SakuraFox_

As a kid growing up in the golden age of RTS-games, I spent all my free hours from the moment I laid my hands on this gem ****. Years later, I see that it aged well and still like to revive those memories from time to time. Here's why: Now that I'm 20, I have branched in all game-types and getting more experience(d) with a bigger count of hours and games. But I'd like to make an quick look-back at the game: 1) Everyone powerful Civilization 5 is viewed as one of the - maybe even the °1 - best age-processing game of all time. But even though civ6 build on all the most-liked features of civ4 and 5, it got big waves of critique for mainly 2 reasons: The more cartoonish approach to the artstyle and pretty much everything got a big nerf. No more overly powerful nations and "features" that could break the whole gameplay (except a few that were swiftly fixed with some patches.) Rise of the nations of course launched way before 5 and 6; but when playing those, I realized a big feature of rise of the nations: Instead of all nations only having a small nation-specific advantage, every nation had a original advantage that they could use/exploit to the range they want. But if every single player has an equally big advantage, it isn't an advantage anymore. It just makes the game more interesting with way more paths to follow. 2) up-to-date fanbase Even though you can't find that much on the ubisoft site about Rise of Nations, it still has a strong player base. Not as much as AoE does, but for a less popular, 16 year old game, still being relevant a hard task. S/o to the facebookgroup "Rise of Nations / T%P and EE" 3) Options Even though most generic games roughly follow the same pathway, every game has an new touch and opportunity to learn. There isn't a perfect strategy, only a few who come close all with their own flaws. But the options give you enough points to path your way to victory. 4) Artstyle I like the artstyle. Realistic approach but without taking it to far away from pixel-art. But this is just personal :s I personally love this game, but I would give it a 10 if it had these things: 1) bigger mod-community: Difficult for a game like this, but the "big" mods of back in the days are also a bit underwhelming. 2) more ubisoft support. 3) more micro-upgrades. There are a lot, but I just really love them :p