Common Sense Media Review
By Common Sense Media
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Conquer the world with economic force and might.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 13+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
What's It About?
For teens who like to imagine themselves as the sometime ruler of the world, RISE OF NATIONS provides a way to experiment with strategy. The player's goal is to guide one of 18 great nations through a campaign to take over the world.
Rise of Nations combines the turn-based play of a board game like Risk, with the on-the-move excitement of a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game. In RTS mode the play is continuous, as both the player and the opponent build up resources and strategically attack each other's cities to control territory.
Is It Any Good?
The game some educational potential, offering specialized units and traits for each nation and following a rough timeline of national development from ancient times to modern ages. These elements could spark a player's interest in a particular nation's history, but the game doesn't take advantage of this by explaining the historical significance between the special units and that particular nation. From an entertainment aspect, the game performs admirably with artificial intelligence that offers multiple levels of difficulty. Players can use a multi-player option to challenge friends.
Although battles are shown fully animated, the violence is tempered by the player only having a bird's eye view rather than being fully immersed. In the end, Rise of Nations is a good game; from an entertainment point of view it is excellent. However, a little more effort could have given players not only an entertaining time, but also an educational one.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about world history. Encourage kids to learn more about the countries they get to know in the game.
Game Details
- Platform : Windows
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Not available online
- Publisher : Big Huge Games
- Release date : September 30, 2003
- Genre : Strategy
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : August 25, 2016
Did we miss something on diversity?
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by
Suggest an Update
Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
See how we rate