The time is right.  The weather is fair, and your men are fresh and ready.  With the flick of your wrist, the lives of thousands come under your will.  Will they live to fight another day, or perish under the might of crazed barbarians?  It‘s up to you.  The enemy themselves lie deeply positioned on top a hill across from your army.  With sneers and shouts, they taunt your men in a strange language.  Enraged and disgraced at the enemy’s plea for death, you bellow “Charge!!!”  At the top of your lungs.  Within seconds, the entire front line races up the steep hill.  With swords swinging, and arrows firing, the battle is underway.  The barbarians, with an unholy rage, cut through your troops like butter.  Only Mars can save you now. 

Activision’s Rome: Total War, is the game that all die hard RTS players, like me, have been waiting for.  Luckily for us there has been the History Channel’s weekly program, Decisive Battles, which uses RTW to recreate ancient wars of the Roman Empire, to tide us over.  As I gawked, and raved about the game, and its ability to wage war with thousands of totally rendered soldiers, my lust for the game’s release had made me hysterical.  But now, as the shelves of stores flow with copies, I nearly fainted as my trembling fingers caressed its scarlet and gold box.  (Really, you can ask somebody.)  As I came home to play the only game I would ever need, I found that all of my expectations and hopes were all true. 

 

The game plays like the other Total War titles.  Forge an empire from the ground up and rule the world.  On your path to total domination, you must use your troops on a board, Risk style, and conquer small regions from other factions.   Rome: Total War, still has this same basic style of play, but adds something new.  Each one of your armies has “move points” which allows you to move them in and out of terrain inside the individual regions on the map.  This adds a whole new method of strategy.  Say your army piece is standing on a hill, when you attack an enemy piece, you will have the high ground advantage.  Or if you move your pieces inside a forest, you can ambush an enemy army passing by, giving you the element of surprise.  Deciding on whether or not you utilize these new strategic implements is up to you, but it could help sway a war into your favor by doing so. 

The battle system is just plain awesome.  Giving you the ability to command thousands of realistic ancient era soldiers, and putting them to work, Rome is light years beyond many other RTS games.  The fighting and tactics can be compared to the Lord of The Rings movies, only every battle is like Helms Deep and Minas Tirith.  Each faction has its own unique units.  Rome has highly trained, motivated armies.  Barbarians like the Gauls and Britons have rag-tag poorly trained soldiers, but have strength in numbers.  Whichever faction you choose, you must be sure to use its strength’s and weaknesses to overcome your foes.