May 12th , 2011
By MegaGamer2010

Genre: Strategy
System: PC
Developer: Creative Assembly
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: Fall 2011

Just about anyone who knows anything about strategy games on the PC knows of the Total War series. The games have just combined ease of use, pure fun, and surprisingly deep gameplay. Beginners would have no problem picking up the game but experts could really learn to enjoy all that the games have to offer. The best part is that, despite how good both Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War were, they were just mere "test runs".

That's right, those two games are nothing like what the people at Creative Assembly had originally thought up. They made Shogun just to warm up and see how the public would accept it and, pleased by the results and good critical acclaim, they began work on their real project, Rome: Total War. Medieval: Total War was merely a "Shogun 1.5", it was just a game to keep fans busy while they were hard at work on their dream game.

If you even faintly enjoyed playing any of the Total War games, be prepared to be blown away by Rome: Total War. This game is combining everything that strategy gamers could ever hope for. A whole slew of playable factions, more unit types then you can count (for some of you that's not too difficult to achieve), deep and fun strategy, and a completely new graphics engine have been added into the new Total War game.

Trying to explain all of the factions and list all of the unique unit types would take way too long. Let's just summarize it. If you have learned anything in your history class, then you probably know about Rome. Basically, they were the strongest people around way back when. Everyone wanted a piece of them. They have enemies on every side of their empire and all of their enemies want to take down the "mighty" Roman Empire. Each of these factions has their own unique units that only they (or countries that conquer them) are capable of producing. Each unit has its own advantages and disadvantages that, if used correctly, can easily win or lose a battle.

A new map setup accompanies the game. The new map is somewhat reminiscient of the Civilization series maps, it is divided up into a bunch of hexagons. Unlike Civilization, however, this map is fully 3D. Fans of the series had better be ready to handle this because there will be a TON of these hexagons. The nice thing about these is that each can be used to your strategic advantage. You can use them to surround an enemy from multiple angles and then come down hard and crush them from every angle. The great thing is that if you invade from both the top and bottom of the enemy, your units will have their starting positions in those areas. Your units will start the battle surrounding the enemy. So basically, using the hexagons to your advantage will be critical.

Another addition is that if you have a unit in a hexagon, you can set them to fortify themselves. They will work on making themselves a make-shift fort in the hexagon that will be much easier to defend. Additionally, you can also build roads to attach cities to each other for easier transportation, etc. The really amazing thing is that whatever you decide to build in a hexagon will actually show up in the exact same spot on the battle map.

A similar set up has been added into the much improved castle assaults. Basically, every single building you choose to build a province will actually be present on the battle map. That's right, blacksmiths, armouries, palaces, EVERYTHING. So assaulting a huge castle will be a much harder task and will require a lot more strategy. To help out with these new additions, you will have plenty of siege weaponry at your control. If you don't care about controlling the city, you can simply choose to bombard the castle with your catapults non-stop and raze the city to the ground and suffer minimal casualties. However, most people will probably actually want control of the city. Those people can choose to knock down the gate, or use new mobile towers and load them with troops, move to a wall, and unload them onto the ramparts and invade the city. Cool, huh?

To compliment all of this a new graphics engine. This new engine can support MORE soldiers on screen than even Medieval could, and, best of all, they are ALL in 3D! That's right, every single unit will be completely animated and this will provide for much more interesting and realistic battles as you will actually see units engaging and hitting each other in real time. Wow.

All strategy gamers should expect a crazy, wild ride when this game hits the shelves this Fall.