Personal blog of Prasad Ajinkya
When playing Rise of Nations, one of the concepts in the game are wonders.
One of the wonders that arguably gets rushed is the Terracotta Army. What this wonder gives you is an unending stream of Light Infantry units at regular intervals, the interval is dependent upon the number of units already produced by the wonder. So that over a period of time, the production rate of Light Infantry goes down and plateaus.
What happens when you mix a Strategy Game like Civilization with a Real Time Strategy game like Rise of Nations?
Easy enough, you get a game such as Rome: Total War.
What happens when you take that mix and add a little bit of Role Playing Game to it?
Cat got your tongue?
Well that’s precisely what Stardock Entertainment did. It’s a heady mix where a lot of things can go wrong. But done right, it can be very entertaining.
In the past we have seen a mixture of classic genres … there was Warcraft 3 with a mix of RPG and RTS (the expansion of Warcraft 3, Frozen Throne went on to give the folks at Blizzard a killer idea of what would go on to make the successful MMORPG seriers – World of Warcraft). Enough talking about Blizzard … for now. We are here for Stardock and yes, the Fallen Enchantress.
In 2010, Stardock had released a game on similar lines – Elemental: War of Magic … and it was plagued with glitches, bugs and bad gameplay. So much so that, Stardock has offered this game as a compensation to the people who had bought the earlier game (tis’ a bit late, but it’s the thought that counts!).
The game took some time figuring out. In fact, I think I suck at Civ-type games (because I generally do not follow the optimal scheme of things). However, I do enjoy the grind, loot and crawl of RPGs. So most of the time I ended up soloing with my sovereign. The game is pretty enjoyable, but the player really really needs to strike a balance between gallivanting on adventures and lore and managing a kingdom.
IMO, that’s the key to playing the entire game. For those of you interested in purchasing the game, its available on Steam for USD 40. A good way to waste a Sunday!