skills that were actually useful in game design (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7460870.stm).

I did like Rise of Nations, though. The combat was very simplistic until the industrial age, but the cities thing worked very well and I had a good time ranting about how primitive the interface and automation was in Age of Empires 3 compared to Rise of Nations.

By: drunkymonkey

drunkymonkey — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 23:21:41 +0000

Seth, you’re right about that. Empire Earth had been around before RoN, although out of the two RoN was far, far more accessible. I enjoyed it a lot more, and found myself playing a lot more too, the demo for Thrones and Patriots (which I never ended up getting, more fool me).

I’m in a mixed mood about RoL, with some people saying it was excellent and others claiming mediocrity. If the demo was a bad representation, then I might have to check it out, but I really can’t see how it could appeal to me.

For the whole traditional trek through time RTS genre, Rise of Nations and Age of Mythology was all I needed. Both brilliant, and entirely different, games that nevertheless were just so easy and challenging to play.

By: Seth Tipps

Seth Tipps — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:03:31 +0000

I personally would be interested to see if there was any connection between the ideas for Empire Earth and Rise of Nations. Empire Earth came out shortly before RoN(I think) , and it had many of the same design features, just very poorly implemented. I wish that another RTS had come along and picked up where Empire Earth left off, as it had quite a few interesting ideas.

By: Natus

Natus — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:20:05 +0000

RoN was a sublime thing of beauty. It was clean, accessible, and brilliant. I don’t think we’ve seen a strategy title that is RoN’s peer since it was published.

RoL, however, was a Charge of the Light Brigade failure. An elegant interface coupled with three innovative races burdened by far too many bizarre units hobbled by a lack of accessibility and personality. It’s really, really too bad. RoL wasn’t doomed because it went too far, but because the inner design was shoddy and unfriendly. And it’s still a near-brilliant game!

By: CrashT

CrashT — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 05:10:29 +0000

drunkymonkey: The demo for RoL really does the game itself disservice.

By: Lou

Lou — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 03:37:03 +0000

Brilliant game. And the nuke counter was one of the greatest design decisions in the history of gaming. I really, really hope they’re doing a sequel.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 22:46:37 +0000

I loved it, but immediately started on the Risk-like campaign which was a bad choice for starting out. After about a week, the thing seemed so daunting and never-ending I just kinda gave up. I never even knew they had aircraft carriers. Gonna have to go back to that one now.

By: drunkymonkey

drunkymonkey — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:16:14 +0000

Personally, I hated the demo for RoL, but RoN itself is one of my favourite games. The music fitted in very well too.

By: Chris R

Chris R — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:54:09 +0000

Interesting read, and I really enjoyed RoN, it was very fun. Haven’t tried Rise of Legends though… maybe I need to pick that up and have a go.