Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War
Preview
Successful mix of genres
by Marko Susimetsä
previewed on PC
Fighting the battles
As is standard in these kinds of games, it is your task to build an army strong enough to take down your enemy. What makes Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War more exciting than most such games is the ability to also wage war at sea. Not only can the biremes and triremes carry your troops and your hero, but they are also able to ram each other and they can carry catapults and grappling hooks to attack enemy ships and bombard structures and units on land. You can also capture enemy ships by boarding them and annihilating the defending soldiers and then use the ships against their previous owner.
The land battles may be confrontations of two armies on an open field, or assaults to enemy strongholds. When attacking the strongholds, you need to be vary of the defences, such as catapults and ballistas, as well as the defensive towers and, naturally, the various units. What I found really enjoyable was the fact that you can use alternate strategies to get over the enemy walls. The simplest strategy is to use your ladder unit, i.e. to send a few hapless soldiers with a long ladder to put it up against the enemy wall and then, if they succeed, to follow them with the main body of your army. Or you can build a siege tower and move it up against the enemy walls, filled with your soldiers. Or you can build a battering ram and try to get through the main gate, or destroy the gate with well defended catapults.
In one game that I played, I had sent my ladder units to put up their ladders and then sent in the main body of my troops after them, the hero included. But only about half of the troops got to the top of the wall before the defenders were able to destroy the ladders. With no extra ladder units available, nor any siege towers or battering rams at easy reach, I suddenly noticed that the defensive towers are about the same height as the walls. Thus, crossing my fingers, I sent in my workers to build one right next to the enemy walls. With the defenders distracted by the part of the army that had already climbed up, the workers were able to complete the structure unhindered and my hero and the rest of the army were able to climb up and get into the heat of the battle. Just in time, I may add.
Beautiful landscape
Sometimes, you just want to go out and smell the flowers. In Rise & Fall, you almost can. With all the graphics and sound settings rammed up, you will see fields of corn heaving in the wind and beautiful flowerbeds under groves of trees. Both the vegetation and the structures and people cast soft shadows and let you get immersed in the gameworld, especially when you are in the Hero Mode. Add to this the beat of the horses', or camels', hooves and the cries of the birds and you will have fun just exploring the sights and walking around the countryside while your workers mine gold, fell trees and build your empire.
Combining two genres
Rise & Fall is surprisingly successful in the way it combines the two genres of RTS and FPS. You can quickly change between the two modes and work in them both while waging a battle. When you are out of the Hero Mode, the hero will continue fighting under AI control, allowing you to come back whenever you want to. Die-hard RTS fans who hate FPS games may perhaps be turned away by the necessity of using the Hero Mode, but I'm sure that this game will attract many gamers who like neither RTSs or FPSs separately. Personally, I'm no fan of either genre, but Rise & Fall manages to keep my interest up by giving me a lot more freedom in how I want to play through the scenarios. Thus, by combining the two genres, Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War, has succeeded in creating something more than just the sum of its parts. It's a whole new experience and way of playing.
Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War is slated for June release. And I will be one of the gamers who will go and purchase this title, even if it still has the precision target-tracking arrows in the Hero Mode. One simple reason for this feeling is that this game offers so much more variety than most other titles in either of these genres that, even with the length of this preview, I feel that I left much untold.
