I freakin hate Cretan archers; one time I went to Crete and one shot me, all I was doing was stealing pigs.
Realism in Rome: Total isn't just the way the game is played out, it's also the way the game looks. I would have to say it's one of the best-looking 3D strategy games I've seen, especially considering the fact that the engine can handle thousands of individual troops on the battlefield. Each of those thousands is highly-detailed and appears as what a person would look like in a FPS game a couple years ago, including how it would react to changes in its environment according to the physics engine; an elephant charge sends soldiers sailing through the air and ignited missiles cause troops to burst into flames, and that's just the start.
Creating such spectacular scenes and empires in the game has the possibility of being rediculously complicated and difficult to deal with; Creative Assembly addressed that possibility by making a remarkably streamlined user interface so simple that an inebriated orangutan could use it. On the campaign map, it's fairly simple to find what you need; information and commands are compartmentalized by importance and type through pop-up scrolls. On the battlefield, changing camera angle (which happens about 50 kabillion times in a battle) happens with a simple movement of the mouse cursor; creating position, line thickness, and direction of troop formations is done just by dragging your cursor. To top off all of this interface ease, Rome's hotkeys are positioned fairly logically for the use of those players that have a solid hold on the game.
...I bet a small child could crawl under that forest of spears and kill the lot of them
While gameplay, graphics, and interface are easily the most important aspects of a game, Rome's music and sound effects hold the game together like morale does to its realism. The in-game music sounds very Roman and fits with the game's mood perfectly. During most of your time on the campaign map, it's very mellow and slow; as you start a battle and the armies clash, it completely changes speed and dynamics to match the activity going on. The music fits the game very well, but in the end doesn't inspire emotion and otherwise indicate top quality as much as the scoring in other games; it's adequate but certainly not as good as it could be. Besides its music, RTW's sound effects are acutely reminiscent of Impression's Caesar 3 and Pharaoh citybuilder games. When you open up a scroll indicating your financial status, the sound of coins dropping starts up; after you've exterminated a population, people scream as blades plunge into them...you get the idea.
Being a hardcore Ager at heart (and completely new to the Total War series), I was quite skeptical of this game; I expected it to be yet another lackluster flop in the huge list of Roman strategy games. Oh how I was wrong. With top-quality graphics and sound coupled with realistic and frighteningly addictive gameplay, Rome: Total War has the possibility of being among the top strategy games in history. Although I don't think it could compare to Starcraft, Age of Kings: The Conquerors, or other truly legendary strategy games (as it does have some failings), Rome certainly is a classic. I kid you not when I say I've had to literally force myself off the game each time I've played it; this game rocks my freaking face off.
