Europa Universalis Rome is an empire builder set in the time of ancient Rome. Despite my love for all things Rome and empire or city builders, I found the game to be tedious, boring and frustrating.

In my experience, there are typically three elements to all empire builders, though most good games will focus on at least two. The primary one is conquering your foes through epic cinematic or stylistically rendered combat. The second element that you can find is winning through the simple strategy of micromanaging your city or empire. That is, you win through trade, diplomacy, alliances and financial gain. And, through all good empire builders, there is the undercurrent that you are somehow a supreme figure looking over all you survey with a sense of power and control.

Europa Universalis Rome only focuses on one of those elements; and that is the micromanaging of your empire, which is done in a way that I thought was extremely dull.

I felt like I was examining a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet when I played the game. Every single element seemed like charts, information, documents and reports that I needed to keep track of to improve the strengths and weaknesses of my empire. And although many empire builders use similar concepts when the players try to improve their empire, they are very rarely the primary focus of the game.

I’ve always felt the real thrust of these games was the ego satisfaction that come from feeling like you’re a god ruling your citizens. In order for that effect to really work, the world needs to feel like a living, breathing, animate world. Stuff needs to happen that is exciting to watch so I can sit back from time to time and watch the fruits of my labor ripen. That doesn’t happen in this game, however, because the creators spent so much time with numbers and charts that instead of feeling like I was living vicariously through an emperor, I felt like I was living vicariously through a bookkeeper or accountant.

When I built a remarkable improvement on my city, I didn’t get to see a creative or exciting cinema display to show me the improvement. It was just built, and the numbers on how it affected my citizens were demonstrated. When my citizens were upset, I didn’t see animated riots in the streets; I just got the reports via a pop-up window and an option to act, should I choose to.

I’m a big fan of empire builders, the history of ancient Rome and games built about it. But there a slew of games in the same genre of ancient Rome glutting the market, and this one has very little to offer in terms of simple fun. In Activision’s Rome: Total War, you have hardly any cinema display scenes or complex designs for your cities. This is OK, because the game is really about the battle feature, which is unbelievable.

In the case of Sierra’s Caesar games, you don’t have much of an active battle, but your people are all going about their business and looking to you like you’re really the god of the city. You can watch your workers run from wharf to warehouse or see your little gladiators performing at the arena, and if you click to a citizen they actually talk to you and tell you what they’re thinking.

This was completely not the case in Europa. It deliberately creates a sense of distance between the world and the player for some reason, and I just couldn’t get involved in a game that seems to be built using Excel. Even the battle settings were seemingly deliberately made dull.

For example, in a battle you move pieces on the board much like you move armies on a map in the game of Risk. When two armies “fight” the only animation you observe is the two armies standing next to each other on the map waving their respective weapons around while the computer continues to “roll dice” each turn to find out how many troops each side lost in skirmish, based on the statistics computed from elements like soldier experience, commander expertise, and so forth. But there’s no chance for you, the player, to take over the combat and actually think their way out of a tough spot.

Actually, Risk was a very good analogy to the game. As I kept playing, I really got the impression that the game was trying to emulate the old-style board games of the 1970s. With all the fine-tuning that videogames can offer, why did the game constantly keep things boxed in with a style that was seemingly slow and clunky? It could have been faster, more flashy, more engaging, because I’ve seen other games much older impress me much more.

I suppose, then, if you like the classic board games of the ’70s then this is a videogame for you. Combat is reduced to dice-rolling, city growth and expansion is reduced to flashcards and some pictures, and the primary focus seems to be (in my opinion) less involved in having fun then teaching and molding the players to learn the dynamics of office management and in some level history. In that sense, it’s somewhat like Wagon Trail or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

To close, I’ll say it didn’t just bore me, it angered me that they could butcher such a fine concept. Educating children on politics and history can still be fun, and I didn’t think this game was fun. I also feel that although people who enjoy a good board game might enjoy this game, if they can’t get a group of friends around to just sit back and roll the dice for six or seven hours, that the game would have been far better if it had tossed in a little pizzazz, flair and some “pretty” effects. But if you like learning about the ancient world in way that really focuses on details like minutia, charts, spreadsheets and maps, this game may be just what you’re looking for.