Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War [PC]

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. If you can deal with the old-school economics, the messy combat, and a couple of really bad single-player campaigns, you might find a real-time strategy game that's different enough to be fun.

The basic idea is that you build big armies, get them into battles, and then jump into the action as a hero who can mow down those armies by just repeatedly clicking your mouse button and running around wildly. It makes for some really rewarding gameplay to hack up enemies as Achilles or even to pick off soldiers with Cleopatra's various bows. Each of the four races has two heroes to choose from, usually a slow and tough slugger or a more nimble archer. The heroes all have special powers, such as Julius Caesar being able to call in a catapult attack or Cleopatra "persuading" enemy soldiers to join her side (use your imagination for what's being implied here).

You spend glory, which is earned mainly by building statues, to level your hero. Leveling is the equivalent of aging up, in that each time your hero improves, you can upgrade your units, unlock new units, and purchase advisors. Advisors are just global bonuses you can buy; think of them as technologies to improve resource gathering, speed up unit training, or boost a particular type of soldier. Some advisors are unique to a given side. For instance, the Roman midwife doubles peon production, the Egyptian tanner improves all units' hit points, the Persian town clerk makes town centers free to build, and the Greek artisan doubles the glory income from your statues. Most advisors have only minor effects, but they're an interesting twist to the typical technologies you can research in other real time strategy games.

Other than the glory and hero leveling, the economics are very old school, requiring a lot of peon herding to collect wood and gold (the usual food is mercifully absent, although there are huntable animals strolling around the maps for some reason). Like the Age of Empires series, you'll have to migrate around as resources are depleted, building and upgrading town centers as you go. Walls are inexpensive to make and hard to tear down, which makes it easier to protect your peons. Laying out walls is supposed to be simple, but it's too easy to accidentally leave gaps and not know it until a bunch of soldiers come marching through. Like a lot of the AI, the wall-building could have been smarter.

A typical game involves players slowly working their way across the map and conquering neutral outposts, which start out heavily defended. These outposts not only serve as your victory locations, but they also give you free military units. Many of the maps have bodies of water, which might have outposts, or which might be a great way to circumvent defensive walls by sailing ships full of troops onto your enemy's shore.