GAME DESCRIPTION: Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War is the first real–time strategy game to place players directly in the heart of combat as a heroic general fighting side–by–side with their troops. Players can completely command one of the four mightiest empires of the ancient world as in a traditional RTS, but can also use Rise & Fall’s innovative Hero Command to enter the battlefield as one of history’s eight greatest heroes: Julius Caesar, Germanicus Caesar, Cleopatra, Ramses the Great, Sargon, Nebuchadnezzar, Achilles and Alexander the Great.
Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War offers an unprecedented level of detail for naval combat, which plays a large and vital role. Players will fight for control of the seas by boarding and ramming enemy naval vessels using massive, accurately–scaled biremes and triremes. Infantry, archers, ballistae, or catapults can all be placed on ships.
Rise & Fall also features numerous multiplayer game types for up to eight players, including a team–based mode where one player manages resources while the other unleashes the full power of Hero mode against the enemy team.
PLAY: Rise & Fall visits an era that has inspired many games, books, and movies. Ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome are among the most interesting times in history. You can play as some of histories legends; Cleopatra, Achilles, and Julius Caesar. It should be an incredibly exciting game leading the Greek against the Persians or Egypt against Rome. It’s fun—to a point.
The interesting thing about Rise & Fall is the ability to go back and forth between being a real time strategy and hero command where you are in the battle. It seems like a brilliant idea to be able to jump right into the actual gameplay and fight—however that isn’t well thought out. It’s extremely hard to fight—as tempting as it is to jump into the game and play it often ends in frustration. The main issue is how hard it is to actually win a battle. One such issue is when Cleopatra finds herself on an island trying in vain to fight here way through. It’s an almost impossible task.
The actual RTS is the best aspect of Rise & Fall. There is a lot to micromanage but it’s not much different than other war RTS games that rely upon the building huge armies and infrastructure. The larger the army the easier the game—this isn’t any different from Civ or Total War. You can also build a navy and weapons which add a nice dimension to Rise & Fall.
GRAPHICS: The animations are extremely dated. There are some nice environments however there are major issues with framerates.
SOUND: The voiceover work is terrible. The music is sterile and the sound effects are uninspiring.
FRANKLY: Rise & Fall has too many issues to make anyone that spends endless hours trying to get through. There is too much frustration with Rise & Fall’s strategy and an even larger problem with actually hand-to-hand gameplay. It’s sad because there was a lot of hope for Rise & Fall mostly because of the era and the ability to fight as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. Then again, that is the exact reason we are still playing right now.
+ Richie Wright
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