User Reviews (11 - 21 of 43)

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It was okay. Watch the hype

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This review speaks to both Rome and Barbarian Invasion. There are some differences, but the gameplay is essentially the same.

I'm a long time fan of strategy war games going all the way back to the first Strategic Conquest game by Delta Tao. I love every flavor of Civilization, from Sid Meier's to Stardock, and games like Stronghold. So, I was looking forward to playing Rome because I thought it had elements of all of those classics. And it does. You have to build and maintain cities, raise armies and duke it out on the battlefield.

But it just didn't grab me. Not in the way those other games did. For one thing, I never could figure out what made one city a happy cash cow and another city a money pit full of pissed off plebes. It seemed to have more to do with population than with infrastructure or tax rates (certain buildings give moral bonuses; higher tax rates make people unhappy). It just seemed kind of random. The only way to conquer a city and not have a riot on your hands for ten terms seemed to be to enslave the population or exterminate them. Me, I don't even like to step on a Sim Ant when I can avoid it.

I played Rome: Total War through one time as the Romans and Barbarian Invasion through three times; once as the Saxons, once as the Romans and once as the Horde...actually I never finished the Horde game. I was just over it by that point.

So, as with most games, it's going depend on what the player enjoys and the sort of game they like to play as to whether or not Rome is for you. By this point, the game is old enough where you can find it fairly cheap on E-bay or Amazon, so it's worth checking out. I think part of my problem was reading all these rave reviews, I had big expectations that weren't quite satisfied. Hope you get more out of it.

Best World Domination Game Ever

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game really is the ultimate world domination game, i have rarely seen anything that can compete with it. Its faults are few, but one of the most irritating things to me is when you send units to attack fleeing enemies, they automatically run behind the enemy and chase them off instead of taking the shortest path possible to cut them off and annihilate them. Diplomacy is also stupid. Otherwise, the graphics, the gameplay, the battles, the units, the multiplayer and custom game modes, and everything else is awesome.

Great, addicting game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: February 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is a great turn based strategy game. Once you get into it, you can't put it down for hours. Good graphics, best gameplay. One of the best strategy games ever.

Rome-Total War Review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Rome Total War is an excellent strategy game with decent graphics and an expansive map. The Barbarian Invasion expansion pack is a waste of time and money however. It is nearly impossible to win or even last more than a few turns.

Lots of fun and runs good on my laptop

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I like this game. I can lose all sense of time while wrapped up in it.
It installed and runs great om my HP pavilion dv6000 notebook.

Incredible...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I know this game is about two years old now but I just bought it for my brother so I figured I would write a review.

I don't normally write reviews but ROTR is so exceptional that I had to say something. After all with all the crappy games out there it's important to recognize and support games that are exceptional.

With the exception of Starflight (A very old title for you veterans) Bard's Tale (same) and Master of Orion II, this is the best game I have ever played. The combo of turn based strategy and RTS in the battle sequences is so good it will make you cry. If you like deep complex turn based strategy games you *MUST* have this game.

Mideival Total War II is just as good by the way.

Excellent game even today

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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.

Cool addictive stuff

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: February 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game seemed to be bad when I first started playing but then, after a few days in which I did not give up on it, I actually started to like it.

RTW

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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.

Rome total war

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: August 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Son loves game. He had it before but since it has multiple disc's (one broke) we had to reorder entire set. It is a strategy game and teaches him alot about Roman history. If one disc breaks entire game is no good. So keep them safe- we learned the hard way.

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