This game does not dissappoint :)
Within an hour I knew I made the right choice. This game is astoundingly easy to get into. Basically you move guys around, attack other guys, build some cities, and make a few on-the-go choices, but this game is really much deeper than that.
How about the graphics? They are very good, the textures you can tell are a little blurred, but the way the fog sits over the land, the cities sit perched on mountaintops, and the military units batle each other are all very eye pleasing, although simple and even cartoonish. No complaints about the sound, either.
The gameplay is great, it's about as addicting as you can get, marriages most likely will collapse as people corall their horsemen around and deploy armies of tanks at to their neighbors. You will run into things such as fighter jets taking on knights, and modern soldiers running around while a Shakespearean Theatre is being built in your capitol, so continuity is a little off, but it doesn't hurt the gameplay.
The game retains a genial, cartoonish appearance throughout. Your advisors will shove each other out of the way to give you updates on the situation, on screen prompts generally have humor to them (Are you sure you want to quit? No, what was I thinking?) and it's friendly with you the whole time.
The only bad things really would be that the advisors get annoying some times and if you reach the end of the game you get booted out and can't continue with your current game (just about to develop the atomic bomb? Oh well.)
Is the game worth $60? If you really have piles of money go ahead and buy it, if you have like $61, you might want to wait for a price drop, but this is a game that must be experienced, rent it if you're unsure.