Rome: Total War is the best Strategy game since Starcraft
User Rating: 9.6 | Rome: Total War PC
The Total War series is a great series of games... it started with Shogun: Total War, which on its own was a great game, but had an incredible learning curve. Rome: Total War fixes all the problems in the series, adding 3d graphics, a shorter learning curve, intense battles, and a truly awesome campaign. Gameplay: Rome: Total War (RTW)'s gameplay is incredible. The campaign mode, which is the meat of the game, gives you a campaign similar to the Civilization games in many respects, however it does what Civilization does not (in my opinion), it makes it fun. You start off as the Julii family, a faction in rome, and conquer the world as you see fit. You can also do campaigns with just about any other faction once you have unlocked them. The campaign is basically world conquest. You build up your forces and treasury, and then proceed to storm over the rest of the world. It usually is not a storm however, as much strategy is involved. Your generals give awesome bonuses, both on the field, and in the city. Family member managment is extremely important. If you have a shortage of generals, you won't be able to conquer as quickly, but if you have a surplus, you should push hard to gain as much ground as possible. The campaign mode is incredibly deep, and depending how much you want to delve into it, you can spend even hours on a single turn, micromanaging every detail about every town... or you could simply allow the games awesome AI control the cities for you, while you simply control the battles. And so we get to the core of the game, the battles. You have a stunning variety of troops to train, and each type is more effective against certain other types. Spearmen, for example, make mincemeat of calvalry, but get destroyed by skirmishers. It has a hidden Rock-Paper-Scissors concept behind it all, but that doesn't hurt the gameplay in any way. The battles can be on an incredible scale, massive hordes of troops duking it out as you sit there moving your troops strategically around the map. The gameplay is simply amazing. There are also several historical battles you can play, to see if you can change history. All of these are fun excursions into the past. There is really nothing else they could have done to make this game more fun. In all aspects, the gameplay is absolutely perfect. Graphics: Admittedly, graphics are the weak point of this game. While they are still good, and, extraordinary for the amount of units shown on screen at once, the graphics are not up to todays standards. This does not hurt the game at all, and, as I said, the graphics are still good. Sound: The music in this game is simply awesome. The sound effects are also incredible. The only thing keeping the sound from a perfect score is the fact there are some points in the game with no music at all. Value: Hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay... this game is worth it all, every penny. Tilt: As I said, the best Strategy game since Starcraft, and we all know how awesome Starcraft was.
