With the massive number of empire-building FreeMMOs out there, its hard to find real gems to play. When Grepolis first launched, I thought I had finally found one. The premise is pretty interesting and keeps the player engaged for a while on its own. Each player controls a small city on an island in a sea of other islands. After completing the first couple simple tasks (building resource productions fields, getting your first units, etc), you reach what seems to be the true greatness of the game: The Temple. In the temple you can choose one of four Olympian gods (also know as the Greek Gods) to worship. Each god provides different benefits for their worshipers. Zeus lets you borrow his thunderbolt to attack a city with, Athena whispers into the ears of mercenaries to make them want to join your city-state, and Poseidon can summon an Earthquake to deal some major damage to opponents city.

The honeymoon period ends after a few weeks of playing, if not earlier. Farming NPC cities without massive amounts of forces means you lose a fair amount of troops (1 Swordsman on defense can beat 6 attacking Swordsmen before dying). Diving Powers take forever to charge unless you build your Temple to an extremely high level. Naval combat can be fun, but VERY expensive.

Overall, the game is fun for a while, as long as you don’t plan on sitting there trying to do something for more than a half-hour or so at a time. This game is great for casual players (1-2 hours per day divided into multiple sessions) but can be a real pay for ‘core players.

Overall rating: (3 1/2 stars)