Hello thread, long time no see
Rise of Legends (2006)
Just completed the campaign yesterday. In total, it took me 12 hours spread over the course of 2 days.
Rise of Legends seems to have began its development as an iteration upon Rise of Nations, the full title of the game still bearing the latter name, and various game files still referring to it as Rise of Nations 2. If the first game is a precious gem covered in dirt with no way for players to remove the dirt, this game is the gem with the dirt removed. For the exact nature of the dirt, see my comments on the first game.
The dirt, in this case, is removed by making economic development less about mechanically racing to secure a technological leap over the opponent along a number of interchangeable strands of development, but about tailoring your position and battlefield options to meet the opponent's strategy.
This economic game is a step further from Age of Empires strand of RTS design and a step closer to the Z or Herzog Zwei strand (Dawn of War, Company of Heroes). Like Age of Mythology, cities must be built on explicit pre-defined points, but unlike any Age of game, cities are no longer generic resource drop off points for generic villagers, but rather generate a commerce (or power, for one of the factions) resource, per unit of time according to the level of investment, similar to strategic points in Dawn of War or Company of Heroes. Rise of Legends also adds once off bonus resources in the form of research points acquired through city (i.e. strategic point) development, which is unique to the game. City development also, with no additional input from the player, equals fortification development. The other "over time" resource in the game -- "timonium" -- is also acquired by exploiting predefined points (in the visual form of brilliant blue crystal deposits) by building and investing in mines, with the twist that they must already be in your "national borders". Like cities, mines also become more fortified as they develop, but to a much, much lesser degree.
There is also a bit of Blizzard here, specifically Warcraft 3, in the form of a large array of neutral buildings to capture and importance placed on hero development, although of course not to the same, almost genre escaping degree concerning the latter.
As for the campaign itself, at first glance it looks similar to The Dark Crusade's or the first Rise of Nations' campaign, so you may think it makes for a nice skirmish game generator. Comparing to the former, the main differences are that there are three different game boards, each with a mandatory initial mission, less possibilities for the player's initial move, and the AI "players" not at all playing by the same rules. A very important aspect to the first difference, and what keeps the campaign from being a good skirmish game generator, is all three boards consist solely of symmetric faction match ups with the game's three factions -- the Vinci, Alin and Cuotl. Not to mention that you only get to play on a subset of the terrain types available in skirmish. Moreover, unless you go out of your way to develop your campaign resources for the sake of it by map painting, you don't actually get to play with all the units the faction has to offer, making the campaign not function very well as an extended tutorial either. Finally, when you unlock a unit upgrade in the campaign board, you start maps with the upgrade already applied (which means you can complete most campaign maps by rushing with your elite starting army), instead of with the ability to research the upgrade during the course of the map. This effectively moves a key component of "teching" out of the maps and into the board, making the campaign games different and incomplete in an important way compared to skirmish or multiplayer games. Likewise for Hero development.
This schizophrenic campaign design is present in its presentation as well, where matters are even more half baked. In terms of presentation, you are given what are today horribly compressed videos, some which could have been in-engine, that imply character and plot development that I suppose is meant to happen during the course of playing the campaign map, but simply does not. Which is strange because, what's there suggests some effort and resources were expended in an attempt to follow the standard set by Blizzard, but it's not very complete. Or perhaps at some point during development they switched from a linear campaign back to a Rise of Nations style one, but didn't decide to rework the presentation to match the more limited requirements of this approach, and instead cobbled together what they had from the old approach. In any case, these observations don't affect my thoughts on the game at all, as I hardly care for such things.
These comments on presentation being half baked only apply to the campaign. The unit and city models are wonderful and very professionally done, likewise for the music, though a tad bombastic as par on course. It's very mid 00s US West Coast entertainment design (with all the good and bad that entails), with only the slightest smidgen of the more offensive (to my tastes) mass produced game art tropes sneaking in here and there like a mistake on an Amish quilt. If you ignore the very lacking and even detrimental world building done through the campaign, what's present in the art itself during games is very unique and well conveyed for the genre. You get a real feeling of fantasy rennaisance era Arab and European trading companies competing for new world or frontier resources, with the playable fantasy Mesoamericans being a nice bonus. Of course I have my critiques here as well (Alin have too many competing motifs, and the Cuotl are too "it was aliens"), but the overall impression is quite positive.
