The strategy game that really introduced me to the genre. I loved this game growing up, so my bias will shine through in this review. The visuals are very much in line with stuff like Age of Empires and other historical strategy games of the era. The gameplay is very much Real-Time Strategy Civilization, with the various playable nations having unique bonuses, buildings, and units, and each game progressing through the eras of history towards a set of victory conditions, either military, science, or diplomatic. There's not much originality here in terms of mechanics, but that doesn't mean those mechanics are lacking.

The management of resources is very barebones, in-line with how a lot of RTS games streamline the economics in favour of the more action-packed combat between units. There is some room for tactics here in terms of unit counters and positional micromanagement, but this isn't Starcraft; the appeal is more in the bombast of using historical units to take cities and territory. In that sense, the game delivers in spades.

On paper, the game is probably lacking in a lot of ways that I can't properly elaborate on, with limits to skill expression compared to other, more intense strategy games, but this game has a charm to it that really can't be quantified. Whether it is playing against the AI for fun, or doing the few built-in campaign modes to add a layer of metagaming to the individual showdowns, Rise of Nations is a solid strategy game all around, that was only improved upon with it's expansion Thrones and Patriots, expanding the gameplay greatly. I will always love this game for the casual RTS fun it delivers.