Emperor is the latest and possibly last game in the City Builder Series, which started with Impression's Caesar, set in the time of the Roman Empire. Emperor, however, was not made by Impressions, but rather by BreakAway, who were also responsible for the Pharaoh expansion Cleopatra. Like it's predecessors Emperor follows the history of a famous Empire, in this case the Chines one, from it's start in the very early Bronze Age up to the time where Kubilai Khan took over the empire. As with the other true City Builder games, you will start out small, learning the use of the various buildings and resources at your disposal. The tutorial is pretty clear and contains a lot of extra information that will help you come to grips with the wealth of detail presented in the game. Cities are built by carefully placing housing, utility buildings, farms and industry, with each level of housing (houses evolve as they get more available resources, such as hemp, ceramics and tea) needing certain types of food, goods and services. As each scenario starts you will be presented with a brief introduction and the mission goals. These range from producing X number of goods of type Y, having X number of people living in Y type housing, conquering city Z and/or having one or more ancestral heroes roam your cities streets. Apart from these mundane goals, some missions will also require you to build monuments, such as a stretch of the Great Wall or the Ch'in Tomb. The various scenarios have been sub-dived into several campaigns, each set during a period of Chinese history, such as Shang, Han and Tang. As you move forward through history, new resources become available and scenarios slowly get more challenging. Military wise, the game is like the other City Builder games too, but with more different unit types, such as archers, hor****, chariots and, something new, siege engines. These are more than useful when you decide to send your troops across the world map to subdue a nearby city and force it into vassal state. Beware though, if you treat your new vassal too harsh, you will have a revolt on your hands, and can forget about receiving tribute while it lasts. The game takes a Zeus like look at religion and if you manage to keep the ancestral heroes and gods happy they might drop in for a visit and help you out blessing buildings, catching animals (for the Imperial Palace) or conquer enemies. The graphics of the game are pretty impressive and allow you to create wonderful looking Chinese cities. Some of the buildings have animations showing they are active, and these are done with some great tongue in cheek humour. More humour can be found in the responses of your citizens and in their names. BreakAway even managed to put some of their beta-testers, with slightly adapted names, into the game. Apart from the voice acting there lots of background noises and some very good music. The game runs smoothly and bug free, at various resolutions and can be played at various levels of difficulty, which mostly mean differences in pricing and in how quickly your people will get upset when you mistreat them. New for a City Builder game is the fact that Emperor supports multi-player games. These are either games where you compete in trying to get the scenario goals done quicker than your competitor, or co-op games, where you build monuments such as the Grand Canal or the Great Wall. While it takes some getting used to, it's a very nice concept, but games can take a very longtime to finish. All in all, if you liked games like Pharaoh and Zeus, you can't do much better than adding Emperor to your collection.
Other Helpful Reviews for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
Funny how all games starting with Caesar look and feel the same. I use the term "funny" loosely, as it might actually get a little bit annoying. Still, any hard-playing fan will probably take comfort in the fact that no ... Read Full Review
A well polished game that's really hard not to admire the effort displayed. It takes the simple formula of build, pave, cultivate and expand and flavours it beautifully with the thriving culture of ancient china. The res... Read Full Review
