gorocco's Full Review: Rome: Total War for Windows
The History Channel's Historical Battles only wet my appetite for Creative Assembly's Rome: Total War (Rome:TW) . Imagine a top notch strategy game such as Medieval: Total War upgraded with a fully realized 3D engine. Before, the Total War series brought home in a magnificent package the strategic and tactical glory of war. Rome:TW offers a more immersive package.
To say the least, I was conquered.
Gameplay
Rome:TW offers two types of games: quick skirmishes and lengthy campaigns. Skirmishes can be quickly constructed or you can opt to play a historical battle. The meat of the game is the campaign mode, which tracks the time of the early Roman Empire when Rome was a small nation in Italy to its growth into a glorious empire. To make its mark in history, Rome must overcome her enemies: Gauls and Britons to the West, barbarians in the North, Greeks to the East, and those pesky Carthagians in the South. Under the guidance of the Roman Senate, you lead one of leading families of Ancient Rome, the Julii, the Brutii, or the Scriptii, in a effort to crush these foes and carve out an empire. But with time, your attention will be drawn to another lofty goal: the conquest of Rome itself!
Campaigns in Rome:TW is played on two levels. First is the overhead map, where you move your armies and manage your lands. It plays very much like Civilization without the tiled map. The land around the Mediterrean Sea is beautifully rendered. Detailed cities and army markers riddle the landscape.
Everything in your budding empire is easily managed with the mouse. The interface is slickly designed to provide as much information as possible while allowing you easy access to micromanage your cities and armies. You don't need to hunt for your belongings on the map as shortcuts abound for finding those holdings with which you can act. Building structures, recruiting men, and conquering your neighbors are just a simple mouse click away.
Diplomacy is present in the game; however, strength of arms seems to be determining factor here. You can negotiate ceasefires, establish trade agreements, and help people remember why they want your head on a pike. The options are limited, but they are not so sparse that you will be bored by it.
When all of the diplomacy fails, you have to get down and dirty and duke it out in the field of battle. This is the Total War series claim to fame - a 3D battlefield where you can control vast armies comprising hundreds of soldiers. True, you can have the computer automatically resolve battles, but not only does this rob you of the incredible battle engine, it also leads to higher casualties and more unnecessary defeats. Here, superior tactics can overcome overwhelming odds.
Battles begin with a riveting speech from your general, highlighting elements of the terrain and the enemy army. It carries the feel of movies such as Braveheart and The Lord of the Rings. Armies are then deployed on the battlefield, and then the carnage begins.
In the Total War series, the armchair general needs to take into account details such as the weather, terrain, differences in elevation, and cover from forests or city walls. And in Total War, you are in total control. You set the formations. You determine the time and the direction of a charge. You order your men to use special tactics such as the "turtle shell" or flaming ammunition. While the interface is simple, the actual fighting is difficult due to the wealth of options available.
A big part of Rome:TW is the emphasis on family. For the most part, the men in your family will be the generals leading your armies in battle and your city governors keeping order despite ludicrous taxation. Captains may be promoted in battle, but such is a rare occurrence. You cannot hire governors for your cities. Your family members will be amongst your most prized possessions. Since breeding is both slow and random, these "hero" units are invaluable in your conquests. Because of the vast benefits they and the lackeys they attract ("their retinue") carry, watching one fall due to a natural or, more likely, an unnatural death is truly gutwrenching.
If there is a problem with Rome:TW, it is the difficulty. This game has a very steep learning curve, and the programmers have done little to help you out. While help windows are available at the click of a button and advisors are always present, you are left to your own devices to figure out your strategy. The manual does little to explain tactics or to even describe the factions and their units. As in previous outings from this franchise, the designers have let you pretty much for dead. I guess that the lack of information mimics the age; after all, what would a Roman general do against a charging elephant if he has never seen one before in his life? Regardless, more readily available information would be nice.
Visuals and Audio
Rome:TW is beautifully presented. The overhead map is rendered in 3D and features many highly detailed markers for armies and cities. Battles take advantage of a new, robust engine. Unlike its predecessors, Rome:TW brings you all of this carnage in full, glorious 3D. The days of 2D sprites for your units are gone; all of the units are rendered by the game engine. Now, you not only have full camera control (limited only by your units' field of vision), but you also can zoom in and view battles up close and personal as individuals go mano a mano. Now, soldiers will fall off the city walls. They will fly back after taking a ballista in the chest. Elephants will chuck men high into the air. This gives the game more of a cinematic feel. In game engine cutscenes showing major events such as the fall of the city gates or the fall of an enemy captain add to the visual flair of Rome:TW. While different soldier types do tend to look alike up close, the engine does a strong job individually rendering and animating literally hundreds of little guys tear each other apart.
The audio department also did a bang up job. Voiceovers are very well done. The music transitions from a gentle feel while you manage your empire to a heart thumping adrenaline rushing beat as your armies march to engage the enemy. The many audio cues to bring your attention to various events add to the feel of being in ancient Rome.
System Requirements
The minimum system requirements are touted to be a Pentium III 1.0 GHz, 256 RAM, with a DirectX 9.0b compatible graphics card. On a computer that barely surpassed these requirements, the demo ran very poorly. I played Rome:TW on a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop with a Pentium M 1.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, and a Radeon 9600 graphics card. The game ran well with no noticeable performance glitches or slowdowns.
Rome:TW, however, has more than its share of bugs. Besides the occasional clipping problem on the battlefield, Rome:TW has crashed numerous times on me. There was one bug that kicked me back to Windows when I was trying to load a saved game (at least I was screwing up so it wasn't a huge loss). Looking through various websites, I am not alone in experiencing these bugs. A patch is already offered; however, it addresses multiple multiplayer errors as opposed to single player glitches.
Conclusions
Rome: Total War is a fabulous strategy game despite the bugs. The depth and control that it offers is astounding and will keep you occupied for months, at least. Until Civilization 4 comes out, there looks to be no real contenders in this genre. Looking to pick a fight or to carve out an empire? Turn to Total War!
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