March of Empires Review

[Are you having trouble keeping all those empires in formation? Then check out our March of Empires guide.]

You’ve probably played something like March of Empires before. Game of War - Fire Age is an obvious similarity, although 18 months in between means that March of Empires is better than that. It’s still not a great concept for a game though, somehow feeling soulless compared to more hands-on empire builders.

It kind of feels like a glorified spreadsheet, at least until you become part of an alliance. You’re regularly completing simple objectives, such as upgrading a mill or your wall defenses. As you complete these objectives, you gain money and experience, as well as complete separate achievements which lead to further things to profit from. It’s fairly formulaic as you find yourself rigidly sticking to the game’s plans for you, and the game's visuals don't really help in endearing you towards what's happening. 

Where March of Empires opens up much more so is once you join an alliance and once you become more aggressive. You can invade territories, increasing your influence, and gaining extra bonuses for owning so much. That’s how this game suddenly turns more interesting. In conjunction with alliances and working together, if you’ve got the time to devote, you can soon become quite embroiled with the political side of things.

At regular points, you need to help your fellow players and in turn request assistance from them. En masse, you can work out what territories to tackle, as well as what rival alliances to negotiate with. Pick the right alliance and it can get quite tense.

For the casual player though, you’ll mostly be dipping in and out, simply to complete the lesser objectives of March of Empires and this is where things are less appealing. It turns into simple-looking busywork, which is nowhere near as exciting as what you could have experienced.