With Zeus, the setting lent itself to more-exciting mission goals: You would often need to attract mythological figures and send them out on quests, or build huge sanctuaries to the gods who would then bestow considerable bonuses to your city. You lay down residential areas, set up trade with other cities, provide food and commodities for your residents, and occasionally fight to defend your city or send your troops out to conquer another.Įmperor follows this formula to the letter, though instead of being in ancient Rome, Egypt, or Greece, you are now in ancient China.
The gods, buildings, and commodities available are specific to the setting, but the basic gameplay remains almost identical. With the last three city-building games, most of the major changes have been cosmetic. Impressions' city-building games have always been formulaic, but it's a solid and addictive formula. It's not a major criticism to say that Emperor plays much like its predecessors. Rice is one of the new agricultural commodities. And some of these problems-such as the combat interface and the aimless wandering of your workers-aren't as easily overlooked as they once were. Though it includes some improvements of its own, it also brings back a few frustrating issues from earlier games. Developed not by Impressions but by BreakAway Games (whose previous work includes the Cleopatra expansion for Pharaoh), Emperor is much like Pharaoh, with a few of Zeus' additions thrown in for good measure. Instead of improving on Zeus, Emperor plays it safe by returning to the earlier games in the series. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom breaks this promise.
RISE OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM SPECIAL SERIES
Zeus had a few of its own problems, but it introduced so many great ideas and features to the series that it seemed like a promise of even greater things to come. The series improved even more significantly with Zeus, which added more-creative mission goals and downplayed the military element, which had previously been a problem with the series because of the cumbersome combat interface. The series improved dramatically with Pharaoh, the first game to leave the Roman confines of the Caesar games.
RISE OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM SPECIAL UPGRADE
So as far as the story is concerned, you conquer five cities the first one was just a Curb-Stomp Battle not worth depicting so you can just get to your main city.Each entry in Impressions' city-building series has been an incremental upgrade to the previous one. And, according to the mission briefing, this is on the heels of your forces taking the capital of Kaifeng and deposing a Puppet King boy-emperor.
The Song campaign's first mission then tops that China is not united, so you have to unite it the hard way by conquering four enemy cities and bringing them into the fold one by one.Thus, all enemy cities ally with you or become your vassal, and you're given a sprawling map, the largest in the game up to that point, to begin building a new Qin capital. The second mission of the Qin campaign for the first time in history and in the game, all of China is united under one banner.Most any mission where you build a monument special mention to the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and of course, the Terracotta Army of Qin.The end of the final mission you fully achieve Alternate History and prevent the Mongolian invasion of China by halting Ghengis Khan's army.