For those who have never played any of the Total War series here’s a quick overview of what its’ about. Rome: Total War is the third game in the popular Total War series (created by British born company Creative Assembly) and therefore shares many similarities with its past incarnations. Like the past games Rome is still split into two distinctly different types of game: A turn based campaign map, and real time battles. Yes, Total War is one of those few strategy gaming series that tries to cross-breed the two distinct genres and succeeds.
Campaigning
The campaign map is where you spend the majority of the single player experience, looking far above on the known ancient world. Although nothing was wrong with the way the campaign map looked in Medieval this time the map feels more alive, with trees, mountains and terrain all being shown clearly on the map in front of you.
With your chosen empire you must build armies, order them across the landscape, and generally maintain your lands and cities. When you meet an opposing force, you zoom down to engage in a real time battle involving those forces you created.
Anyone who’s played either Shogun or Medieval: Total War will all know the score. Fans will also know that generally Shogun and Medieval were very much alike. Graphically they were fairly similar but with Medieval (and it’s later add-on pack, Viking Invasion) adding more depth. So how is the third in the series different? Does it follow the trend?
Firstly, and most striking is the graphical difference. Whereas Shogun and Medieval had fully 3D landscapes the armies and units themselves were represented with 2D sprites. This was fine from a distance, but as soon as armies engaged and you inevitably zoomed in to see the battle close-up then the graphics were a bit of eyesore. Rome: Total War has made that much needed leap into 3D units, and you can tell by the screenshots it was worth it.
Whether you’re fighting on the battlefield, or laying siege to towns and cities the graphics fail to impress. Yes, I did say 'cities' in that last sentence. In Medieval: Total War castles were very much the central military hub of your lands but didn’t really represent your overall province. In Rome the buildings you create in a region are represented in huge (realistic looking) towns and cities. Sieges when they occur often appear and feel like scenes from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, with huge siege towers and catapults flinging huge rocks at the enemy, and bodies falling from the battlements. The graphics certainly do enhance the enjoyment of the battles, and with almost perfect sound and atmospheric music you’ll fail to be impressed.
Most notable changes in Rome: Total War occurs however in the campaign side of things. Some are largely visible, whereas others may only be noticed largely by fans of the series. Perhaps most striking of all is the removal of single-move provinces. In the older games armies would move from province to province in a single turn, much like a chess piece moving to another square. While this was fine for the older games Rome now has added much more depth by making armies move a certain distance, with the route taken totally defined by the player. Want to sneak up on an enemy by marching the long way around? Want to make your enemy see your large presence marching unstoppably towards them? It’s now possible thanks to this new move by Rome.
The terrain you walk over on the campaign map is also where you directly fight should you run into an opposing force. This means you can move armies to guard bridges, mountain passes, forests etc. and it’ll be represented right there on the 3D battlefield exactly as the map shows. So rather than feeling like random environments generated to simulate that area, almost feeling detached from the campaign map itself, real time battles now feel like a small look of the much wider picture.
This is the perhaps the clearest change in the series, with other changes being minor and noticeable only to the die-hard fans, some of which will come onto later as some may have them up in arms (both for good reasons and bad).
