Rome: Total War: The game that Hollywood aspires to emulate

Author's Rating:

Pros: Graphics, the epic feel, the general gameplay, everything!

Cons: Some AI issues and the fact that it isn't cheap

The Bottom Line: 
If you are a fan of Ancient history and computer games, get it. If you are just a casual gamer, I'd say rent it, as it is DEEP.

Author's Review
I am a sucker for military-themed historical computer games. Rome:Total War takes the cake as one of my favourite games ever. As I played this game, reruns of old Hollywood sword-and-sandal flicks swam around in my brain. Except this is better. Its sad to think that a game can be better than an actual movie.


There are two parts to the game: the campaign part and the battle part. The campaign part has you take the role of leader of one of three Roman factions, or later on you can unlock many of the other nations to take the fight to those dastardly Romans. In the campaign game, you balance economic, miltiary and political needs to try to expand your empire to take over cities and provinces. The map is huge, (Stretching from England to Egypt and from Morroco to Russia) but thankfully you only need 50 of the Provinces for complete victory. There are navies, but naval battles were absent from the battle game, which was a little dissapointing, but not much. Your family members and other leaders develop traits such as magnificent builder, lazy or good attacker, and they get flunkies to follow them around. These flunkies and traits affect the person's traits and abilities, and changes over time. Preferable those with high command ratings should lead the armies while those with high management ratings should tend to the cities. There is a basic diplomatic system which is basically a bartering system. Basically, the Campaign game takes quite some time to finish as you methodically consolidate your empire to rule supreme.

The battle game is what occurs when armies on the campaign map collide. In the campaign game, the battle is fought over the exact terrain in which the armies collide. However, for those with little patience, you can jump right into historical battles, which include a pretty cutscene to show the situation, or Custom battles, where YOU decide who fights whom, and choose the battlefield. Personally I played the battle engine on its own quite a bit, so here are my observations:

They took the time to research the Roman Legion of the Punic War period. The very fact that the Roman unit list had the names Hastati, Principes and Triarii had me licking my lips in anticipation. No more "generic" Romans! No more depictions of men clad in iron plate when historically they would wear chain mail! Of course, the Romans in iron plates (Lorica Segamentata) DID exist, but only later, much later. The archaelogical evidence for Rome's enemies is somewhat lacking, (especially the Carthaginians) but I like the look of the Parthians and the Greeks and even the barbarians. Graphically, this game is excellent. The very fact that you can have several thousand well-rendered 3-D men hacking each other to pieces, along with horses and elephants. The end of a battle is a sobering sight as thousands of digital corpses lie on the field, but strangely there is no blood and gore, probably to keep the T rating.

The sound and music are gorgeous. The music soundtrack for a battle changes according to what is happening onscreen. For example, at the beginning you will have moody, tense music, which starts to pick up as your army marches forward. Once the troops get down and dirty with each other, the music changes into a martial tune that would not be out of place in movies such as GLADIATOR or TROY. The battle sounds are great when you have a lot of men fighting and grunting. The units acknowledge your orders in English, but that isn't a big part of this game.

The Sieges were very nice as they actually involved men getting onto ladders or siege towers and then physically climbing up those walls. There are battles INSIDE the city as well, which is kind of cool.

Each unit had a use in battle. Phalanxes were good for holding ground and chopping up cavalry. Cavalry were good for fast manouvres or quick hit-and-run attacks, and so on. Only the lowly peasants were basically useless: they die in their thousands and run away at the first sign of trouble.

So far I have been glowing with this review, but there ARE some problems in this game, which include:
1, some graphical glitches, where you can "see-through" the walls when you get close
2, some AI issues. Sometimes, your computer opponent will self-destruct as he charges his general into your strongest infantry unit. Also, in the campaign mode I have heard of "foolproof" ways of taking a city without any problems whatsoever, but I'm not sure about that.
3, Sometimes the game crashes to desktop for no apparent reason. This problem has been mostly fixed with the latest patches, but it can still happen.
4, at $44 or so CDN a pop, it still isn't cheap.

Nonetheless, Rome:Total War is a must for the avid strategy gamer and history buff.