Episode 75: Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

Retro Spectives

When Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom was released in 2002, it was not to a fanfare of fervor or excitement. This was the 6th title in Impression Games’ city builder series, and it was widely viewed as more of the same. Caesar, Pharoah, Zeus and now Emperor all had the same baseline mechanics, and although they had their own theming and nuanced differences, they still mostly played the same. Critics were not impressed.

Emperor brought along a couple of refinements in residential walls and roadblocks, but was otherwise a refinement of everything that had come before. The real question is, is the essential gameplay here still worth experiencing? Is putting economic supply chains together, and turning your farms on and off a meaningful experience? Or does it all end up being a boring and repetitive exercise as you build up your city the exact same way every time?

On this episode, we discuss:

• How important is the planning phase in Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom? What are the consequences of making mistakes in your planning, and how well can you recover from your mistakes?
• How well does Emperor communicate information to the player? Is this yet another strategy game with a learning cliff instead of a curve, or are you able to identify where exactly problems lie in your city?
• What degree of control do you have over your city? Are you given all the dials and knobs to tweak to achieve your desired outcome, or is it too hands off?

We answer these questions and many more on the 75th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom OST: Jeff Van Dyck

We recently guested on the Retro Asylum Podcast where we discussed and reviewed Fallout 2! We had a great time covering Fallout 1 with Chris on our show - and he was kind enough to return the favour for the sequel. The episode should be dropping very shortly, so please subscribe to them for some more Fallout goodness.

Does Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom deserve its status as the best of the Impression Games’ titles? Are there any modern games that exist as genuine spiritual successors to these games? Was there anything about the economic management that James and Pat drastically misunderstood? Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!