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Rising Lands

Windows - 1997

Alt names Rising Lands : Conquest and Civilisations, Rising Lands : Conquêtes & Civilisations, Rising Lands: Die Herrschaft der Clans
Year 1997
Platform Windows
Released in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom (1997)
Japan (1998)
Brazil (2000)
Genre Strategy
Theme Post-Apocalyptic, Real-Time, Sci-Fi / Futuristic
Publisher ASCII Something Good Corporation, MC2-Microïds, Microïds, R&P Electronic Media
Developer Microïds
Perspectives Free-roaming camera, Diagonal-down
4.7 / 5 - 21 votes

Description of Rising Lands

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One of the most innovative real-time strategy games to have come along in a long time, Rising Lands is a good game that is hampered by a few idiosyncracies and an inconvenient user interface.

The review at Games Domain explains the premise and gameplay mechanics quite well as follows: "[the] premise of Rising Lands is quite topical - at least in movie terms - with the impact of a comet on the Earth sending civilization back a few thousand years. Out of the devastation arise a number of tribes, each set on being the leading power in the post-holocaust era. Your role as leader of one of these tribes is to steer your people through a series of campaign missions while developing research in military, engineering, farming and magic disciplines.

The general theme of this real-time strategy game may sound all too familiar, yet it has a few innovative elements that add to its strategic nature. The quality of the graphics and animation is also strong, but unfortunately there's a few areas where an otherwise good game design falls a little flat. As you begin the campaign you only have limited knowledge of farming, military and engineering skills - each mission gives you the opportunity to make a couple of discoveries, provided you build and man a research lab during the mission, and you choose which of the technology paths to focus on for the mission.

You can focus on the military, to get (for example) flamethrower and tower defence units, or you can research farming methods to ultimately allow you to make more efficient and speedier use of the farmland around you, or you can focus on engineering to allow you to build such things as vehicles and balloons. Later in the game magic becomes available for research, from which you can train druids and cast spells. Thus the tech path you choose in the campaign affects the tactical options open to you in each mission, and with 15 or so technologies per tech path, that choice can make a difference.

In addition to carrying over tech knowledge between real-time missions you also carry over relationships with other tribes, so if you make peace with the red tribe in mission 4, you'll start mission 5 at peace with them too. Winning via peaceful methods is sometimes possible, and the more allies you have, the better. There's a definite feeling of continuity between missions, but sadly there's no convincing plot line to suck you into the game world. Mission goals are presented in a rather sterile fashion, which is in contrast to the colourful presentation within the real-time element of the game."

With a great premise and very intriguing blend of empire/micro- management (think The Settlers), real-time strategy fare, and historical context of Ultimate Domain, it is a pity that the interface in Rising Lands is not as user-friendly as Warcraft or other classics. You need to make a lot of left-clicks to order the units to do your bidding, and sometimes there is simply not enough time to do that when the enemy's armies are approaching. However, unlike most game reviewers, I feel the game's strong points more than outweigh the cumbersome interface. There are simply too many good ideas here, even if not all of them are implemented well. For instance, you have to make sure your units have access to enough food, or they will die. Hunger will also drive your units to abandon their post to find something to eat - a very nice nod to realism that adds a whole new layer to gameplay. You can also trade resources or people with other tribes by the use of markets and special "exchange" buildings, and you need to train messengers to initiate trades and pacts. Like all good 4X games, research is very important in Rising Lands: you get access to balloons and other cool units with enough research.

All in all, if you enjoy innovative RTS games and are willing to put up with both a non user-friendly interface and high difficulty level, Rising Lands is well worth your time. Similar to Gangsters series, it's one of those games that will grow on you once you get over the initial annoyance of having to put up with the interface until you are used to it. Highly recommended and a Top Dog in my book, but definitely not for everyone.

Review By HOTUD

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Comments and reviews

Ann 2023-10-08 0 point

The game seems to be working fine except when on multiplayer, the screen just turns completely black. I tried a few things but nothing seems to work, would anyone happen to know if there's a way to fix this?

B2 2022-09-16 4 points

Caso procurem a versão dublada (Português - Br) consegui alterar o idioma finalmente https://mega.nz/file/oF8gRRDQ#SycL99yb2pUv5T8GuXOsPuDV-WLqAltmPwX_Qf2t2E4

Draculia 2022-03-07 0 point

Does someone have the save files for all the levels? My game is frequently crashing before I finish a level.

Vyruz64 2021-05-27 1 point

This is one of the first games I played on my very first PC! And I actually work at the place where I got my first PC now so I kept remembering it.
Thank so much to Cortez for making the Win10 compatible version!

If you want to play the game with the cinematics and background music follow these steps:
1. Download both the .iso (which is actually a .bin and .cue) version and Cortez's release.
2. Install virtual CD player software of choice, I used Daemon Tools.
3. Mount the .cue file in the virtual CD player.
4. Start Cortez's hacked .exe file.

This should start the game and you should have all the cinematics and music.
The game streams these from the disc image, the .cue file contains data for finding the audio tracks and binary data.

Eugene 2021-04-13 1 point

Looking for it for a loooooong time!!!

fvitu 2020-04-12 0 point

I loved this game in its time, I hope to enjoy it thanks

Cortez 2019-12-11 2 points

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H57Fz595lk

This youtube video has instructions to fix the game to run in windows 10

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Download Rising Lands

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Windows Version

DownloadCarlos Cortez' Release
Compatible with Modern Hardware English version 222 MB
DownloadISO Version English version 439 MB DownloadContains Multiplayer Maps Italian version 439 MB DownloadRIP Version Portuguese version 217 MB DownloadISO Version Portuguese version 453 MB ManualEnglish version 62 MB

Game Extras

Various files to help you run Rising Lands, apply patches, fixes, maps or miscellaneous utilities.

PatchOfficial Patch English version 331 KB PatchOfficial Patch Italian version 335 KB FixModern computer fix English version 293 KB

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