First of all, the tutorial is highly inadequate, and unless you download a patch for it, it does freeze, just like another reviewer said. I've tried to play the game for two evenings now, and can't get past the first mission. Now I'll admit, I'm not the best strategist, but I successfully made it through Age of Empires which was far more complex than the first mission in this game. You only have to kill one thing, a praying mantis, and no matter how many warrior ants I throw at it, it won't die. That's frustrating. And the interface isn't very nice. It's hard to tell if your ants are really attacking at all, and hard to control them. I should also mention that these warrior ants are the only ones you get to control. You cannot directly control workers.

That's all outside the anthill. Inside you can only use menus to control things, and to me it doesn't make a lot of sense. In some cases you can't see what's happening, and in others you can see it, but it doesn't make any sense.

Some may like this game, but I would suggest passing it by. Especially if you have to pay the full [price]. It's DEFINITELY not worth that.

"I Already Uninstalled It"
Unfortunately, this game was a big disappointment. A fair warning--this review is based on hardly playing the game at all. The tutorial was just about all I needed to see to convince me that I didn't like this game. Rather than a full written review, here is a list of some of the things I disliked about the Empire of the Ants:

1) The game locked up on me during one of the tutorials;

2) Whenever the game is started, it turns your sound all the way up to the maximum. This is *way too loud* so one of the first things you'll have to do every time you play Empire is to turn your speakers down;

3)The depictions of the ants you control look too much like, well, ants. They're ugly, crawly things & are in what looks like constant random motion. In addition, they can be hard to pick out against the background;

4) The background itself is a static image & is also rather unattractive.

As for other issues, the above-ground gameplay seems to be standard RTS with more different kinds of ants than you thought existed--missile ants, melee ants, elite ants. I don't remember any of this from my college zoology course, but ants were never my strong suit. Below-ground, you set policies for your workers & tell your queen what kind of ant eggs to lay.

The ads for this one looked & sounded nice but the presentation & design shown here are a big disappointment. In an evening's worth of play--most of which consisted of looking at the tutorials (until they locked up on me)--I went from anxiously looking forward to playing this game to having no qualms about uninstalling it.

Maybe someone who has played more of the game than I have will like it--but until then: beware!!

"One of the best since sim ant"
I've been waiting for this game to come out for the past six months and after playing the demo I'm still eager to buy it! I would only reccommend this game to those who enjoyed sim ant, this game really just takes it to the next level.