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| The battles really do look this good. |
If it seems that RTW is a complicated game, it is because it is. Luckily the
developers included an excellent context sensitive help system in the form of
strategic and battle advisors. These advisors make themselves available when
they have instructions, pointers, or strategies to convey, and you can just as
easily ignore them as you can listen to their voiced advice. You can turn off
tips on the individual or overall scale, so once you become a Total War veteran
your advisors will leave you be to carry out your plans.
You certainly get a lot of gameplay with Rome: Total War. The campaign can
easily last over 500 turns, if you survive that long, which translates to a lot
of hours of play depending on how many battles you let the computer
auto-resolve. You can play as the other factions in the game, but each one is
locked until you defeat the corresponding faction during one of your campaigns.
This is a disappointment, because by the nature of the game it will take most
players quite a while to unlock all of the playable factions and I believe that
if you spend $40 to $50 on game, you should be able to play as who you’d like
from the very beginning.
In addition to the campaign game you can play the historical battles that
come with the game. Each comes with an elaborate opening movie that provides you
with the background on the battle and sets up the battlefield situation. From
there it segues into the battle and you can take charge of either side and see
if history repeats itself. The game also has a skirmish mode if you’d like to
create your own battles or try out new tactics before putting them to the test
in the campaign. There is also a multiplayer component for some greater
challenge against human players. For obvious reasons there is no strategic game
online, only real-time battles. The host specifies a set point budget, players
buy their armies with the points, and then the battle rages to see who is the
best tactician.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
95%. A strategy game for the ages.
System Requirements: Pentium III 1.0 GHz; 256 MB RAM;
64 MB
Video RAM; 8x CD-ROM; 2.9 GB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse.
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