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Rome: Total War Gold Edition Review (continued)
More User Submitted Rome: Total War Gold Edition Reviews
Date: 2007-12-29
Fast delivery. A must have for the game strategist.
This is a turn based game were the player captures cities on a map of ancient Europe. Player must manage the economics of each city that is owned, by building structures and taxing the citizens. Military units must be created on the genre of ancient Roman times for the defense of cities and expansion of the players empire. The highlight of this game is the management of unit formations on the battlefield. Players can choose to manage units on the battlefield or let the computer automatically calculate the results. Player management is best when the odds are equal to high against success.
Date: 2007-12-27
Excellent game even today
I really enjoyed Medieval Total War and love the period of classical Roman history so this game seemed like a perfect fit. And it does deserve much of the praise it gets on this forum. For some background, I haven't even played the expansion because the original is so good (and seeing the Roman empire fall and helping barbarians rise to inaugurate the Dark Ages seems like I'm doing an historical disservice!).
What I have to remark on first is the incredible look of the cities. I am telling you the truth, you will hardly be able to tell that you are not looking at the actual ancient city (assuming you have a good quality system). Most other games will show the cities as small with a couple representative structures and that's about it. This game has huge cities with long winding roads, tall imposing structures (that realistically can block arrows and catapult shots), huge imposing walls, and vast blocks of insulae (apartment buildings) that I think would be about right for the historical number of inhabitants in these ancient cities. On a sidenote, in the strategic gameplay, the population of cities is grossly understated, but at least the city appearances are realistic.
The terrains are also very detailed and appear quite realistic. It literally feels like you're stepping on another continent when you engage hostile forces in Africa or the other locales.
The number of forces and the strategic complexity of the battles is also second to none. You position your forces for battle and see the opposing chariots or archers or whatever rushing at you and you feel like you're watching a History Channel documentary. The sheer size of armies, even on the reduced setting most people will probably use, also adds to the sense of realism.
Conquering and defending cities is also quite enjoyable, as you can use the gigantic nature of the city to run anywhere in it you choose and can make choke points about anywhere (preferably at the walls). You have to be careful when attacking, inching forward gradually so you don't expose an isolated unit to the combined forces of the enemy, and being sure to protect your flanks.
There are a few small complaints I have.
I wish the soldier actions were more realistic and varied. You can see them not actually making contact with their swords when they get close in battle. And most of the forces look like they're at a Teamster meeting, standing around in lines waiting for the soldier in front of them to die so they can start halfheartedly hacking away at the enemy. However with the number of soldiers involved I can understand why this would need to be limited.
The automated city defenses also are a little lame, especially for smaller sized cities.
The AI is pretty stupid as well so you're not likely to get much of a challenge out of playing the Roman factions. But you can unlock the others by beating a Roman faction campaign (or getting the hack from the Internet).
When elephants run amok they seem to be a little too random and a little too low in energy.
There seems to be a negligible benefit from building more advanced Roman swordsmen after the legionary cohort (in fact with the hugely increased maintenance costs it really makes more sense to build only legionary cohorts). Historically the power of the legion rested with the fluid 3 tiered hastati-principe-triarii formation, and it would have been nice to see that in this game, rather than swordsmen simply hacking away until death for all units of all technologies.
In spite of these deficiencies, I definitely would recommend this game to any strategy and/or history game afficionado.
Date: 2007-12-18
Fun overall but can't control armies larger than 7-800 men
On the box art of this game you see armies containing thousands of troops besieging city walls defended by thousands of troops. Unfortunately the actual game does not have this capability, even on the highest difficulty. In the main campaigns--there are 3 you can choose from, you have to play many hours before you can control armies larger than 2-300 men. Only towards the end of the campaign can you control more than 600 troops. If you attack a city with more than this limit, you will find yourself with an A.I. controlled "allied" army fighting next to your 2-300 troops. So epic battles are not really possible, just skirmishes.
This is unrealistic given that a typical roman legion was about 5000 men. As PCs get faster one should have the option of using any size army one can amass. Age of empires had this option. Perhaps there is some way to do this with RTW, a hack or add-on or whatever but I could not find it.
Since this game is several years old, being able to have 10-20,000 man armies would more than make up for the dated graphics. I liked the game very much but was disappointed at not being able to have battles anything close to that portrayed on the box.
Date: 2007-11-24
Funer than I thought
Even though the battles and the campaigns are hard, it's still really fun and joyful. The part you would like the most is campaigning and using good strategies to win. The hardest part of the campaign is the financing. I also learned a lot about Roman history. You will rate this computer game the best !!!
Date: 2007-09-22
RTW
I love this game. I've had it for two years and I still play it. The graphics are actually pretty good. There are a couple of drawbacks to this game are no 3D naval combat, a pretty stupid AI, and some video glitches. But the rest of the game is awesome. I haven't tried online play yet, so I don't know how it is. You also don't need a graphics card or at least you don't need a really good one. Also, what i like about this game is that the Roman units are significantly stronger than the other nation's troops (there are a couple of exceptions). I would recommend this game over M2TW.
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