Ah! The Roman Empire! Any intellectual worth his grain of salt knows something about the period. As most people over age 18 who have been to college know that the Roman Empire used to be THE superpower. They were the leaders in art, philosophy, medicine and sanitation, diplomacy, and military tactics. There also was some insanity with the emperors: One leader made a horse his loyal adviser. Enter in Imperium Romanum, a real-time strategy that lets you play with the Romans.
When I first received it, I thought it sounded interesting. The manual certainly lends itself this form of credibility. Unfortunately, shivers ran up and down my spine when I read the note on the back of the CD slipcase that our fearless leader, Ophelea, left me: “Be sure to patch.” Have we learned nothing from Pools of Radiance II: Ruins of Myth Drannor?! When the game first came out, it was highly unstable. Within two weeks or so after release, a fair amount of the bugs were crushed, and a month later the game was stable. Even then some people had issues with the game. And it did not stop people from hating the game.
On the bright side, Imperium Romanum smoothly and cleanly installed itself onto my computer from the CD. I have read on the forums that there are issues with downloading and then installing it from the South Peak game’s Web site because of the use of an old download application. As of this writing, the version is up to 1.03 and is now stable. This is what it should be out of the box. Period.
Regardless of issues, let us start with the good aspects of the game. The whole point of the game is to build various colonies of the Roman Empire. Graphically, it is a very nice game to look at. I love how the game loads a view of the base as a mosaic/impressionist painting and then becomes alive. Your citizens move nicely around the map. Dusts flies as the slaves build structures. Citizens approach the forum with complaints. The camera lets one zoom in and look at the nitty-gritty details of the game world. The aqueducts flow with water from one place to the next. Smoke rises from buildings on fire.
The game sounds rather nice. The music is a somewhat nice and relaxing to listen to while playing. Flutes and drums resound to create an imperial feel. The downside is that the same tune plays over and over again. There is only one voice actor, and he plays the role of your “adviser,” reporting what occurs in your city. And he does a good job with the role.
Gameplay wise, this is a standard build-your-city strategy game. What this means is that you can define the cityscape. Need more people to work in the mines or wheat fields? Build more houses and farms. Are the slaves are being run ragged? Build more slave houses. Simply clicking on buildings informs the player about who works or lives there, how much is being produced for income and, if applicable, what is being produced. All of these buildings can be intuitively built by right-mouse clicking, which brings up various building types. It is a nice change of pace from the traditional “click on the proper button to build it” function. There also is a “view” command with certain buildings, notices and all tablets. This takes you directly to the object in question and is a handy feature. Anyway, building takes a lot of time to occur, and a speed-up function is available at a click of the mouse. Ultimately, when nothing can hinder you from building, it is sublime.
Furthermore, there are four game modes. There is the traditional tutorial that teaches players how to play. There is a scenario-based gameplay, which can be considered a sandbox-esque mode and a map to conquer. The downside of this is the random event factor, which does not work that well with this game. Then there is the “Rome” mode, which allows players to create an improved Rome. It is rather easy since the game literally tells you where to build everything. And then there is the meat of the game: Mission mode. This mode allows players to build colonies and can be considered the meat of the game.
There also is the unique tablet system. In each mission, you can usually draw three tablets. These tablets describe various goals that are sometimes optional, bonuses, occasional tidbits of history and, sometimes, bonuses for completing the task. This gives the game a feel of stately stride and great structure. However, sometimes the game gives an odd requirement after you have built over the general area (build a wall around the city when I have built all over the place). It was so bad that I consequently found myself restarting missions far too frequently.
However, there are several issues. The game throws “random” encounters at you because of the lack of the tablet system. What this means is that randomly barbarians may attack It just does not work since taking down barbarian hordes/villages is basic at best. It is one thing to initiate war; it is another to have it initiated without any warning — especially when building is done peacefully. This game is not a traditional RTS in which such thing would work, which leads us into the next issue: building warrior units. This is a pain because they eat up required resources, they don’t show off the military awesomeness known as the much-feared Roman militia. One can only do three things: show them where to go, when to attack and when to retreat. That is it. No other tactics are necessary. Some might love it; others, like me, dislike it because it defeats the purpose of the game.
Furthermore, there are moments when the game feels unbalanced. Why grow olives other than for trading? Herbalists are an underinitialized force and rarely necessary. Why do I need to build both temples and altars when temples can be considered an upgrade of the altar? The next problem has to do with accessing farms. The game is occasionally unresponsive to left-clicks on building areas &mdsh; the flat area, which is considered a part of the building because of the nice white glowing ring surrounding it. Typically, it takes about three clicks for it to properly respond because it requires the player to literally click on a part of the building. I count the empty space surrounding the inside of the fence and building a part of it, not empty building space. Also, supplies disappear almost as quickly as they are acquired. This makes it annoying when the citizens start complaining about not having enough resources.
It also is important to note that moving the camera around can occasionally be painful. It is best seen through the following analogy: Look around you. Notice what is on your left and right (respectively). Now stand up and turn around. That is how the camera functions. What is on your right might actually be on the left side of the map. While it does work, it is unintuitive. It also makes the map feel disjointed because it makes things feel like they belong elsewhere on the map.
There also is the questionable stability of the game. Although this is fixed now thanks to version 1.03, it was not always. For completionists’ sakes, I am including this. I have experienced only one bug, and that one literally stopped the action of the citizens when I loaded the game one day. I lucked out by clicking on the view button on one of the tablets. I have heard that some players finished the tutorial and then the game crashed. As previously mentioned, some people have issues downloading and installing, so CD installation seems to be the way to go. Furthermore, there is one text box that “talks” about the happiness of my citizens, and I quote, it ends with “(line 265).” As previously mentioned, this is no longer important, but it haunts me whenever I play.
And finally, the game is not Roman enough! The game feels stripped as there is no real city management going on, no military tactics, no philosophy, no medicine, no art, no insanity and no real history of the Romans. I should be able to make statues of my warrior greatness — my own version of Marcus Aurelius! I should have access to a wide variety of statues instead of just one. Also, where is the multiculturalism of Rome? The Romans were excellent at diplomacy, so I should be able to see all the various cultures living in the city. Furthermore, the developers, Kalypso Media, could have gone with a somewhat fictionalized account of the start of the Roman empire — like the Aenid — and then have some sort of overarching story that explains how the Empire developed and fell. The only thing holding it together is the Roman theme. In other words, it’s all wasted potential, and that is what truly hurts the game.
There is supposedly multiplayer, but it pretty much is uploading your score to the Web site — even though the official Web site through South Peak brags about being able to be played with “1 to 8 players.” As some people can already guess, someone already has maxed out the score for each scenario. Perhaps multiplayer was added in one of the expansion packs available for the game (there are two available for purchase off the Web site). The oddest thing is that the online forums for the game are still in German. And the link is from the English Web site. This is unacceptable that obtaining help is not in one’s native language.
When everything works, it is awesome. This makes building great when it is unhindered by everything around it. Thus, there is a really solid game hiding underneath it all. But when everything clashes, it is like running into a wall. The game wants to stand tall with games like Civilization III and Warcraft III (and the rest of the games from that series), but it does not meet the standards set and raised by those games. Imperium Romanum comfortably sits on that fine line of “solid” and “average.” Furthermore, at its current price of $40, it is a hefty admission fee even though there is a lot of gameplay content. The admission fee just does not meet the gameplay. This is one of those games that gamers pray to find in the bargain bin. If you are really curious, there is a demo to download off the official Web site. The main group of people I imagine liking this game are people who had tons of fun with Legos and Zacs when they were kids. Everyone else, especially hardcore RTS fans, will skip over this one. This is shame because the game has a really cool concept. It is even worse shame is that this game could have been a lot cooler.
