Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

This is it. This is the one I've been waiting for GOG to get, ever since I signed up. I had the CD once, but it stopped working years ago, and then I moved away from having a CD drive in my computer. I've been missing this game for ages, and it's a delight to finally have it back. I've liked most of the city builders, but this one is the last (I believe) and best of the 2D isometric games in Sierra's series. They built on their experience in the other games, refined it, and added a few new features that give it a twist all its own. The feng shui element to placing buildings is especially interesting, although opaque; I don't remember if the manual goes into it, but exactly how it all works isn't really explained in-game (but you can find resources online that explain it). The graphics show their age, as you'd expect after 15 years, but even on a big screen they're still pretty. The music's lovely. There are a number of included campaigns, themed after the Chinese dynasties, that will keep you busy for a good long while, and the little blurbs before and after each mission provide some tidbits of history if you're into that kind of thing. It's also possible to create and include custom missions and campaigns, and there are still websites floating around out there with some available for download. It even has a multiplayer feature, though I can't speak to how (or how well) it works; I prefer single-player games in general. GOG just gave me back alittle piece of my younger days with this one. Couldn't be happier.

I was frustrated when I first started playing this, because the game doesn't clearly define "market employees," which led to much confusion as to how to both allow an inspector in the market AND keep market peddlers going in the right direction AND allow market "buyers" to purchase goods. The key is that the *buyers* who leave the market to go purchase goods are NOT considered "market employees." They CAN therefore go through gates that are closed to "market employees," and this is critical, because these gates are needed to guide the market *sellers* (peddlers) in the right direction (market employees = peddlers and announcers). You could use road blocks to guide them, but a road block would block the inspector on your market loop, so you need gates that are closed to market employees, except for the gate going into the housing loop. The only real critique that comes to mind is that the game lacks realism in some respects. For example, it doesn't make sense that the complexity of meals (e.g. having meat, millet, and salt available, versus just meat and millet) determines the size of housing, which really should be determined by the building materials available and the development of architecture. The "random walker" concept is also unrealistic. In the real world, peddlers and building inspectors know where they need to go. However, this doesn't detract from the actual challenge and fun of the game. It actually adds a bit more challenge. Hint: construct road loops for all buildings that require inspection, so the inspectors' routes are maximized, saving labor/money/space. Also note that market buyers WILL NOT buy food from a warehouse. They will only buy food from the mill, so you should set your mill to "GET" food, and set your food warehouse (once you need one) to "ACCEPT" any extra food that won't fit in the mill. This game becomes more and more complex as you go through the ages (starting with the Xia tutorial), but you learn as you go.

This is definitely my favorite of all the Sierra City-Builder Series (2nd fav would be Pharaoh). One of the biggest changes from the previous installments comes in the form of residential neighborhood walls and pass-through gates, so now you can actually design a city without having to resort to cheesy snake neighborhoods or roadblock mazes to reach those highest of residential house types. The classic city-builder gameplay is all here: gather food, set up markets, produce base resources to use for higher level resources to sell, trade away surplus and import needs depending on each scenario type, build great wonders, build friendships and alliances with neighboring towns, worship different deities and get their avatars to show up in your town and bless structures. Scenario missions start small and gradually work their way up to complex city building missions, many times you'll revisit past cities you've made and have to improve them further. The music is excellent, quotes from the populace are spot-on and occasionally hilarious and you do get a pretty decent education in Chinese history at the same time. The only weak point of this game is one that it shares with all the other Sierra City-Builders: the combat sucks. But who plays these games for the combat? I highly recommend this game to anyone looking for some excellent city-building and management gameplay. I might buy this just to have a digital copy... I've still been using my original CD (which still works on Windows 10, so I imagine this version should be just fine).

Let's be straight. This last entry in the Impression games is mostly a reskin of their previous game, Zeus : Master of teh Olympus, with a bunch of small changes and two big ones. Let's speak of the first big change : Feng Sui. It basically associates most building with one of the chinese classical element : Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. A building would rather be on terrain associated with its elements, for example a building associated with woods would like to be near forests tiles... Generally, this force you to rethink your city planning as it encourages you to build certain structures near certain terrains. It's actually a good addition that let you with a new puzzle to solve depending on the terrain disposition, preventing you to cut and paste too hastily your districts from one city to the other. The second big change concern religion. They basically reverted back to the religious system in Caesar and Pharaoh. You must please gods by regularly offering them some of your precious resources, but the rewards are a visit by the god, at most one a a time, which isuseless. The only useful god are those you can send on military expeditions. If on the other hand you displease them, they will punish you by rasing your city with an earthquake or a flooding. I hated this system in Caesar III, I hated it in Pharaoh and I was delighted it was gone in Zeus for a better system of gods-as-natural hazards and rewards for monuments. Reverting it a serious step back. The fact the gods seem are slower to get annoyed at the beginning because it depends on the number of people, doesn't cut it. They're still a bunch of locust that you must consciously feed with your precious resources you might have scarcely any of rather than spending time city planning. Overall I believe the religious system is so bad in Impressions games but Zeus that I would still recommend Zeus over this one. But if you like challenging puzzles, this one is definitively worth your money.

This is the best and most addictive game I have played in this series. I started with Zeus/Poseidon, played Pharaoh and Cleopatra, but this game is, in my view, the most polished and complete game released. I have been waiting for the past 3 years for this game to be released on GOG, so thank you for that!