Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

I was never really into city building games, but this one was fun. I never found it extremely difficult and most of the time it was quite relaxing to build your city and have it running smoothly with the great sound track. Sure a few times you were threatened by other cities and you had a few options to solve that problem, but those were offset by monument building and establishing new city type missions. Combat wasn't great, and often the maps were a bit small once you had built a large city. Biggest downside today would be lack of HD resolution etc. This game would be ideal for a remaster.

The town atmosphere of this game is by far the best I think. It makes you feel the vitality of the town. Vision, hearing and playing together make up an excellent experience. The only drawback is that the way of operation is not very intuitive. Finally, I am Chinese, and I very much hope to have Chinese. Or I'll die in my eyes.

I became enamoured of the Sierra/Impressions Games City Builders many years ago (Pharoah/Cleo/Zeus/Poseidon/C3/Emperor, I have them all in a CD Boxset). This one is my favourite by far, I've played it through so many times over the years, and recently started over (again), losing myself for hours in the richness of the game, and loving every second of it! The graphics have held up very well, I love the aesthetics and attention to detail, the missions are still fresh and challenging, and the in-game music is still one of my favourite things about it. Absolutely lovely game and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre. I am a very happy City Builder, thank you GoG!

Could not have been more pleased to see this on GOG, as I lost my CD copy years ago. Not just the best game in the series, for my money this is the best city planning game ever made. Sticks to the successful Pharaoh-Zeus formula with subtle improvements all over the place, most notably the ability to set roadblocks with specific permissions. The major addition is the need to maintain good feng shui instead of building wherever you like, and balancing that with the practical needs of the city is what sets this game apart from its predecessors. It also looks and sounds gorgeous even fifteen years later, and you can learn a bit of authentic Chinese history while you play. Do yourself a favor and check this one out.

This is the final city builder of the studio and it shows polish on every single aspect of it, refining mechanics introduced in all previous titles. Campaigns are varied and challanging, but fair. Most importantly, has still a big fan community, constantly producing new material for it AND a option for free game on any given map, with any given "global" settings. Truly, the very best of its kind.