Rise of Nations: Extended Edition Review (Blitz)
Okay, so I used to play this game all the time since way back. I still have a few CDs of it too. I really like this game. It is one of the best RTS games you could ever find. It is an amazing game with heck of a lot to offer. That being said. I cannot recommend it. The reason being that this version removed several actions. You cannot delete a unit or worker now. You cannot change the units' stances, so they're always in aggressive mode. Also, you cannot delete buildings. Let's say you are conquering the map. Rather than send troops half across it, you would rather build new training buildings closer to where you're fighting. For every building you construct, the price of that building goes up, so if you have 12 of one building, it will be very expensive to build another one. Before, you could just delete some and then it would be cheaper, now, you cannot, and the price gets hefty.
Aggressive mode gets your army killed pretty quick because they split up and chase the enemy down rather than actually fighting together. There is one of the campaigns where you cannot being in aggressive mode else you lose very quickly. This is not acceptable. I don't even know why they removed those stance changes. Also, let's say you need a lot of workers, but then you need less and less as your civilization advances and you get more and more resource upgrades. You would rightly want to retire some workers, but you can't. The only way to do so is to send them to the enemy. You have a population cap, and a worker counts towards that. You want a bigger army? Well, you'll have to get rid of some workers first.
Because of these changes, things become very inconvenient and you are forced into a certain play style. If you're army is always aggressive, you're going to have to micro-manage them a lot more rather than just leave them on the front line sending more troops to them so you can go do some other important stuff. I cannot recommend this game until this issue is fixed. They should still have those, but they don't. If they did, I would recommend this game completely. Also, for being 20 years old, this game is a little expensive. If you have a cd/dvd player or a way to run it for your computer, you might be able to just get a dvd from eBay or something for a lot cheaper. Otherwise, maybe get this one sale? It's still a good game, but it's not as enjoyable because of the inconvenient changes.