The settings

Rise of Legends takes three very different races into a battle for domination. The young inventor Giacomo, along with his trusted general Carlini are after the Doge, the main bad guy who killed his brother. Into his revenge race he will do and undone alliances and on his way he will help not only him but all the people he will encounter. You will encounter the Vinci race, a race who harness the power of technology. Steel and steam are used to create both beautiful things and killing machines. Pulleys, gears and pipes can be found on Vinci's units. Units taken from Leonardo's schematics can be found among the Vinci's troops. Flying machines, tanks and walking robots are part of the troops that Vinci possesses to confront the other two races. The second race you will encounter is Alin, a desert based race. With units that come from the power of elements, Alin can create fire, sand and ice troops to overcome their enemies. Cuotl are aliens who come to earth and used their technology to impress and enslave some jungle tribe and pose as gods for them. The Cuotl race is very similar to the Maya civilization (both as gods name and the building architecture).

Big Huge Games tried to reinvent fantasy strategy games and they did a wonderful thing. Only if you look at the surface. But if you go deep into the game you will realize that the game has some flaws that can brake or not the gameplay. For me it was a sad experience. If BHG would left only the first chapter from the campaign I would be very happy. But starting from the second part, the things begun to creek. The campaign is similar to Conquer the World from RoN as you try to destroy the boss from each chapter. The missions started to be very similar, even the starting text was the same, even if you were playing on different parts of the map. The end was ridiculous and it screams for a sequel in 2007.

 

Are there any good parts?

I must say that BHG did some very good things. The races are very well done and are balanced almost to the perfection. You can feel that if you play in multiplayer. The Vinci start very powerful and you can rush your enemies. The Alin and Coutl become powerful as the times passes and you can recruit dragons for Alin and the Sun Idol for Coutl. But playing with every race you start to know them better and better and you will find that none is weaker or stronger than another if played well. Clashes between clockwork men, spiders, flying machines, robots and tanks are often found on the battlefield trying to gain resources and overcome the enemy. On the single-player side you will have some starting troops each time that you start a mission with the possibility to add some more as you gain troop points from conquering parts of the map. You can also gain research points, building points and experience points. Each of this points are very valuable because it makes you stronger and it consolidates your position. With research points you can research new troops (the most powerful units must be researched) or improve the ones you have. The building points can be spent to improve territories who in turn can give you additional points depending on what you are building. The last type of points can be used to unlock or improve special powers that each hero present has.

The heroes are a good addition to the game and to the gameplay. Each hero has an ability like more health to the heroes if Carlini is present on the map or increased range and line of sight if Lenora is present. Also, each hero has up to 4 powers allowing him to turn the fate of a battle. Giacomo can heal its troops with its Inspired Augmentation or Carlini can deploy a turret to aid him in the battle. All this somehow forces you to keep your hero alive because he is very valuable.

 

And the black points go to

The AI doesn't know how to play on offense very well. On the defense it does a good work by building defense towers and by keeping troops to defend the cities but when it comes to storm your troops or cities you will mostly overcome it. I don't know why but if you leave your city undefended the AI will know and will send enough troops to take it but if you build a defense tower it will send troops who manage only to suicide themselves. They don't know to use their powers to give you problems. He will place units on choke points but most of the time these troops will remain on defensive even on the hard difficulty. Some players will enjoy this because it will make the battles longer and you will need more time to complete the missions. If you count on him for a skirmish, you better do it yourself.

The campaign is long and it does a bad job in putting in scene the characters. The storyline is boring and you might wonder why are you still playing the game. So there is no chance of replayability which hurts the game.

At the start of almost each mission you will have to build you city or cities to the max, to max your research and to build enough troops to complete your mission. This will insert dead times into the missions when you will have to wait to gain resources, build troops, buildings and to slowly conquer your enemy cities or complete the quests. There are main quests and side quests but you will probably complete them all because they give experience points. Too many maps force you to rebuild the same base and deal with nothing but "conquer all enemy cities" objectives. This adds to the length of the game but will insert a boring factor to the player.

 

Legends uses a new 3D engine and offers a beautiful graphic. The good news is that you can play the game even on a mid-range system but to fully benefit from the game you might consider a more powerful computer. The game has some chokes when there are large battle on the screen or when you siege a city and smoke and debris are present.

 

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