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History - Great Empires: Rome
Release Date: May 12, 2009 (US) May 29, 2009 (UK)
Reviewed On: Nintendo DS
Developer: Slitherine
Publisher: Valcon Games (US), Slitherine (UK)
Genre: Strategy
ESRB Rating: E 10+ - Mild Blood, Mild Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes
PEGI Rating: 12+ - No Further Description
OFLC Rating: None - No Further Description
In 2002, Slitherine software released Legion, a strategy title ever so loosely based on the history of the Roman Empire, for the PC. Seven years later, Slitherine has teamed up with Valcon Games to produce a portable version for the DS, but with a new name. Undeniably, Nintendo’s portable masterpiece will not allow for some of grander aspects a Legion port, and it shows. While Legion was by no stretch a great game, the opportunity for portable strategy is certainly not one to be missed.
All the elements of a stellar strategy game are in place, but they may overwhelm.
Nintendo’s portables have given us some of the best strategy titles of all time in the Advance Wars series and many other real-time strategy ports have also made glowing appearances on both the Game Boy and DS platforms. Is a new name and some new features enough to make Great Empires one for the books, or is the History Channel endorsing a low-quality, interactive documentary?
Story:
Rome’s rich and vast history isn’t invoked by this title, and there’s certainly nothing connecting the campaigns. Factual representations are all over this game, but that’s as far as Slitherine takes it.
Despite the History Channel’s recognition for delivering the world’s histories in entertaining ways, Rome’s story isn’t even here. Unfortunately, nothing links the game’s six campaigns together, and it’s uncertain whether they are even organized chronologically. This would have been one way to make the overall gameplay cohesive, but without any sort of subplot, such as following one soldier’s bloodline through the campaigns, we are merely left with hollow vignettes of Rome’s history.
Design:
Simultaneously the most endearing and detesting aspect of Rome, the design does little right, and what it does to right is still subject to opinion. Many of its design flaws are endowed by Legion.
Rome is composed of several menus that initially overwhelm and complicate the first few hours of play, but their design adds a nice feel to the experience. Audio also livens up Rome’s banality. While it’s all pretty generic, the Latin exclamations from your units as they head toward the battlefield will induce an occasional chuckle. Rome’s music won’t get stuck in your head, but it keeps it from being completely dull.
Building Rome's modest hamlets into thriving cities takes much time and care.
Graphically, Slitherine attempted to make the game feel larger than it needed to, resulting in everything being eyestrainingly small. Cities, buildings and, especially, fighters are all rendered with a handful of pixels and make the experience of playing far more difficult than it needs to be. On first glance, Velites look like Auxiliary, Legions, and even the mighty Praetorians; but to Slitherine’s credit, it’s impossible to have much detail in all of 50 pixels.
Gameplay:
Oddly, Rome suffers from being unnecessarily deep. A much more accessible game could have seen Rome rise to prominence among the DS’s strategy titles.
Navigating the plethora of menus with the stylus is frustratingly imprecise and makes simple everything flow smoothly. It’s not all the fault of the stylus though; Rome boasts a complex system of menus, buttons, and more menus that are never clearly explained. In fact, the tutorial directs players to the game’s manual on more than one occasion, which is a really lazy way to go about teaching players how to player your game.
Management is really the most prominent aspect of the gameplay. It is nice to see a robust offering of troops and buildings, but because their purposes and effects are never fully explained, players will spend hours on trial and error rather than playing. On the surface, players must mine and maintain three crucial resources: wood, food and ore. Each allows certain buildings and units to be created, but the lack of any of them can set the player back seasons, or even years, in the game.
Each turn takes place during one of the four season of the year, and will require little of the player unless he is on a warpath. Choosing new buildings to construct takes place once a year, completed in the spring, and only one may be built per city, per year. This really slows down the gameplay and by the end of a decade or two, most players won’t care enough to remember what they were working toward.
Pray to the Gods that the enemy's troop cluster contains fewer men than yours.
Players will start each of Rome’s campaigns with two or three cities with which to establish themselves in, but any number of the rival tribes can be controlled instead to sidestep Rome’s handicap at the onset of each campaign. Swiftly establishing armies is very important as choosing a direct course is the quickest way to victory; and trust me, these matches can go on for hours upon hours.
Buildings constructed and troops recruited, players will then set out to conquer neighboring territories as quickly as possible. Failure to do so results in rivals building their armies up faster, and in greater numbers, than you can manage with the limited number of resources at your disposal. Engaging the enemy in combat is a hands-off affair with the exception of the pre-battle. Dictating where, how fast, and in which formations your troops attack isn’t satisfying at all, especially since battles must be watched. Sadly, these merely boil down numbers and luck, making the most potentially exciting aspect of Rome, a dull, often buggy, bore.
Once the player has a few more cities under his belt, the game goes on autopilot, and becomes a series of menial management tasks. Garrison recruitment, resource mining, and shallow diplomacy efforts, which include treaty offers, paying tributes and war declarations, all offer little reward to the player as each campaign progresses.
Summary:
Strategy buffs will find a lot here; history buffs won’t. Not at all up to the History Channel’s renowned standards, which makes you wonder why they even decided to attach their brand to this poorly executed port.
With Rome’s main game, playing for two in-game decades can result in crushing defeat, which leads to hours of wasted time. Conversely, once you gain a foothold and begin manufacturing enough troops to decimate Rome’s enemies, you’ll still have to finish out the many tedious hours ahead.
While Rome doesn’t offer much to the casual strategy-lover, enthusiasts will find a cheap strategy title with a few disjointed mini games. There are four in total, including Roman numeral Sudoku, Roman soldier slide puzzles, a timed Ancient world geography game, and Legionnaire, a Rome-based Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The latter two are interesting, if nothing else, but their difficulty keeps them from being worthwhile.
History - Great Empires: Rome feels exactly like what it is; a considerably scaled down port of an average real-time strategy game. Unfortunately for the game, Slitherine didn’t scale down its excessively deep features. Variety is good, but had the types of buildings and soldiers been explained a bit, the whole experience of playing would have been more smooth and forgiving. As the Greeks would say, “Nothing in Excess!” Come to think of it, I’d better leave the Greeks out of this, or they’ll end up in the next Great Empires.
Story: 2.0/10
Design: 6.3/10
Gameplay: 5.3/10
Total Gaming Network Rating: 5.8/10
Design: 6.3/10
Gameplay: 5.3/10
Total Gaming Network Rating: 5.8/10
~Eldri