This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Nate Francis.

It's been more than a decade now since Westwood Studios wrenched PC gaming forward with the landmark title Command and Conquer. That genre-defining event set the stage for a virtual real-time strategy takeover of the PC gaming market, as a host of development and publishing outfits rushed to get their own RTS titles to market and utterly saturated it. Since that time, however, there've been few releases that have truly moved the RTS format forward. The Total War series blended in strategic world maps and a nonlinear scenario advancement build; Warcraft III gave us the concept of a hero that was nearly an army unto itself, whose use of special powers could help break even superior forces.

As the industry waits for the next godsend that will drive the genre into true "next-gen" territory, Microsoft and Big Huge Games have teamed up to launch the anticipated sequel to the award-winning title Rise of Nations. Rise of Legends takes the player out of the "real" and into a mythical land where gunpowder and steam engines contest with malevolent magic and fantasy creatures for the fate of the world.

Brian Reynold's team was assembled with one goal in mind: Make a better game than Rise of Nations. "You can never be satisfied," said executive producer Tim Train in a recent interview. "Don't get me wrong, we're proud of Rise of Nations, but when we sat down to consider what our next game would be, all we kept talking about were the things in Rise of Nations we felt we could have done better." Particularly unhappy with the game's dated graphics engine, Big Huge Games back-burner-ed RoN 2, and updated its money franchise with the Rise of Legends title.

So was it worth it?

From the outset of the game, it's eminently clear that Rise of Legends has succeeded in making a more visually appealing product than its predecessor. The opening cinematic alone is nearly worth the price of admission, and although it's obviously never a true indicator of the quality of game behind it, this one really set the game off on the right foot. Play it at a LAN; in no time, you will have a crowd oooh-ing and aaah-ing behind you. 

The beginning of the game itself opens in formulaic fashion. There are three campaigns involved:

Sitting down to the game and simply playing is fairly easy. Players are presented with a strategic campaign screen to begin, upon which your hero strides, preparing for conquest. Each district is clearly outlined, and inside of each lird a city. Each city, then, is marked for difficulty, along with any special resources it confers once conquered. Additionally, the cities on the strategic map can be built up as you accumulate wealth; adding additional districts makes them both more secure and profitable, depending on what type of district you choose to build. As you proceed to tame the continent, those bonuses will come into play more and more, from providing extra starter units prior to each scenario, to additional resources and hero abilities.

Players will also note, as they begin, that they are not alone on the globe. Aside from the main objective of each campaign, other opposing generals will be attempting to make inroads into territory you've already conquered. As you move from scenario to scenario, these AI-controlled foes will be on the move as well - and should they attack a city you've captured and forgotten to garrison (with a military district), you'll find yourself having to backtrack and re-conquer. It's time consuming and a pain, so make sure to attend to your defenses!

While the strategic map comprises a moderately entertaining minigame in its own right, the meat of any RTS game lies in its tactical warfare, and Rise of Legends does not disappoint.

Each individual scenario has a difficulty level setting that you select when you begin. This is great for people who suck at RTS games (like me) or are just so impatient that they’d rather blast through to the end of the story arc (also like me). Alternately, if you fancy yourself an elitist commando with an RTS pedigree dating back a decade and an ego that doesn't allow for anything simple, ramp up the difficulty and do your worst, Hannibal.

More so than many other "gather and conquer" games, Legends seems to go out of its way to make the gathering/building paradigm as painless as possible. You simply build your main city (whose buildings all need to touch each other), set down some gold-generating districts (unless you're Cuotl, as they trade solely on energy), and watch the cash start rolling in. The other farmable resource, cleverly labeled Timonium, is ripe for mining. As in many other RTS titles, you simply pop down a mine near a Timonium deposit and queue up some miners. Aside from occasionally defending or upgrading your mines, you can now forget about them. Gold not coming in fast enough? Plop down another commercial district in any of your cities and build a new, automated trade caravan.

Of course, there are also buildings adjunct to your cities, which can be placed anywhere inside your ever-expanding borders. These buildings allow you to begin most of your production and research work, in a similar fashion to virtually every other RTS on the market. Buildings erect themselves (or in the Cuotl case, materialize from thin air), requiring no peons or other labor to construct.

The ease of city and resource management makes building fairly vast armies a quick and painless process, in comparison to many other titles. It also allows you to pay more attention to the real fun, which is the warfare. While the sound production is fairly generic and uninspiring, the sharp visuals here are second to none. As a slick, shiftless interface, gratuitous use of tool-tips and on-demand, in-game hints and tips combine to make the game as user-friendly as possible, simply tossing the unread manual on the desk and logging in to crush something is no longer an impossible, learning-curve dream. And really, who has time to read when there are dudes to be slaughtered?

While Legends is simple to sit down and play, Big Huge Games seems to have designed it with Blizzard's mantra in mind: Easy to learn, hard to master. This wouldn't be a Brian Reynolds game without some serious depth to it, and he delivers that necessary depth in a fashion that, unlike many aspects of his Alpha Centauri project, is not at all obnoxious. The tech tree and unit abilities advance at a pace that most any gamer can be comfortable with, while you'll continue to fiddle with things like dominance abilities right up until the end of the game. Personally, I've got about 20 hours into the game (most of them sober, even), and I still feel like there are depths to be plumbed in army composition, use of dominance powers, tech advancement... virtually every aspect of the game. As I advance into the Alin campaign, I'm already rethinking some of my strategies (or lack thereof) from the Vinci campaign, wondering how I could have turned skin-of-my-teeth victories into sheer blowouts.

Rise of Legends may well suffer from what many gamers will find most attractive about it: Its accessibility. Simplifying resource management and city maintenance "dumbed down" an aspect of play that many hardcore RTS fans find compelling. Their ability to manage complex structures and resource chains whilst simultaneously shredding the planet into confetti with staggering armies is a point of pride and enjoyment for many, and it isn't too difficult to find people for whom the relative ease of managing the game makes it fall flat.

Further, there seem to be several scenarios wherein the production crew simply "gave up" on interesting pre-scenario cutscenes. The first several scenarios include cutscenes at their beginning which advance the story and provide plot-basis for the objectives you'll set out to achieve. Yet, in virtually half of the campaigns, you'll get the same generic cutscene: A quick visual overview of the scenario terrain, with a background voiceover telling you something like "The enemy is near; we must prepare. If the enemy gets in our way, he must be destroyed." It seems like a bit of laziness incongruous with the detail involved with much of the rest of the game, and makes it that much more galling - especially after hearing it for the sixth or seventh time. Unfortunately, this same lack of attention seems to have been paid to the audio department. Compared to the great visuals, the sounds of gunfire, spells and airships are almost relegated to a muzac-style of background noise. Disappointing, especially for audiophiles with big investments in surround sound systems and top-end cards.

Multiplayer is also a bit of a gamble at this time. The game is extremely well-balanced for multiplayer play, but actually making it work can be problematic. Big Huge Games is currently addressing many common support requests for multiplayer assistance on its website.

Finally, there's also news that, while the minimum system requirements are relatively low (1.4GHz CPU mated to a 64MB video card) that the game is struggling a bit even on mid-range systems. This is odd for an RTS, which is usually a genre noted for its system-friendliness, yet there's enough being said about it online that it can't be discounted. This is fair warning only; this reviewer tested it on an AMD X2 4600 with 4GB of RAM and a GF7950 pushing two video cores and a gig of RAM, and it ran both stable and flawlessly.

Ultimately, Rise of Legends is a game that succeeds at providing a quality, enjoyable RTS experience. Taking the best interface cues from genre stalwarts like Command and Conquer, Warcraft III and Age of Empires, the player will become immersed in a global conflict pitting two well-balanced yet different powers against an unimaginable foe. While the game at first comes off as "more of the same" due to heavy borrowing of mechanics and concepts from other genre titles, it grows to have its own feel quickly enough that even most jaded gamers will find themselves hooked, should they stick with it. Plumbing the depths of the game doesn't seem to end until the game does, yet it doesn't come at the player in an overwhelming fashion which can quickly confuse and swamp many normal gamers in technical micromanagement. The sides of the conflict, instead of feeling like three sides of the same triangle, feel and play differently, which is a refreshing change of pace that will hopefully, one day, become typical of the genre.

Oh, and there are no elves. Anywhere. Winner!

Intuitive and friendly UI, stable, engrossing fun.

Excellent unit detail, wonderful landscapes waiting to be destroyed.

It serves the purpose of letting you know when you're being attacked, but that's about it.

Easy to sit down and enjoy for hours on end, even for RTS novices.

Enough depth to keep most players coming back to the single-player; balanced for multiplayer.