Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War

As of press time, several negative Rise and Fall reviews have cropped up online. Mine is the dissenting opinion; in my mind, this RTS' fun and innovative gameplay far outweighs its minor faults. [Sep 2006, p.57]

A good enough looking title (if your PC can cope with all the gloss turned on), an intuitive HUD, and epic music all helps with the immersion. There are a couple of niggling glitches that could be improved over time through patches, Civilizations at War nonetheless remains a solid title, and one that non-RTS action heavy gamers should check out.

Rise & Fall manages to bring some welcome action to a normally slower-paced genre, but it sometimes feels like this is at the expense of tactics.

The movements of the characters are nigh hilarious and detract from a true serious experience. If you don't get hung up on that, you will probably have just a grand ole time.

A game that had it all, great design, excellent graphics. All it lacked was time. [Aug 2006, p.36]

With the many varied objectives and the third person mode there is a nice change in gameplay that is quite refreshing from the usual kill all the enemies or get to a certain point on the map.

More could have been done with this game. A little more creativity, a lot more programming, and I believe they could have had something quite good on their hands.

Ignore the lumpen campaign and you have an RTS with some big ideas. [July 2006, p.91]

If you have always wanted to control a main unit on the battlefield in an RTS game then I recommend getting this title. If you are a die-hard RTS fan and you only want that then I have mixed feelings about this game for you.

Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War is a passable hybrid of a console action game with a PC real-time strategy game. And while it's not terribly good at either genre, it's interesting enough as a combination.

Ultimately, Rise & Fall is about pretty units killing each other in a beautifully drawn environment and little more. It's a good strategy skirmish, but it falls short of eternal glory.

It soon becomes clear that not only is this a deep, well-crafted and carefully balanced RTS, brimming with features, but also that the developer is desperately trying to encourage a wider audience than the core strategy crowd. [July 2006, p.114]

I am particularly a fan of the naval battle, actually the ramming of another ship and seeing my enemy’s armies flying high up the sky.

Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War isn't a bad game; rather, it is a noble effort that simply falls short of its goals.

For all its strengths, in the campaign mode it's hardly making history. [Aug 2006, p.75]

In the end, Rise & Fall attempts a few innovative things with the real-time strategy genre, though it's hurt by the fact that it wants to be both a hardcore real-time strategy game and a fast-paced action game. Unfortunately, it's hard to have it both ways in this genre, as the action mode is bound to frustrate and disappoint strategy fans.

As an RTS it’s as entertainingly humdrum as any of the sixteen billion others, but the Hero Command innovation is so wretchedly underdeveloped it mostly serves to annoy and all but ruins the game’s single player campaigns. It’s fun in multiplayer and skirmish modes for a while, but Rise & Fall is far from the classic game that it could have been.

Sadly, there's very little reason to recommend this title fans of the strategy or action genres. While there are some decent features, there are too many mistakes built thrown on top of an altogether bland design.

We can’t put our finger on it, but Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War just isn’t that fun. Despite having some fantastic features, it’s confusing to see so many games repeat the same mistake over and over again. Poor AI is a curse for RTS games, and Rise & Fall doesn’t do much to avoid this. It’s disappointing that such a fantastic concept falls flat on its stomach due to some minor, but unforgiving, mistakes.

Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War is a great experiment but a mediocre game, too broken to be enjoyable for any length of time.

It isn’t perfectly realised, but the subtleties of tactical planning and the bloodiness of frontline slashing combine to suggest a new way forward for realtime strategy. [Aug 2006, p.90]

If the Action / Real-Time Strategy hybrid seems like an interesting one you might like to try "Sacrifice" (which is about six years old), because while Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War tries hard to bring something new to the crowded RTS genre with it's Hero mode and naval battles, there are just too many downsides to the game to make it worth playing.

An interesting idea, yes, but perhaps more interesting in its failures rather than its much-too-rare highlights.

The multiplayer doesn’t deliver any type of replay value that drives me back to playing Rise & Fall. The campaign is short and the difficulty level is on the basic side of the river.

The mixture of RTS and action game doesn't really mesh well, the game runs really poorly, and the game includes Starforce. Unless you've got a really high end machine and want to play something somewhat different, stay far, far away from this title.

Just satisfactory. Hero mode is a nice distraction from the redundant campaigns, but everything in the game lacks sufficient depth.

Click-click, kill-kill, click-click, kill-kill. You'll maybe get a naval battle or an occasional siege on the side. But once you've done this a few times, Rise & Fall has pretty much exhausted its novelty, leaving you with a bland and clunky RTS.

While Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War has some great concepts behind it and a few enjoyable moments, it's not really worth the gas it takes to drive it home from the software store.

It doesn't have the sheer polish or design coherence of something like this month's other Rise-TS, Rise of Legends, but there's lots to like. Until you remember the campaign mode again at which point you just find yourself wishing the developers to go bust, until you remember they have and you start feeling bad again.

One day someone is going to combine the RTS with another genre and pull it off really well; Rise & Fall isn't that game.

If you're considering buying "Rise & Fall," think of it as strategy light. It's good for someone who's neither a strategy nor an action addict -- someone who just wants some lighthearted fun with ancient Egyptian and Roman heroes.

Controlling your hero directly, action game style, is a neat gimmick even though it's in poor execution. [Aug 2006, p.88]

Rise & Fall means well. Considering the competition out there and the ever-rising stakes, good intentions and mere competence are no longer enough. [Sept. 2006, p.67]

If you ever run into one of the erstwhile developers of Stainless Stell Studios, you should probably buy him or her a beer and let them cry on your shoulder; it’s gotta hurt to see a game you made that obviously started out with a lot of potential get released in such an unfinished state.