rome: total war review

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Average Ratings

Addiction Level	9.1/10
Graphics	8.5/10
Value for Money	8.6/10
Reviewer Rating	9/10
Overall Rating	9.4/10

92% Recommended11 out of 12 Reviews

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By British 241 on 28th Nov 2004

British 241's Ratings

Addiction Level	7/10
Graphics	10/10
Multi-player	Yes
Value for money	7/10
Overall value	7/10
British 241's recommendation

Good Points

Realistic Battles
3D Map
In the Classical era

Bad Points

A lot of its features can be found elsewhere
Gets repetitive very quickly
Needs a great computer

General Comments

Rome: Total War is very good to begin with. When you first go on if you've played a "Total war" game before you'll ask yourself: campaign or "Quick" battle?. I went on campaign and found that a compulsory tutorial awaits. This is probably so impatient players don't just go and play the campaign, dont know what they are doing, start losing and then hate the game after that.

Well the tutorial certainly is helpful and seems to teach you everything from the manual and more. It is a very good one if a little boring if like me you have played total war games before.

After the tutorial you can either keep playing from where the tutorial has left you or you can play choosing another faction (of the Romans only to begin with) and play on a map of Europe and North Africa. However before this you can choose to play the "short" game or the "long" game. The short being to capture 15 provinces and the long to capture 50 provinces and to outlast or destroy the senator. Both are fun.

After choosing the pre-game options you get presented with a cinematic (which my computer couldn't run so I pressed Escape and skipped it).

After that you are presented with the map. Now if you have played any of the "Civilization" games you will realise that the moving of the troops is almost identical to the "Civilization" methods and the settlements look similar to the "Civilization" Settlements too. This in my opinion was very offputting as I already own "Civilization 3". However it shouldn't be too offputting to ruin the game.

You can then upgrade your settlements or command your army to take over the province capitals, which presents you with a pre battle menu (like the other "total war" games which you can decide to automatically decide the battle, command it yourself or withdraw). If you choose command personally the game brings you to the battle view. This is were the game gets good, if you have a good graphics card and processor to handle it). The graphics are amazing, almost life like allowing very interesting battles.

Another new feature is the siege methods. No longer is the time where you fire catapults at walls and then go on a mad killing spree. No, you now can use siege ladders to get onto the walls and then you have to use Urban fighting methods and actually take over the city which is a lot more fun than destroying a fort as in "Medieval: Total War".

So i'd say its fun to begin with but gets boring as you play over time.

Total Respect: +2