On the surface Rome: Total War is indeed a marvel to behold, but it is weighed down by some questionable design flaws.
User Rating: 6.8 | Rome: Total War PC
They say Rome wasn't built in a day, and it shows in Rome: Total War, which is unfortunately not the grandiose in-depth strategy game that it's been made out to be. Rome: Total War has a lot of things going for it, but falls short due to some serious bugs and design issues. First of all, the game is divided into two game play modes: The strategic map, and the battle map. From the strategic map, one can plan out one's conquest of the ancient world. There you can manage your provinces by setting their taxation rate, what buildings to construct there, as well as unit recruitment. This is also where diplomacy and trade take place. The battle map is obviously where combat is resolved, if one chooses to do so. On the surface, Rome is an amazing looking game with seemingly endless options. There's nothing quite as exciting to see two troop formations come together in a mighty clash of flesh and steel, to direct your cavalry charge straight into the flanks of your opponents forces, to rain down fiery death into a formation of enemy units. If you, like myself, enjoyed the first 20 minutes of the movie "Gladiator" with its spectacular combat sequence, then Rome: Total War will not only satisfy you, but leave you wanting more. In fact, you may not even notice a problem with the first 10-20 hours of gaming. It's only after you've played the game for any amount of time that you really begin to see the problems seep out of the woodwork. It becomes apparent that the element of strategy on the strategic map is not very deep at all, and many elements such as trade, espionage, and diplomacy are very abstract and simplified. Every province is controlled by a single city which acts as its capital (whether that capital is a small town, or a bustling city is up to the size of its population). Geography comes into play when it comes to roads in and out of a city, but this aspect of choke points is not one that I found to be relevant. In fact, after a while, moving units from one city to another reminds me of playing RISK, as you build up monstrous armies and send them out to lay waste to the territories before them. Overall, the net effect of this strategic map is one of limited options. Yes, there is diplomacy, and one can send diplomats out to other factions to sue for peace, demand tribute or to negotiate trade rights. The truth is, that 99 percent of the time the AI factions never give in to your demands, and trade is so oversimplified that, it really relegates the strategic portion of this game as a vehicle to serve up combat sequences. (Incidentally, trade could have been so much more interesting if you could trade for certain valuable resources, which in turn could give you access to units and/or techs that would otherwise be unavailable. Unfortunately, trade is simply a matter of having trade rights with another faction, and that simply boosts your income.) On the strategic map, one also manages the members of your faction's family. As the Romans you have the options of playing as the Julii, the Brutii, or the Scipii. Each male family member can act as a governor of a province or as a general in your armies (or both, but in practice you'll assign them to one of either role.) As your family members age they acquire increased attributes, and retinues (assistants) which also boost their attributes, with the exception that retinues can be passed from one family member to another. Unfortunately, after you have dozens of generals and governors across your provinces, and after they've had enough time to accumulate dozens of attributes and retinues (some of which cancel each other out) it becomes impossible to gauge how effective your general/governor is. In fairness, there are three attributes that are immediate clear: command, management, and influence, which are the most helpful in determining whether they go to war, or on the home front, but for those family members who have a +10% to trade but a -2 to population unrest, this information is not readily available. Then again, after having played for many hours, you tend to worry less, because the game basically snowballs until you have several massive armies wandering the European/African/Mid-Eastern continent conquering all in its path. One last issue with the strategic map lies in the nature of the Roman campaign. After achieving a certain amount of success, the other Roman factions immediately begin to dislike you even though you are wildly successful, and while the logical conclusion might be that this is the result of envy among the other factions, it just comes across as contrived and manipulative. It would have been nice if you could at least build a repertoire among them, much like one builds a repertoire in Civilization III when one wants to be elected General Secretary of the UN. As far as combat goes, this is without a doubt the best part of the game. It is both appealing to the eye and to the battlefield tactician in all of us. However, this element of the game has been weighed down by questionable design decisions that are frustrating. Things such as one's own archers causing friendly fire damage to nearby adjacent friendly troops just rubs of incompetence on the part of the programmers. Archers will blindly fire into friendly units, and slowly whittle away at your troop numbers. Double right-clicking a single unit will cause a unit to charge into an enemy, but do the same thing with a group of units and they just linger. In a game where timing is everything, something like this can be devastating. Rome: Total War has some MAJOR path-finding issues. Again this isn't really apparent at first because one invades the weaker barbarian neighbors with towns and cities with simple constructions, but trying to invade a city the size of Rome, and you'll quickly find out how idiotic your units are. Large metropolises such as Rome are labyrinths, and makes navigating your units through them a real chore. Moreover, this wouldn't be such a problem if the designers hadn't designed a system to keep the attacker from taking their time. If the defender can occupy the city Central Square for 3:00 minutes they win by default. This is all well and good when one has a sizeable defense force, but when you're talking about an overwhelming military force of over 1500 troops losing to one a third its size simply as a result of the fact that it takes over two minutes to move your army from the city gates, is downright inane, and frustrating. Your armies are limited to twenty units, and while this may seem like a lot, it really isn't, when you factor in your general unit, and support units like archers and siege weapons such as onagers, you're left with a half-dozen infantry and cavalry troops. Siege weapons such as ladders and towers are limited to one unit, a really stupid design choice. Once a siege tower is placed against a wall, it cannot be used by any other units, which seems to me like a very inefficient use of siege equipment. Reinforcement armies under an AI general are incredibly inept, and end up squandering their numbers, if they even move at all. (I've played a few engagements where they simply stood where they started and never moved, and because the AI has control over them, you cannot switch over to control them.) These are the most glaring issues, but not the only ones. There are some performance issues too. Considering that even on my modest machine, the game runs pretty well at high-res, but once flaming arrows start flying, the FPS rate drops to a lovely slideshow crawl. While I have not played multiplayer, I admit that I am disappointed that multiplayer is limited to skirmishes, and one cannot play a multiplayer strategy game. Overall, Rome: Total War captivated my attention for several weeks, but now after the dust has settled, and reality has caught up to my sense of excitement, I can't but help wonder if the game was released a few months too soon. Perhaps another six months of development would have given CA the time it needed to iron these things out. Unfortunately, it looks like the only way we'll see any improvement is in an inevitable expansion pack. 
