The strategy game world has been abuzz since Big Huge Games unveiled its sophomore effort earlier this month, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends. Though it carries the Rise of Nations name, Rise of Legends goes in a completely different direction from the original in terms of subject matter. Rise of Legends is a fantasy-themed game that features steampunk-like technological nations battling against fairy tale-style magical nations. Producer Tim Train offered us a chance to play Rise of Legends at the show, and, of course, we couldn't say no.

　　Even though we recently played the original Rise of Nations for a refresher course in the series, we wouldn't have needed it. Heck, even Train left us alone, as the demo was easy to pick up and play. Plus, there are all sorts of user-friendly features in the game, including a mission log that tells you what you need to do. The first thing that we needed to do was to expand our starting city, so we tacked on different types of districts to improve our military production, commerce, and research. Districts are tacked on to cities, so you can build a huge, interconnected city that looks amazing, especially when you upgrade it to a large city.

　　It's important to build districts, because they drive your progress in the game. Rise of Legends differs from Rise of Nations and most real-time strategy games in that you don't really accrue research points over time. Instead, you have to build a specific district to receive two research points that you can spend. The tech tree follows a point formula, so you can buy two first-level technologies with those two points. However, a fifth-level technology will require five points, which means you'll have to build about five scientific districts to get the six points you need. But, like in Rise of Nations, the price gets higher and higher each time you build copies of an existing district. The way to solve this little problem is to conquer another city, which will let you start from scratch again.

　　There are two resources in the game. One is gold, which is accrued by cities and trade caravans that travel between cities (in the case of the Vinci, the nation we were playing, the caravan looks like an early locomotive engine, only without the tracks). The other key resource is Timonium, an element you have to mine at preexisting mines on the map. So cities and mines become important strategic points on the map, and they can be fought over by different sides. If you capture a mine or city, you gain control over its territory, and thus, you expand the size of your nation. Like in Rise of Nations, color-coded lines indicate the national borders in the game, which can play pivotal roles during battles.

　　In the scenario we played, we were caught in the midst of a Vinci civil war. Our Vinci faction was under assault by the other Vinci faction, which possessed a powerful doge, or supercannon, that could shell our city with poison gas and explosive shells. We had to quickly build up an army of imperial musketeers (which come in groups of six), as well as clockwork men (mechanical robots) and various flying machines. Once we had enough massed, we ran wild on the enemy (the scenario is designed to be easy), quickly overrunning key cities and mines, thus gaining a resource advantage. The combat is similar to other real-time strategy games, so once you deliver troops to the battlefield, they'll do the job of fighting while you get to watch. But you can also do all sorts of neat tricks, from ordering troops to volley (to increase their firepower) to using a hero power to tip the balance of power. In this case, our hero could summon six flying machines on the spot, giving us the ability to wipe the enemy off the map. Once we gained control of the doge cannon, it was easy to simply shell the enemy's main city, allowing our units to swoop in and capture it.

　　The technologies you can research are somewhat similar to some of those in Rise of Nations. For instance, you can research certain techs to expand the borders of your nation, as well as to increase the attrition of enemy units on your soil. You can also research tech that lets your units heal in enemy territory. Vinci-specific technologies (each race has two unique lines of technology) include the ability to strip-mine for resources, which is helpful when you need to build up that war machine.

　　Rise of Legends looks just as good as it did when we saw it a few weeks ago. The Vinci cities are wonders of clockwork gears and levers, and they're constantly in motion. There are a bit of rough edges around the game, though, but that's to be expected since it won't ship until next year. You can zoom in and shift the camera around a bit, so you can play the game from a completely top-down view to a more isometric one. One thing we're hoping makes it in the game is the ability to zoom farther out so you can see more of the map.

　　The various pieces of Rise of Legends look great, and we'll see how Big Huge Games can piece everything together to create a compelling real-time strategy game. Still, things look very bright for the game, and we look forward to keeping an eye on Rise of Legends over the coming year.