Good on the surface, but little depth

User Rating: 7.1 | Rome: Total War PC
By DrowningFish | Review Date:
Rome: Total War is a good addition to the Total War games, but compared to Medieval: TW, it just doesn't feel like that much of an improvement. Overall, the complex feel to R:TW really takes away from the experience, and you'll spend more time tedious managing settlements and armies than enjoying the game. The new strategy map features a 3D world, where armies actually maneuver around instead of moving between provinces. Although this is nice at first, I found it rather complicated as it forced me to run armies around to stop enemies, and made it complicated to see my layout as a whole. Although the terrain does add new strategic elements, especially in terms of natural borders and choke points, I think they could have set it up differently so the player could focus more on strategy itself than the map.

The battles haven't changed too much, which is good I guess. The interface and controls are essentially the same, and you still have the rock-paper-scissors approach to units. The graphics have definitely improved, with full 3d units instead of sprites like in M:TW. But graphics are only entertaining for a short while, and don't really add to the gameplay value all that much. Eventually you'll find yourself auto-determining battles simply because they aren't fun or exciting enough to spend the time managing.

Rome: Total War is enjoyable at first as you learn the new features, but in terms of actual game play value, it hardly improves at all on the formula used in Medieval: TW, and you'll find yourself getting bored doing the same thing over and over as you play. The complexity of the game makes it hard to become immersed in, and eventually just gets old.

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