It's been a while since I've been up until the proverbial Quarter to Three playing an RTS, but that's exactly what happened to me last night.  I was approaching the end of the Vinci campaign in Rise of Legends, and wanted to see both how the story continued to play out but also the game mechanics of the second "army" in the game, the Alin.  While the presentation of the narrative is mediocre at best (a chronic problem in the RTS world, my own games generally included), the campaign format and strong play systems just keep me coming back for more.

I haven't dipped my toes yet much into multiplayer, since I enjoy seeing the mechanics slowly revealed in the context of the single player game much more.  But I keep reading interesting posts about it at QT3 and being tempted to give it more of a try.  I did at least already suffer my way through the 1000 ports you have to open up for their Gamespy implementation to work, so maybe I'll poke around more.

As a fellow Microsoft Game Studios game (and an RTS, to boot) I certainly wish Rise of Legends the best of luck.  They've got a quality game though I maintain that their choice of setting and overall positioning is probably too weak to really be a blockbuster hit.  Perhaps strong word of mouth will build some grassroots support for them, however.