Rome: Total War is not only one of the best strategy games ever, but one of the best games ever created as well.
User Rating: 9.6 | Rome: Total War PC
I honestly believe that with Rome: Total War, Creative Assembly have created the pinnacle of strategy gaming. A lofty statement to be sure, but this is one of the few times such hyperbole can be backed up. Rome: Total War is aptly and often described as two games in one: a very deep, very immersive turn-based strategy game with a depth comparable to Civilization and complete accessibility, as well as a brilliantly designed real-time tactical strategy portion in which you fight battles. The turn-based portion is played on an absolutely stunning 2-D map, which is littered with information that is very intuitive. Mountains are visible, as well as choke points, and obviously cities. It's easy to do everything - want to find out how busy your roads are? Simply zoom in and look at the amount of traffic on that road. What about how much that city is making per turn? Just click on the city and a screen containing all the information you will ever want comes up. Pretty much all the information you could want is at your finger-tips and accessible. For people who are overwhelmed by all this, though, there is always an option for an NPC to advise you as what to do, and occasionally it's valuable to hear her. Still though, it's hard to see why anybody could find it confusing, and the advisor may not have your specific plans in mind, so it's often best to go with your intuition and learn on the go. Another thing is family members, basically your generals (sons and sons-in-law), and their wives (daughters and daughters-in-law). Family members are somewhat like living characters, but if they die, you will lose them forever. However, if you never take them out in the battlefield, if and when they need to command a battle their prowess may be woefully underpowered, and if you never keep them in cities, they never get good management and so on. A dead character is a terrible event, as it's one less general to lead your guys into battle. Of course, captains can also be used for battle, but they are naturally not as good. So the turn-based portion is utterly fantastic. Now what about real-time? Well, the real-time portion is equally stunning, if not more so. The turn-based was a cohesive fusion of all turn-based games before it, but there's really not anything on the market like the real-time portion of Rome: Total War. First off, the battles can get bigger than any other game, easily, you can see thousands of units on the screen simultaneously without even a dip in framerate, and it's truly spectacular overall - most of all the sieges, which are awe-inspiring with massive walls, huge doors and tons of siege equipment. But even more important is the gameplay - tactics like assaulting spearmen with cavalry is pretty much suicide. You have to use units on the go but you also have to do it intelligently, and often will find yourself flipping back and forth over vast tracts of distance to make sure everything's going alright. Battles will often be very challenging, and even if they're not hard to win, you still want to do it with minimal casualties because it carries over to the turn-based map. Luckily, this kind of challenging is the kind rarely nailed by any game, it's insanely fun instead of extremely aggravating and only compels you to play more when you lose or win. Another cool thing about these two games, so to speak, is that they affect each other. Position one army near an army that's about to have a battle and it will reinforce soon after the battle starts. Units that die in the battle will die on the turn-based screen. Terrain or bridges seen on the campaign map are present in the battles placed near it. It's awesome how the interplay between the two games manages to connect them into one seamless game, and is a truly monumental feat by the Creative Assembly. Perhaps the greatest testament to this game is that you really only have to do the parts you really like. Don't want to mess with the turn-based? Then just have the computer manage things on the campaign map, or just play the pre-set historical battles, or just play skirmishes you set up yourself, or even take it online, though with the excellent AI there's not much incentive to do that. It's just as easy to to focus entirely on the turn-based mode - just have the AI auto-resolve every battle that happens. But if you do either, it is my opinion that you're really missing out. The only real reason I tilted this to a 9.6 instead of a 9.9 is that a few players may just not want to play strategy games. But anybody who is remotely interested in any kind of strategy game - check out this game. It is my belief that no strategy game you can find will best this one. 
