I haven’t really been watching for new releases lately since my computer has so much trouble running anything new…  But at some point in the last year or so Rise Of Legends was released.  I enjoyed Rise of Nations, and RoL had some very cool trailers, so I decided to give it a try.

To start with, the gameplay in RoL is even more combat-oriented than it was in RoN.  RoN was vaguely similar to Civilization in its nation-building…and featured lots of real-world nations…but it focused in more on the battlefield than Civilization ever did.  RoL goes even farther.  Of course the nations are completely fictitious, but there’s almost no nation-building at all.  It’s almost entirely combat-oriented.  This isn’t a bad thing, but it puts RoL up against titles like WarCraft III and Dawn of War.

The game is divided into three fairly unique sides…  You’ve got the Vinci, who are a kind of steampunk technological society.  Lots of clockwork stuff clanking into battle.  There are the Alin, who use magic to summon up giant scorpions and dragons.  And then the Cuatl who use super-high technology to appear as gods, much like the bad guys in Stargate.

The gameplay is fairly similar to any other RTS out there…  Build up your army, crush the other guy, move on to the next level and do it all over again.  RoL uses a strategic battle map similar to the one in Dark Crusade - in-between battles you can choose exactly which territory to attack next.  This really doesn’t seem to have much over-all affect on the gameplay though, as you generally wind up having to conquer absolutely everything.  You can’t really pick and choose and avoid certain battles.  Well, you could, but it doesn’t really get you anywhere…  Also, unlike Dark Crusade, there isn’t really any way to hold off the enemy armies.  If an enemy attacks one of your territories you lose a military district; lose all your military districts and you lose the territory.  There’s no way to fight or defend your territories.

A fairly unique aspect of gameplay is the emphasis on building up your cities.  Just about everything essential comes out of cities in RoL, which can be upgraded and expanded throughout the course of a battle.  You’re constantly adding new districts and watching the city get bigger and bigger.  It’s kind of unique to keep everything in one place…  To centralize things…  And the visual impact of seeing your city grow as you play is very nice…  But ultimately it isn’t much different from building farms across the countryside - you’re still building structures to raise a cap to let you build more soldiers.

Visually, the game is very good.  Each race has a very unique look and feel to them.  The mechanics may not be too different from one to another…but the units look completely different.  The Vinci use bizarre flying machines that look like they’re barely able to remain airborne…while the Aline field huge winged dragons.  Ultimately they’re both air units that behave fairly similarly, but there’s no way you’re going to confuse the two of them.  RoL still doesn’t beat the visceral impact of Dawn of War though…  The way DoW’s units interacted, literally ripping each-other apart, is simply amazing.  RoL takes a more traditional approach of having the units basically bash their swords against each-other for a while, and then one of them falls over dead.

The storyline is very interesting…  During the opening credits you see some kind of alien spaceship blown apart and debris rains down on the planet below.  You see shards of broken spacecraft raining down on medieval kingdoms.  But even the storyline has trouble…  The implication is obviously that this is a recent event and the start of all the trouble you’re about to play through.  The first mission even has you going to investigate something weird that was just discovered in a mine, and the bad guy beating you to it.  But throughout the game it starts to sound like the crash happened long ago…  You’ve got an evil Djinn who was corrupted by a strange device thousands of years ago, a device that you eventually discover is an alien artifact.  And the Cuatl appear to have been using this alien technology for years.  So it’s unclear if the crash you see in the opening credits is actually a recent event or not…

I’m having a lot of fun playing RoL.  It’s definitely giving me my RTS fix while I wait for StarCraft 2…  But I’m really not all that impressed with it.  Dark Crusade is superior to RoL in just about every respect.