Description: Rise Wars is a strategy game for Android that will remind a lot of players of the RISK board game. It’s a simplified strategy game for the mobile setting and Rise Wars aims to appeal to everyone, even those that might not have played games like these before. Rise Wars features five maps including Europe, North America, Pangea, Tamriel and a full world map as well as 45 achievements to get when playing. It’s designed for six players, but you can play with two humans side-by-side, or six friends in the same room as well as against the computer or online against people from all over the world. Is Rise Wars the simplified, dynamic version of Risk you’ve been looking for? Read on to see.
How it Works: To get started, you’ll need to download Rise Wars from the Play Store. The free version is ad supported but the paid version isn’t much to buy anyway. After you have your preferred version installed, you’re ready to play.
You can choose to create a local game and play against other people with you – by passing the tablet back and forth – or against computers. As well, you can start a game online with people from all over the place.
Here, you can choose your world map as well, including a fun choice, Tamriel, the map from the Skyrim video game. Once you get your map started up, you’ll be prompted to choose some land and get the game going.
Once you’ve chosen your land and the computers – or other players – have chosen theirs, the map will look much more like a RISK board.
For first-time players, there are popups as you play to give you pointers on how to play the game.
Attacking an enemy nation is mostly determined by the number of troops you have there and the number of troops you have there.
Of course, how the dice fall also has an effect on how well your forces will do against the enemy.
The more you play the game, the more statistics you’ll have to look at.
There are also achievements to collect as you try to become a great general.
Opinion: Rise Wars is a nice modern take on what makes RISK so much fun and while the overall appearance of the game could do with some work, the gameplay doesn’t suffer as a result and is sharp as ever. Taking piece after piece of territory away from your enemies is a lot of fun and the dice rolls add a simple, yet conventional mechanic to the whole thing. Keen strategists will like being able to have more than one game running at the same time – like fighting on different fronts – and the ability to check up on stats and your world ranking. Overall, there’s a lot on offer for strategy fans and while the presentation isn’t the best it still plays excellently.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – There’s no problem with the game’s speed, but you might find yourself waiting for other player’s for quite some time when playing with 5 others.
- Features (4/5) – It’s a simple sort of update to the RISK formula and here, less is more giving an accessible game for all ages to easily tap into with no issues.
- Theme (3/5) – Rise Wars doesn’t look all that good on high-resolution devices and it could be better suited to tablets, but it does feature background music and sound effects.
- Overall (4/5) – Despite some issues with the look and feel of the game, Rise Wars is a lot of fun that will appeal to keen RTS fans and newcomers to the genre as well, thanks to it being one of the most accessible strategy games based on the RISK formula.
Pros
- Rise Wars ticks all the right boxes to satisfy keen RTS fans looking for stats and strategy.
- Lots of map shapes included.
- Local and online gameplay encourages multiplayer and works well.
- Accessible and easy to get to grips with, unlike other, more stuffy strategy games.
Cons
- Presentation could be better, with high resolution assets needed.
- The tutorial skims over things and makes it a little difficult for new players.
Conclusion: Rise Wars might not be to everyone’s liking, but the more accessible spin it puts on the RISK formula means it’s easy to get into – despite the clunky tutorial – and it’s a lot quicker, which is great for tablets and smartphones. It could do with some higher resolution assets, but all-in-all this isn’t a bad-looking game and the core mechanics speak for themselves, making Rise Wars an addictive game that’s fun no matter where you are.