Review - Total War: Rome II

By Jamie Kennett

Last Tuesday saw the release of the latest instalment in the Creative Assembly’s genre-defying strategy series; Total War. After the 19th century Japan of the previous game, Shogun 2, the latest one takes us back to that old crowd-pleaser; Ancient Rome. Total War: Rome II is set during the same period of the infamous nation’s history as its predecessor from 2004, being that the player oversees control of the faction from the late 3rd Century BC -towards the end of the Roman Republic- and well into the establishment of the world-changing Roman Empire. Utilising the same game engine as the honourable Shogun 2, whilst at the same time revisiting some of the [better] gameplay from the first Rome game, there is many a good feature of this latest release, and only a few bad ones. Read on for the rest, naturally.

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An immediately noticeable addition is that of the new launcher that appears upon starting the game. From here you can select any one of the Total War games in your possession (for me that’s basically all but the Shogun games) to play to your heart’s content. As well as this, you’re also presented with a live feed from the chaps at the Creative Assembly, which allows you to keep yourself posted on any news regarding updates, as well as future expansions and inevitable games. There's also a very helpful online encyclopaedia that's accessible within the game, at any time, for anyone who gets stuck on anything, or just wants to brush up on their ancient history.

Once you actually get Rome II on the go, you really begin to notice the veritable redecorating they’ve been doing. After passing through the usual series of logos and opening cinematics, you’re taken to the main menu (obviously), but it’s changed considerably. Now I never actually played Shogun 2, so I don’t know if this is a continuation of the style from that game, but the menu for Rome II simply consists of a central golden SPQR banner, (topped with an effigy of an eagle; the god Jupiter), with all the buttons now lurking on the left side of the screen. I can’t actually see them, however, because of the stupid-but-unavoidable display settings on my monitor that chop off the edges of the screen. If the menu buttons were still in the centre as in Napoleon I’d be able to read them, but then that’s not the game’s fault, that’s my idiot monitor’s fault. Either way, the menu’s very minimalist now, and I do like that. It makes the game as a whole feel fresh and refined, and topped with the strangely Game of Thrones-esque background music, it does subtlely get you in the mood for imminent battle. Anyway, enough waffling about the sodding menu. We haven’t paid [the currently discounted Steam price of] £29.99 to stare at a gold eagle have we?

We have. Look at it. It's beautiful.

The game itself deserves much praise, as it's the most engrossing, detailed, and epic (see the actual dictionary definition of “epic”) of any Total War game I’ve played. The style of warfare took some time to get back into for me, as until recently I was in Napoleon mode; battles consisted of endless lines of fusiliers, and men in big hats fighting each other with copious amounts of cannon and shouting. Luckily the singleplayer for Rome II accommodates for people like me by providing a lengthy tutorial/refresher course in the form of a prologue to the game’s “grand campaign”. This trio of narrative-based chapters sees you fight it out against the Samnium people of eastern Italia, who are rather unsportingly occupying regions that rightfully belong to Rome. So, under the guise of Fulvius Silanus, you gradually destroy the Samnites. At least that’s the idea; I spent so long trying to do the prologue that I eventually had to abandon it and start the main campaign itself just so I could write about it here, and I haven’t covered much ground (literally) in that either.

The Grand Campaign in Rome II is as you might expect from any Total War game; you pick a faction, and then gradually dominate the map through the cunning use of diplomacy and war-mongering. There is however, a number of slight tweaks to the general premise of all this. Instead of simply picking a faction, you’ll find a lot of them are split into smaller clans, and you must then pick one of them as the domineering faction in that particular nation. For instance, I’m currently playing as Rome, but as Rome under the influence and [effectively] rule of the House of Julia. This means that most of my generals belong to that house, as do most of Rome’s statesmen, but it also means that the House of Julia has the most sway in the Senate. That being said, I’m not entirely sure that the Roman Senate actually does anything. The way the whole “Senate” thing works on here is completely different to how it works in the first Rome, because you control the entire republic, and not just one patrician family. Remember how in the 2004 game there were the Brutii, the Scipii, the Julii, and the Senate, all as separate factions but all incorporated into a larger “Roman Republic” faction? That isn’t the case here. Its almost as if all of that has been streamlined so that the game has more emphasis on the war side of things. You still get given little missions to go out and do, but who gives you these missions is beyond me. Basically you are now just “big red Rome”, and you simultaneously play as the senate, and the head of your particular house, it would seem. I don’t really care how that all works anyway. No doubt there’s a video from the actual developers lying around somewhere that’ll explain it better than I ever could.

The campaign map only seems to get bigger and more detailed with each game.

To avoid further confusion, most of the other facets of a Total War campaign are still knocking about; diplomacy remains a faithful friend of the keen strategist, and has been built upon from previous titles to include some diplomatic options that have clearly been influenced by the grand strategy series’ Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. Naturally trade still has its place in the game, but it doesn’t play quite as crucial a role as it does in Empire and Napoleon, but that’s purely because there was less emphasis on it during the historical period the game is set in. There’s now food and population resources however, besides the treasury, that dictate how big you can allow your empire to get, and how well you can provide for it as it expands. Run out of food and your nation suffers from attrition, which makes the “plebs” (as the advisors refer to them) unhappy, which in turn leads to open revolt if not attended to. Revolts are bad.

By-and-large, the multiplayer is exactly the same as its always been, but with one subtle change; instead of being forced to pick preset and often rubbish maps to butcher your friends on, the game now lets you pick anywhere in Europe from a pop-up map of the continent, and then generates your battlefield for you using the same mechanics as it does in singleplayer battles.

The important part is the fighting itself, and the visuals that go with it. I realised the other day that Total War is essentially the gamer’s answer to chess, except the pieces actually move, they look like genuine soldiers, and the battlefield is always a darn sight more interesting. As I said at the start, the game uses the same engine as the previous title Shogun 2, which as we all know provided some captivatingly cinematic fight scenes in the midst of enormous battles, staged in some genuinely stunning locales. This carries over into Rome II, but as you might expect it’s been improved upon even more so. The textures and details on battlefields are so high now, that they actually look better than the maps from some FPS games of years gone by. It doesn’t end there. The soldiers are so meticulously detailed that you almost feel as if the developers implemented the eye-level camera angle you can now zoom down to just so you can see every single one of your completely unique soldiers in all their glory. They even show emotion for crying out loud… Animations and sound effects have been honed to replicate the drama and intensity of battle as best as physically possible, not to mentioned the humorous dialogue that soldiers exchange between each other now; at the start of one of my battles, the general’s rousing speech was interrupted by a footsoldier shouting “today is a good day to live, and have us a Roman victory!”, to which a soldier in another column retorted with “today is a good day to die!”. He clearly wasn’t as enthusiastic as the others…

You'll find that battles such as this one will sufficiently sate your appetite for complete slaughter.

As another example of the extreme personalisation of the ground troops we can now experience, I witnessed a moment of ambient and atmospheric brilliance at the end of my latest siege earlier today; as I lined up my Roman hastati in formation in the town’s square, all 700 of the humble frontline soldiers began cheering, waving their swords in the air, and banging their shields as their triumphant general trotted past all of them with his bodyguard, who in turn thrust their spears into the air and began roaring victoriously. A couple even tried jumping in the air to get a better view. It was great. This was all topped off by one of the men in the general’s bodyguard then shouting “Right lads, let’s get to looting this place!”. Cracking stuff.

I like to think this shot I captured gets the point across about detail.

Aside from the visuals of a battle in Rome II, both during and after, the mechanics themselves have had a lot of work, and whilst they take some time to get used to, they make battles all the more manageable. I have to say I wasn’t a great fan of the new HUD at first (I say “new”, I am fairly sure it’s in the same vain as Shogun 2’s HUD), because I’d been so used to the “classic” HUD of games Rome I through to Empire, and Napoleon to some extent. Also, unit cards continue to feature intriguing little artworks of their respective troops, and not actual pictures of them, a la Shogun 2 again. This does mean you sometimes have absolutely no idea what they actually look like on the battlefield, but it makes sorting your army far easier than previous games; all units of a particular group share the same stance and equipment on their card/s; for instance hastati, principes, and legionaries are recognisable as regular infantry on the unit panel from the tiniest of glances, as opposed to the constant mix-up that line infantry and grenadiers always caused in the “gunpowder” Total Wars. There’s also a nifty feature that allows you to lock grouped units in a particular formation, whether preset or custom, allowing you to move an army as one massive blob and be assured that the AI won’t completely ruin the formation you’d been laying out for ten minutes.

So… I like this game, for the most part. Obviously it’s not perfect; it takes longer than expected to “get into”, the layout takes some getting used to for people who haven’t played Shogun 2, and there’s a few mechanics that aren’t quite so well explained to you by the game, but if you can wade through all that and reach a point of content understanding, it is very rewarding. Especially if you have a decent machine and you’re able to experience the stunning visuals to their fullest.

If you've forgotten how far the series has come visually in the last nine years...

One final piece of advice though; make all attempts necessary to turn off that infamously patronising advisor as soon as you can, even if you’ve never played Total War before. She’s still there, and she'll do everything in her powers to tell you all things you've known for years, over and over and over.