Rush, Boom, Turtle: Fall of the Legends

[TomChick]

In this week's Rush, Boom, Turtle, I throw a two-year-birthday party for Rise of Legends. Unfortunately, the only people to show up are me, Brian Reynolds, and the four people playing online. Rise of Legends runs crying into its room and shuts the door. The whole thing is kind of awkward.

[SlyFrog]

Originally Posted by TomChick

In this week's Rush, Boom, Turtle, I throw a surprise two-year-birthday party for Rise of Legends. Unfortunately, the only people to show up are me, Brian Reynolds, and the four people playing online. Rise of Legends runs crying into its room and shuts the door. The whole thing is kind of awkward.

Dude, we don't suck. Rise of Legends's shitacular netcode that makes it nearly impossible to get a freaking game is what sucks.

The fact that they had the same problems with Rise of Nations and didn't fix it sucks even more.

Really annoyed me, because in the end, it killed what was my favorite RTS ever (Rise of Nations - I gave up on Rise of Legends much more quickly when the multiplayer matches started dropping and hanging in the exact same way they had in Rise of Nations when I was using a different computer, set up, location, etc.).

[Unicorn McGriddle]

I recently reinstalled Rise of Legends and am enjoying anew its excellent city mechanics. Many games could learn from the way RoL has deep, meaningful development choices that don't overwhelm the gameplay with econ crap instead of fightin'.

[Aeon221]

I liked Rise of Legends, but the campaign was really poor. The rest of the game was fantastic, but the campaign (and the heinously irritating characters) just soured me on the whole experience.

[Mark L]

The autopatcher in the game doesn't seem to work. Is there anywhere where one can get the patches all bundled together? I seem to recall there were a lot of them.

[AndrewM]

I bought it! I enjoyed skirmishing a lot. RoL was the first game where I really sat down and said, hey, I'm going to learn how to skirmish! Mostly I just play through the campaign. Which in this case was unfortunate because the campaign was pretty terrible. I never even got to the alien part of it, and never bothered to skirmish with them either, so I have never actually seen them in game! How sad is that?

[Not One Of Us]

I'll be trying, at some point, to play a game with Umac, but the last time I tried to create an account/log in to the multiplayer...thing, it simply wouldn't work.

And Christ, what the fuck? I enjoyed the campaign; maybe because I kept hearing about how it supposedly killed babies for the past couple years that actually playing it was a pleasant surprise, but still.

[TomChick]

Yeah, I've been trying to upgrade the install on one of my computers, and it's pretty sad that the ingame patching is busted. It's as if no one in charge bothers to check on whether the game even works anymore. :(

-Tom

[Jab2565]

I would have shown for a ROL party, now actually being able to connect to a game is another story. I didn't realize that you could alt right click to get artillerly to hang in the back of your army. I think the interfaces for RON and ROL are my favorite RTS interfaces. It does seem like the interface decisions (Rally to groups, the artillery one, break down of all weapon and armor stats,and more I'm forgetting) would be a no brainer. I don't see them as being "hardcore" options, lowering the amount of micro management needed seems like a way to get less skilled RTS players into a game in my opinion.

[mkozlows]

Unskilled players don't do that. We just sort of click on the enemy units and hope something good happens.

(Also, don't you see any contradiction between an interface element being so obscure you didn't know about it, and saying that it's not hardcore and would help less skilled people? Only hardcore people know why they should look for it, much less use it.)

[Unicorn McGriddle]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EUCHDI36 is a pack of all the patch files to date. Unzip that into \Rise of Legends\Patches. Run updater.exe in the root directory. If it chokes on a patch file, delete that file and try again. (The autoupdater downloaded some strange patch file with the wrong number of character groups in its filename which updater.exe didn't seem to like.)

I like the game, but the patch situation is very fucked up. They should be providing the patches as an official download instead of forcing us through this broken bullshit system. This is NWN2-level shit here.

Andrew: Go start up a Coatl game! Do it! Do it now!

[AndrewM]

Unfortunately I'm in a no-games hiatus for various reasons, so I can't. One day!

[Demon G Sides]

RoL is tons of fun for its 5 dollar price tag at gogamer.com.

And fwiw, i've played numerous online games with people in England and we had some good times. A few hang-ups, but only one straight up freeze.

[Omniscia]

$5? Try $9.90 and out of stock.

[lesslucid]

I bought it... still don't have a computer that'll run it, though - at least not the way it's meant to run. :(

One of the things Tom brings up in the article is how great the design of RoN was - something that I was really impressed by at the time - and yet how few games have tried to follow in its footsteps. What's with that? New RTS games get churned out by the barrelful every year, where's the "spritiual heir to RoN"??

[Enidigm]

I liked Rise of Nations, it was one of the better RTS games made recently. I especially enjoyed the Cities of Gold themed Coutl, and it was interesting to learn that they were one of the last races to be fleshed out, although it was obvious considering the number of interdependies of the other two that they were the last to be conceived, and felt a bit shallow compared to the others.

There were two big drawbacks. The aesthetics of RTS games are as much a part of the experience as the gameplay and balance, but RoL perpetuated a certain deviation in this standard that BHG practiced in thinking that unit responses are simply repetitive annoyances. I think beeps and clinks, although done well enough to convey color and theme (like the eerie Sputnik-froggy beep of the Moon Priest), just fall short of the storytelling nature of sound in RTS. Even old games like Battle Realms understood this (i love the background material on the Lotus Clan as being following the path of the Tree of Corruption, and so the peasants declare "i am the root", and the basic infantry respond "the leaf obeys").

It has some serious performance issues as well. Even now, on a 3.0ghz dual core, high end recent video card, the game chugs - and lags badly, to the point of distraction. Every 5 seconds or so causes a major screen pause/refresh, and lags of up to a second are not uncommon. Unit control is a bit on the loose side in any event.

[Troy S Goodfellow]

Nice interview and an odd occasion, but I love Rise of Legends so who am I to argue?

I'm one of those critics that thinks the setting was a turn off for many casual RTS players - original invention is very hard to sell in this day and age compared to the industry a decade ago. I'm sure Microsoft would have preferred RoN II and I'm positive it would have outsold RoL by a huge margin. Personally, I'm glad that they went for an original mythos, but drawing on three very different worlds (steampunk, Stargate and pseudo-Arabian Nights) probably made it that much harder for newbies to buy in. The Alpha Centauri comparison was a good one.

I'm with you on the symmetry in Rise of Nations - radically different is usually more fun than slightly different. But one of the great things about RoN is how the few asymmetries were along very different paths. It wasn't simply one nation having better archers and another having cheaper swordsmen; one side got free villagers, one side mined wealth along with metal, one side got the ability to move through forests, one side got invisibility...even if the mechanics and most units were identical, these tiny changes could make one game play very differently from another depending on terrain and opponents.

Troy

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Battle Realms had exceptionally good, exceptionally goofy voice work. Even today, my friends and I can still speak the lingo as soon as somebody brings it up -- InnnnFEST!, I am the root, focuthed and thteady, heart to fist/fist to heart, the works.

[AndrewM]

Originally Posted by Troy S Goodfellow

Personally, I'm glad that they went for an original mythos

I'm not sure I am, if the cost is no more Brian Reynolds strategy games.

[JoshV]

I'm kind of torn, as I am definitely tired of your basic fantasy, but on the other hand, i wasn't excited at all by the setting of RoL.

[fuzzyslug]

Originally Posted by Troy S Goodfellow

The Alpha Centauri comparison was a good one.

I'm not so sure the comparison is good, perhaps ok might be a better term. After all, we're all aware of a game called StarCraft that not only turned away from a bread and butter fantasy setting for one rooted in science fiction but used three completely different factions (only two of which splintered from the mean). In retrospect (and in comparison), it's amazing how well StarCraft actually did given that it had two things going against it. Perhaps they should have used ROL 2 to gather fans before making such a big leap.

What's sad is that Age of Mythology reinforced the lesson that radical and imaginative departures such as these in the RTS genre just don't sell as well as the tried and true. I hate those kind of lessons.

[Rock8man]

Originally Posted by JoshV

I'm kind of torn, as I am definitely tired of your basic fantasy, but on the other hand, i wasn't excited at all by the setting of RoL.

Yeah, same here. Plus as others pointed out, Alpha Centauri was a great comparison too. I just couldn't get into that game because of its setting. There's something immediately compelling and familiar about a historical setting which makes the game less intimidating and easier to 'click' with, compared to a science fiction setting where they are throwing unfamiliar concepts at you on top of unfamiliar gameplay design elements.

[zengonzo]

I would definitely not have preferred Rise of Legends to have 'standard fantasy tropes'. That would've made me write it off immediately, rather than after playing the demo.

It's a real gamble, to create a specific fantasy world. One worth taking, artistically, but difficult for a company that must turn a profit. You run the higher risk that your environment just won't resonate with other people.

For me, I love steampunk, I loved the rarely-explored Arab influence, but when I actually played the game I had a hard time comprehending whether to attack a flying whirligig with a purple diamond monster or the green glass demon. If I'd been more drawn to the environment I might've taken the time to figure it out, but I'd had other items that drew me more at the time.

Another problem, I think, is that Rise of Legends came about at the end of an arc for graphics. It felt largely like a reskinning of RoN, at a glance, and there were other games that felt like they were doing much more to make the units feel grounded, and less sprite-like.

Total War, for example. I always had a much better intuitive grasp for how units would handle the environment in that series. I felt them much more grounded and when they were vulnerable and when they were strong. I could feel the significance of their morale, their discipline, their effectiveness, as compared to classic single-sprite strategy games. I think that made a huge difference for strategy, and I have a very hard time going back to the Westwood model.

It's made me somewhat skeptical of Starcraft II.

[Hugin]

I never played Rise of Nations because I don't generally care for historically themed RTSs and 4x strategy games.

However,

I do like RTSs, and I do like steampunk, (and I adore Alpha Centauri).

So why didn't I buy Rise of Legends? Because I thought the demo was underwhelming. It felt slow. None of the unit designs really excited me (and again, I like steampunk). I'm all for new fantasy settings but this one just didn't seem all that interesting. At this point the only unit I can remember was the sort of walking...theater box hero unit thing, and I thought that was dorky.

Maybe part of the reason it didn't sell as well was because, accessibility aside, the world they made wasn't all that compelling.

[Quitch]

Same, I love me some RTS but I think the Rise of Legends demo was a mistake. You fired it up and there was yellow and gold everywhere, this big scorpion, the immediate (no matter how mistaken) whiff of a Warcraft III clone... and then you exit back to desktop.

The only reason I'd ever bother with it again is because people insist that it's good. But unless the AI is rock solid, what does it matter?

Here's another less, unless you're a top notch RTS developer who is going to sell a shitload, don't shaft us with crap AI because what's the point of us buying it then? For the non-existent online community?

[Matt Perkins]

Loved the interview. Still in love with Reynolds.

I'm can't say I'm a huge Rise of Legends fan, but still a very good interview. Thanks, Tom.

[Dave Long]

I think the last time I tried to play ROL online I had all sorts of problems getting it working.

I'd really like to bust it out again, though. Maybe I'll see if I can fire it up tonight.

[JoshV]

Originally Posted by fuzzyslug

I'm not so sure the comparison is good, perhaps ok might be a better term. After all, we're all aware of a game called StarCraft that not only turned away from a bread and butter fantasy setting for one rooted in science fiction but used three completely different factions (only two of which splintered from the mean). In retrospect (and in comparison), it's amazing how well StarCraft actually did given that it had two things going against it. Perhaps they should have used ROL 2 to gather fans before making such a big leap.

What's sad is that Age of Mythology reinforced the lesson that radical and imaginative departures such as these in the RTS genre just don't sell as well as the tried and true. I hate those kind of lessons.

Wait, i wouldn't call StarCraft a giant departure, its SciFi is pretty standard, with one race being Humans with marines and tanks that is fairly straightforward. And one more being your standard evil bug things, which is easier to relate to as well, as they are basically the Aliens\Tyranid\Heinlein bugs. (the third, the protoss, yeah, wtf, i still get confused by teh names of their units)

The Blizz was also fairly popular at that point, which i'm sure helped, along with a real lack of notable competition.

PS: The interview was pretty cool, i'm hoping maybe the BHG guys will do a console RTS at somepoint...a good one, Brian Reynolds seems to have a good obsession with interfaces.

[PeterK]

Put me in the camp liking Rise of Nations more than Rise of Legends. I liked some of the gameplay tweaks in RoL and thought the campaign was more engaging than RoN, but I personally don't like a fantasy setting for an RTS. It doesn't matter to me whether it's standard orcs and elves stuff or something different. I just prefer historical or "reasonably normal" sci-fi RTS settings, mainly for aesthetic reasons.

Also, I prefer having the sides be somewhat similar rather than all out different.

[Enidigm]

Haven't there been studies showing imaginary worlds are always less popular than themes more or less based on realism? Imagination is more rare than often thought. It takes an extra step that many find hard to swallow. Hell, just look at Crysis vs. CoD4 - soft fantasy vs. hard reality.

Part of the problem with the world of Rise of Legends (now that i just recently tried to replay it) is that, holy moly, does it not make sense. First level - Laser guns, walkers, MacGuffins, Petruzzo, Venucci, Giaccomo - a litany of characters, names and places that have absolutely no meaning to anybody and so confusing the first time i played i remember having literally no idea who was who. THEN it throws you confusingly into some kind of meta campaign tactical view, but instead of being narrated, it's all text box information.

The rich setting was amazing, but BHG needed to take twice the effort to elaborate the narrative, describe the setting and characters, and integrate the campaign/skirmish levels. And sometimes victory/narration announcements overlap, ect. It seemed sort of hacked together.