Rome: Total War Preview

Extra Empire Essentials

Tying the city building and fighting together along with a couple of other odds and ends is the large-scale 3D campaign map. You can move your armies practically anywhere on the campaign map to block passes, traverse mountains to attack another army, or just sit around and drink some wine in a city; there is very little linearity to the game in that respect.

Map chock full of Empire

If all of this seems overwhelming, it probably is. But worry not; you've got barrels of help if you need it. The most obvious help comes in the form of advisors, which do exactly what their name suggests, give you advice on whatever matter you're dealing with at the moment. As the game progresses, the advice will become more and more advanced. Somewhat similar to the advisors are the general's pre-battle speeches which - while they are good at maintaining the theme and feel of the game - give useful information on the enemy, the battlefield on which you're fighting, or any other tactical analyses. With so many variables affecting what the pre-battle speech is, there are hundreds of thousands of them; you'll probably never hear the same one twice. And to keep you up to date on what's happening during the battle, there are movie clips to mark key points in the fighting such as a general's death.

The other big help is the little micromanagement that is needed along with your choice to do away with managing a certain aspect of your empire entirely. If you're not into fighting, you can just order your generals to fight whatever battles you put them into and the general AI will deal with the battles while you work on your cities. And since the UI has been substantially improved since the previous Total War titles, you shouldn't have too much to worry about. However, if city building isn't your thing, you can just tell your governors to work on a general function of a city (cash, crops, troops, etc) while you're out fighting in the field.

Mmm Rome

If plain fighting or city building doesn't spark your interest right away, the game does have what are called "Senate missions." Not too much was spoken about Senate missions, but it's assumed that they do include the conquest of particular regions or the building of certain cities; I'm sure there will be more to it but your speculation is about as good as mine.

As you can see from the screenshots released so far, the graphics are spectacular. The detail on the in-game art is almost equal to that of a lower-end game's cinematics. Elephants toss soldiers around the battlefield, cavalry trample over them, sieges have realistic pyrotechnics; all of the little things that you don't see in other strategy games are in Rome. The music - composed by Jeff Dyck - is also enjoyable and the sounds are crisp and vibrant, adding to the feel and theme of the game like most other quality audio in the industry does. All in all, the visual and sound quality of Rome is most impressive.

Next: Wrapping Things Up
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