Rome: Total War

Yeah, I may be a little late to the war and this game has been sitting on my Hard Drive for a long time, unplayed. But today I was bored and decided to give it a go. I've played the Empire: Total War demo and the menu here is pretty much the same, along with those little quotes displayed above the loading bar. It's a great, simple and clean interface.

So anyway, I decided to start on the prologue campaign just to get through tutorials and whatnot. And I really got hooked, I'm naturally a sucker for RTS's ever since those days when Age Of Empires first released, such glorious days. Anyway, the first battle was a small scale one meant to teach me how to command my troops, basic RTS stuff. After I won my first battle against those pesky barbarians, I was back onto the world map, which I think is a very clever idea. It's an easy way to manage your troops and cities, with little details such as carts and boats travelling around, trading goods. It's a well executed and nifty little idea.

Graphics are as expected from a 3 year old game. They do the job but what's really well done is the sound. You can zoom down to ground level to "march" beside your troops and the sound of their clanking armor and the chorus of a hundred stamping feet really immerses you in the battle. One thing I dislike though, is that there is no blood. At all. It ticks me off but I'm sure there is a mod out there that implements it.

Now let me talk about how it played. Well, I did have some issues when commanding some of my units to go to "x" through route "b", they'd usually take the longer route; "a" to "b" to "c" for example. It didn't happen enough to make the game annoying or lose me a battle. But it does sort of make your tactics uncoordinated. Aside from that you really do get that sense of controlling an army, and the battles really do feel epic.

What more can I say? I'll definitely be playing this more, along side Empire: Total War, which I purchased a few days ago for £6 (thank you Steam).