There's no doubt that each game in Impressions Games' city-building series has been an incremental upgrade to the previous one. The series began with a Roman Empire installment Caesar III, then continued with Pharaoh - the building sim set in the Egyptian landscape, and finally culminated with Zeus, Greek city-state simulator and its own expansion pack, which added a bit of Greek mythology. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (ERoTMK) now moving the series away from the Mediterranean area into ancient China, and spans seven dynasties and more than 3,000 years of Chinese history-from China's pre-imperial Xia dynasty circa 2100 BCE to the Mongol invasion of the Middle Kingdom under Genghis Khan in 1211 CE.

What you can expect from this game? Instead of improving on Zeus, ERoTMK surprisingly returns to the earlier games in the series and combines all the best elements into a package that is inviting and richly detailed. In the other words, the mission goals in ERoTMK return to the basic goals of Caesar III and Pharaoh. You have to create a new cities, building military forces, etc, occasionally you will be required to build gigantic monuments and structures like Great Temples, Grand Canals, and the mighty Great Wall of China (of course, these monuments take forever to build). Also you must produce a certain quantity of a commodity in a year, save up some money, reach a target population, but also fight to defend your city or send your troops out to conquer another. To make things a bit harder, each of the scenarios gives you drawbacks and bonuses.

ERoTMK features seven historical campaigns, each representing one or more Chinese dynasties: Xia, Sang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui/Tang, more than 40 engaging single-player missions (plus you can download some bonus maps), "Open Play" mode, ability to construct engineering marvels like the Grand Canal and the Great Wall, besiege walled cities using catapults and battering rams, defend against invaders, and hold off barbarians, ability to compete or cooperate online with up to 7 other players (collaborate on a monumental building project like the Great Wall or wage war to gain supreme power over China). In comparison with the previous Impressions' game, ERoTMK brings various improvements such as the addition of residential walls, ability to lay farms anywhere on the map, four religious ancestor lines to choose from, Buddha, Taoists, Confucius and your own ancestors, ability to use the animal of your birth year, brings back the festival system of previous games, more practical overview map, and already mentioned multiplayer option which allow players to play against each other or work together and many other goodies.
I don't deny that ERoTMK is maybe one step back in comparison with Zeus, but it's definitely beautiful and satisfying management game. If you like city building games, then you should buy this game as soon as possible!

For more information download this playable demo (127MB) and visit the official homepage. Those who already own this game, don't forget there's a bonus campaign consisting of three new missions (50.8MB).

Hardware requirements:
Minimum: Pentium II, 400 MHz, 64 MB RAM, Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 8.1, 900 MB HDD Space, 256 MB Swap file on your Windows drive, 4X CD-ROM, Video card with at least 4MB of Memory capable of 800x600 resolution at 16 bit (High color) color depth, Online play requires 56K or faster Internet connection.

Recommended: Pentium III, 800 MHz, 128 MB RAM for Windows 98/ME, 256 MB RAM for Windows 2000/XP, DirectX 8.1, 1.2GB Hard Drive Space.