Easily one of the best real-time strategy games ever created.
Cons: Music is a little understated, tons of races, but none are dramatically different from each other
Rise of Nations is the debut game from Big Huge Games, founded by Brian Reynolds, the genius who's collaborated with Sid Meier on turn-based strategy games like Alpha Centauri and Civilization II. Rise of Nations may be a real-time strategy, but it's easily up to both those games standards. It's a tremendously innovative game in a genre that's starting to stall, but more importantly, it does them all perfectly.
Rise of Nations looks like a regular real-time strategy game on the surface, but there are many innovations contained in this strategy game. The first thing that will hit you about this game is its streamlined, clean interface, which practically eliminates excessive micromanagement. In fact, Rise of Nations is so clearly ahead of its time, its interface still makes newer games feel outdated and clumsy. Rise of Nations is also very intuitive, despite its ten bazillion techs, because, simply put, everything is laid out sensibly, just where you would want it.
Another one of Rise of Nations most important innovations will soon come into focus as well - national borders. National borders in and of itself is not all that innovative, as its a carry over from Reynolds' turn-based strategy pedigree, but its never been seen in an RTS before, and it's pretty much implemented flawlessly here. Simply put, each of your cities exerts an influence around the borders. It's hard to explain how much this affects gameplay, but it comes apparent as you play. Suddenly, city placement becomes that much more important. Another one of Rise of Nations' endless innovations is the fact that when you attack cities, you don't destroy it, you simply capture it (although you have to defend it for a certain amount of time before you can do stuff with it). This makes it imperative that each of your cities is well defended, as if you lose them you'll lose trade routes, resources, and territory, and likely a strategically placed military foothold as well. Also worth noting is that your units will suffer attrition in enemy territory (provided that they've researched the tech, which they should) without a supply wagon, which makes for very interesting battle situations.
Rise of Nations' combat is not pure micromanagement ike other games (such as Warcraft 3), it's a brilliant mix of strategy and tactics. You have to use certain units against certain other units for best results, and if you don't deploy your units correctly, then you'll be slaughtered by an inexperienced player. Luckily, all the information in Rise of Nations is at your fingertips, which makes the fast-paced combat exhilarating. The best battles will decide the games and can last for absolutely nerve-wracking lengths, especially since they're all purposeful - battles will almost never be in the middle of nowhere, they'll usually be centered around the capture of a city, which will make for great sieges as you both reinforce your armies and try tactics like flanking or diversionary tactics such as attacking another city. The battles could hardly be more fun.
Rise of Nations boasts two modes, Conquer the World and more regular Skirmish. Conquer the World is an interesting venture for Big Huge Games, as it's a fast-paced Risk-style board-game in which you try to take over the world. Conquer the World is very fun, but Skirmish is ultimately the core of Rise of Nations' gameplay. Rise of Nations multiplayer is immensely fun, although unfortunately the huge shadow cast by Blizzard causes the community to be rather small. Still, if you can find a friend to play with - which you will easily if you show him the game - then the experience is just as great as it can be. Luckily, if you really can't find anyone to play with, it really doesn't matter - the AI in Rise of Nations is so good that it's pretty much as exciting to play against as regular people, and you can learn incredible amounts of information from it (this is one of the few games where watching replays is not only informative but extremely fun). Skirmish is also incredibly customizable, as Big Huge Games has given you too many options to count to tweak gameplay.
I'm sure I could talk about Rise of Nations' gameplay for much more, but it's probably better if I move on to graphics.
The graphics in this game aren't run by an incredibly high-tech engine, but luckily, the stuff they're rendering looks great. Most importantly in the department of graphics, though, is the amazing animations. If you zoom in, you can see the water running in some buildings or the wood being cut in the lumber mill, as well as soldiers reloading their guns or citizens cutting the crops. It's these endless animations that makes it still a very fun game to watch as well as play - sure, it's no Age of Empires III, but for its time it looks superb.
Sound in Rise of Nations is equally superb. The music is great, and will often reflect what's going on at the moment you're playing, although it's unfortunately a little understated, and it would be great if we had some more swelling battle music. The individual sounds of the game world itself is also terrific, and each sound makes absolute sense.
Rise of Nations' value is terrific, what with two game modes and endless customizability as well as a robust multiplayer system. It would help if it had a more popular multiplayer community, but it should be relatively easy to hook your friends on this relatively cheap game.
Overall, I just can't say enough about Rise of Nations. It's easily one of the most fun games I've ever played. For any strategy game fan who missed this - get it and the Thrones and Patriots expansion immediately if you're looking for something to play. It's a game of a caliber that has yet to be even come near to in the real-time strategy genre, and one whose endless innovations are still ahead of its time and have yet to be assimilated.