Customer Reviews

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this game to have some fun without all the violence in modern games. Or the stupidity in the Sim City games. I am extremely happy with this game and intend to purchase more of the sold out software games in the future. Thank you Amazon for bringing back the fun in computer games.

I enjoyed this game very much. There are tons of maps of all different sizes to to choose from on this game, which makes gameplay much more fun and interesting (the only difficult part is the names of the maps are hard to keep straight, and when you choose a map you have no idea what you will get unless you've learned the names by heart). I enjoyed this game and had very few troubles with it. Everything installed correctly and there were no issues with getting the game to play. I did notice that when the gods come to visit you sometimes they do freeze up. This never bothered me however and didn't affect any of my other citizens. It took me forever to figure out how to pay homage to the gods so I go in trouble...a lot. Overall the game is really fun, even if it is "old". And I would recommend it to anyone who likes civ building games.

I was not too enthusiastic about venturing into chinese city building after playing the various incarnations of Caesar and Pharaoh over several years. My experience with Zeus (Greek city builder) was a disappointment with its slightly comic graphics and intrusive gods. But the graphics, music and gameplay in Empire draws one into the Sim completely. It is a very satisfying visual and historical change from the other city builder sims.

The play is similar to earlier offerings in the genre so the learning curve is easy. At the price of the Sim, and its accurate visuals, I highly recommend it to established players of the genre, or to novices that have never played such a sim before. There are fortifications and battles, but it isn't the focus of the Sim as is the case with the entire genre. But it is a well rounded Sim that will give many hours of interest.

This game is great fun and very addicting! It is set up the same way as Zeus: Master of Olympus, so if you liked that game then you will like this one as well. The main difference between the two is that in Emporer, there are many, many different city maps to choose from to play your game, so you aren't stuck with the same layout every time you start a new game!
Now the frustrating bit... There are a couple of game glitches. One minor and one very major. The minor glitch is that when Gods appear to walk your city (just like in Zeus) they sometimes freeze up and don't move. And you can't get them to walk anywhere or do anything. The bigger your city, the more likely this is to happen. The major glitch is the extremely frustrating part, and it happens when you reach a population of 2000 people. If you continue to play beyond that, within 45 minutes you will notice mass desertions and your population will start dropping drastically! Within the hour your population will drop from 2000+ to a little over 400! The whole game will come to a stand still because you will suddenly need over 1000 workers to fill positions! Once that happens, you have to start shutting down industries in order to get your game moving again and then it takes seemingly forever to build your population back up into the thousands again! Sometimes it's better at that point to just start a new game. That happens no matter what city map you use, which time period you start, or what level you set your game to. There is no way to fix it. Now I have Windows 7 so it may just be because my computer is too new and that the older game may not be completely compatible with this system... But I've never had a problem playing Zeus!
So all and all this is a pretty fun game if you can just make the best of a frustrating situation when you get to that point!

This game is fun but can be repetitive over time. The graphics are nice. The game helps me learn how difficult it is to build and maintain a healthy city.

I love this game I once owned the game and lost it during my move. So tried to purchase it through Amazon and the company I selected had not disclosed all the info about there copy. Like the fact it was not original from the factory and it was the British version and did not work. So I did not get a chance to play it which sucked anyway the game is great I am still looking for a good copy.

I loved the game when I originally bought it several years ago, but that original copy got lost in the move to the new house. This game is a replacement that I got for dirt cheap.....Thanks Amazon

The only thing I don't like is that I actually have to keep the disk in the drive at all times in order to keep playing. It would be much more convenient if I could only use the disk to install the program on the computer and not need it again.