The Roman Republic is expanding in all directions, bringing more civilisations around the Mediterranean into its sphere of influence. A canny new family leader arises and is given the task of expanding the Republic. But will they be happy with just doing that, or will the allure of conquering Rome itself prove too strong?
You could make a good argument that late 2004 was one of the greatest periods for video game releases ever. In rapid succession, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, World of WarCraft, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Halo 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Knights of the Old Republic II were released to a joyful public. Also in that mix was Rome: Total War.
Rome was the third game in the Total War series that began with 2000's Shogun: Total War and then expanded with 2002's Medieval: Total War. However, it was a startling reinvention of the series, both graphically and in terms of how it played. The basic premise of the game was the same: you establish an empire through military conquest, building armies and developing your civic infrastructure to build better troops. You switch between an overhead, turn-based strategic map on which you build and move your armies, and engage in side-activities like assassination or spying, and a 3D real-time battle map in which armies clash and you control your forces directly.
Rome seriously upped the presentation though. For the first time, both the overhead map and battles were in full, glorious 3D, packed with detail. Moving around the map you can see trade caravans moving between cities, cargo ships ploughing the Mediterranean, lava spewing from active volcanoes and the land turning white as winter advances. The attention to detail was amazing in 2004 and, now rendered at much greater resolutions, still impresses today. The 3D map is now divided into tens of thousands of individual tiles, which are used to generate the map for any battle that takes place on that tile. This makes the game much more immersive; if you fight a battle next to a city, that city will be visible during the battle. If it's a coastal battle with a fleet nearby, you can see the ships in the distance as combat commences. Fight near a major landmark, like the Pyramids or Colossus of Rhodes, and that landmark will likewise appear in the distance. The strategy map and the battle map feel like a unified whole, unlike the earlier games in the series and, bafflingly, most of the later games.
Battles are the main appeal of the game and in 2004 Rome offered the amazing vista of armies that looked and felt real (barring the scale, which is often significantly smaller than in reality). Roman units can use their javelins - pila - to inflict heavy losses on an enemy unit before closing to melee combat, archers can send arrows hurtling into combat (difficulty levels determine if friendly fire is possible), and cavalry can smash into enemy flanks and send individual soldiers flying. Roman legionaries can employ the Tetsudo formation to minimise missile damage, and Greek hoplites can lower their massive spears to inflict horrendous damage on cavalry. The earlier Total War games used 2D bitmaps on 3D backgrounds to depict battles, but Rome renders everything in full 3D. It was so impressive in 2004 that it even generated a spin-off TV show (Time Commanders).
The battles are excellent and the strategic gameplay was revolutionary at the time and still strong today. The game did innovate by also being more of an actual economic/empire-building game, rather than just a pure strategy game. Cities in Rome have no limit on what can be built in them, so you are free to construct buildings to recruit new and more advanced military units; ones that help eliminate squalor and improve public hygiene; ones that improve income; and ones that entertain the masses so they forget about their daily woes. Keep the people happy and prosperous and you can build a colossal empire spanning the continent. Fail to do so and you will fail, mired down in constant rebellions and religious strife.
The city-building part of the game is excellent - there's more than a bit of Civilization in it, though you can't build cities completely from scratch - and surprisingly detailed (you can even view your peaceful cities in full 3D at any time, a feature missing from every other game in the series). More recent Total War games have gone in a very different direction by giving each city only a few "slots" for new buildings, severely limiting what you can do with them in an attempt to re-orient the focus on the battles. Understandable from one angle (rotating through up to 50 cities in the late-game to see what needs to be built does become a problem), but disappointing from another. Total War is fun when it sprawls and the period from Rome to Shogun II is when it sprawled most engagingly; later games have eliminated that sprawl (at least in terms of detailed city-building and managing numerous armies simultaneously), to the joy of some players but the disappointment of others.
Rome Remastered improves the graphical quality over the original, replacing the identikit armies of clones with a variety of faces and individual armour variations, although battlefields do tend towards happening on flat fields and cities tend to look very samey (problems resolved in Medieval II). This period of the Total War series has been criticised for a focus on sieges and those used to the modern games may take some getting used to the sheer number of engagements happening on city walls or holding gates against invaders. However, the quality of sieges has been upped by improvements to AI. Although the AI is still capable of occasionally baffling behaviour, there has been a notable upgrade since 2004 in both strategic and battlefield AI. In particular, the AI will punish the Roman factions for following orders from the Senate too vociferously, embroiling them in multiple wars on multiple fronts that can quickly sap their strength. Weaknesses from the original game have been largely negated and many improvements made in terms of the user interface (being finally able to reorganise the arrangement of units in the UI is a huge relief) as well.
The biggest weakness of Rome is arguably the same one it had in 2004: the game really hates it when you're not at war with someone and will often have smaller, weaker factions attacking you just to get some action flowing again. Sure, the franchise title is Total War, but the game's relentless insistence on being all battles, all the time and denying you much time to rest and regroup between conflicts can be wearying, not to mention bafflingly illogical.
In terms of the package, it also includes the original Rome expansion, Barbarian Invasion, and the later Alexander expansion, notable as an early digital-only expansion (it did get a physical release some time later, though). Barbarian Invasion is set in the twilight of the Roman Empire as it teeters on the edge of collapse and is significantly tougher than the base game. Alexander is a narrative-based game following the life and career of Alexander the Great (narrated by Brian Blessed) through a highly-focused campaign. The campaign is more limited than a standard Total War grand campaign, but it's still a lot of fun, and a good example of how a short, detailed Total War game can be as much fun as a sprawling, epic game lasting many tens of hours. Disappointingly, though, the Sons of Mars mini-campaign included in the original Rome is missing, replaced by a very bare-bones tutorial.
As the Total War series has gone on, it has become more divisive amongst its fanbase. More recent games have focused on hero units, special abilities and cooldowns, simplifying unit recruitment, army management and sieges. For those who've enjoyed that movement, Rome might feel too complex, sometimes too ponderous and too enamoured of micro-management. For those who prefer having much finer, more granular control of their empires and armies, Rome Remastered (****½) is a deeply rewarding, enjoyable turn-based strategy game and a very solid real-time battles game. Improved graphics, controls and UI make this one of the finest remasters in recent memory. Roll on the inevitable Medieval II remaster!
Total War: Rome Remastered is available for PC and on mobile devices now.
