If there is any single gaming genre that I find to be incredibly underrated and unexplored, it is real-time strategy. By the end of the 1990s, the hype of PC gaming was fading. With the Playstation and N64 dominating the industy, it would be a while before PC gaming picked itself back up. And while PC gaming today is not at the height of its former glory, it certainly has risen in popularity over the past few years. Even so, there were quite a few games that were largely ignored during that dormant period of almost a decade. One such real-time strategy title was Rise of Nations.
While licensed material such as Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds played out well enough, it really didn’t bring any new ideas to the table. Starcraft, widely considered one of the greatest RTS games ever, was past its initial hype factor. Medieval Total War was one of the last PC titles to receive much coverage for some time. Both changed RTS gameplay significantly, and became staples of the genre (the first arguably more so than the latter). A year after Medieval Total War was released, Rise of Nations came out. While it certainly didn’t sport the greatest graphics, Rise of Nations offered some solid gameplay and left the entire outcome up to the player’s discretion.
One of the larger criticisms of Rise of Nations is its lack of a core story. The reason for this is the option to play as any one of 18 distinct nations. These range from the more traditional French, German, and Russian, to the less mainstream like the Aztecs and Bantu. Each nation has specific unique soldiers and vehicles. The game breaks the mold of RTS titles before it by allowing players a sort of ‘level-up’ system, in which they can race to research the technology of the next era in order to try and gain a leg-up on their opponents.
Resources are varied and plentiful, but players will have to choose what is more valuable. The easiest to manage are farms, which allow for more citizens to live in a city, and therefore construct more buildings. Constructing a city near a mountain or forest allows for the construction of mines and logging camps. The payoff is distributed to the player in the form of gold for overall spending and metal/wood for constructing buildings and training military units. Trading posts can also be set up around the more valuable resources, such as marble and silk, boats can gather fish, and oil platforms can be constructed. While these earn you money much more quickly, they are generally set between your land and that of the opposing empire, making them highly contested. So while the initial few levels are fairly simple to complete (in part due to the fact that the world map is largely unexplored at the start), the challenge increases greatly as the player advances through each major era. By the time one has reached the modern age, managing your resources is based on what is necessary and what is expendable.
The game has several difficulty settings that will largely affect the time it takes to complete a round. The clock is generally set at 90 minutes per round, which is more than necessary on the ‘easy’ setting. However, some players may find themselves pressed for time when playing on the hardest difficulty.
Rise of Nations included a surprisingly smooth-playing and enjoyable online multiplayer experience outside of the core game. Players were allowed to choose from any one of the 18 nations and go head-to-head in a race to build their defensive and offensive forces, as well as research tech. Also available was a map creation tool that allowed players to choose from a number of environments (desert, jungle, deciduous forest, etc.) and create custom battles.
Rise of Nations was one of those rare gems of a game that managed to slip under the radar due to the release of the new Gamecube, Playstation 2, and Xbox systems. Nonetheless, it is one of the best RTS titles I have ever played. It offers an astounding amount of freedom without sacrificing the challenge of managing your troops and resources.
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