A Legionary's Life

It's fun, simple and quite replayable!

I picked this up a few years ago, played a few hours and couldn't quite get into it and so left it alone.

Last week I saw the dev had released a new roman-themed game, so decided to go back and try pick this up again and much to my surprise, I clicked with it right away and it became one of those, "Oh I'll just play for an hour" and before you know it, your day has just vanished into nothing.

I've really enjoyed playing this over the past few days, and it scratches that roman-fanboy itch in me quite well. Audentes fortuna iuvat.

As a proud Mediterranean, I happily recommend this absolute masterwork of history retelling and addictive game play. However, the most important thing everyone should know before getting this game is that it has a somewhat steep learning curve. However, once you master it while knowing which traits matter, and which ones you should consistently upgrade, you will have a great time. Plus, who doesn't like Roman history?

Train, fight, die. Train, fight die. Train fight, die again. But always with excellent morale!

only took me 74.4 hours to get a perfect run lmao

this one is a lot better than never second in rome, would love to see some form of modding support to allow for extended campaigns or even entirely custom ones

In the roleplaying aspect, I believe this is one of the best games ever made. The writing is excellent, and anyone interested in ancient history will enjoy it.

Though we are following real historical battles, your own accomplishments are very impactful in the story, while still keeping everything fully historically accurate. You can die a nobody or become one of the greatest heroes of the time.

I can best illustrate this with one of the most difficult events in the story. If you train your character in the right aspects, and you seize the initiative at the right moment, and then fight many enemies by yourself, you can single-handedly save thousands of people. To be exact, an entire wing of your army.

The following quote only describes your reward for this deed, so it will not spoil the context of it. Some could still prefer this not to be revealed before playing, so consider that first before reading it. Still, this was extremely satisfying, so I wanted to quote it:

"A crown made of grasses and flowers picked from the battlefield is offered to you. When you start to grasp the magnitude of what is happening, you have to fight back the tears. You are the fifth Roman to receive such a high honor. The fifth in the whole history of the Republic."

Powerful stuff. I only wish it was longer, or more dense with story events, at least. Thankfully, as of writing this, the sequel is already out in early access, called Never Second in Rome.

It is a fun game wich lets you expierence the life of a roman soldier on several campaigns. Its good fun and ur ahppy to live through each battle.
The only thing is that the fighitng is a bit repetetive, but still i do like this game alot and am very happy that there is a second game about to be released!
The narrative is great and u acutally learn sth about roman warfare and history as well.

After I saw the announcement of his second game, I decided to leave this review.
The combat system at first might seem hard to learn but you eventually get the hang of it. I love how the difficulty of the game reflects its story, in your first runs, you probably will not be able to go around like a God of War and slaughter everything in your wake, you are just a dude who is in the army, so you play it safe and experience the story that way. After your first run, you get curious and invest the points the game has given you to experience the other parts of the story, and from each run you get stronger and stronger, and do the thing you'd never attempt as a regular legionary.
Aside from the gameplay loop, the best thing about this game is its storytelling, it puts you into an interesting time period with incredible attention to detail, and makes you experience it firsthand as a regular soldier, the game makes you feel like you are just a grunt, a pion involved in things bigger than himself. Even if you go and do some otherwordly stuff in your later runs, realistically, you'd just be a footnote in history. I love it.

This game got me into RPGs. It's great, albeit a grind, but that's the point. There's well enough replayability and it's well worth the price. Looking forward to buying his next game.

Great rogue-lite. A must for any Roman history buff.

Amazing game. Highly recommended!

Solid game would love to see a 2nd that expands into random events and more overall content. but a solid roguelite that I keep coming back to. Well worth the price paid.

The game looks fairly simple but don't let looks deceive you, there is nothing simple about this game. Yes it feels very RNG heavy early but you learn ways to mitigate it and the narrative aspects are top notch. I just made it to the end of a run for the first time and all I want to do is go back and do it again.

A must for any Rome nerds. Very solid writing.

A very fun game once you get the hang of it. I find most people who review this game poorly don't understand the game at its core. The game at the start is hard, it is annoying. If you keep trying to play it and get better it will be a lot more fun. I've 100% the achievements in this game so I've played my fair share. The best part of this game is the story, I believe the combat is fun too. The atmosphere and setting is king though being a Roman soldier during the 2nd Punic War is awesome. I would recommend this game, if you buy it don't give up and keep playing it; trust me it's worth it.

A very simple to play yet complex to master game. Very simple in its design and gameplay yet very addicting. I've survived quite of few playthroughs now, and I eagerly await the next game.

You know, I actually wrote a negative review on this one. It was pretty short and all about how "premise is great, but..." - but there is no character creator to speak of; but RNG is so harsh that average playthrough is way too short to actually immerse yourself; that fighting system is so esoteric that you will not manage to actually understand it until your 128th character, when you would not care about anything anyway...
And then I though, "well, maybe I'll play it one more time, just to make sure it's trash!" SO I played. And then played a day after. And then the day after that.
Because there is something in it, despite all the problems from above - and they are absolutely real, don't get me wrong. There is something deeply believable, deeply true about this game, where important part of your money come from selling captives to slavery, where been given job to "gather supplies for army" means take away bread from starving peasants, and where you can lose respect from your comrades for NOT beating up to near-death some stupid kids who were throwing stones at you. Because this is how Roman world, for all of it's roads, and aqueducts, and baths and theaters, actually worked. I am not in any way an ancient historian, but I have read about Rome to say that yeah, this Roberti guy, unlike many creators nowadays, doesn't just exaggerate bad stuff for shock value; he does know the history of his ancestors, and present's it as it was. And the casual, almost skippable brutality of it scares and captivates more than all the flamboyant violence and cruelty of Hollywood Rome. Even more than that; It, dare I say, teaches to love and cherish this fragile modern world we live in. World, in which such casual brutality, even if not (yet) extinguished permanently, is at least seen with horror and disgust it deserves.

Fun text-based RPG, enjoyed/ still enjoying playing it. A lot of people complaining about rng, but they just have negativity bias so ignore them.

Very nyice

It does not look like it at first but, this is amazing game, like it very much, finished it many times and still playing, can't wait for another similar game, hope never second in rome will be quality product..

Combat is way too random, it's a very fun game if only a 90% chance to hit wouldn't whiff 6 times in a row, that made me stop playing.

I wanted very much to like this game, and the concept is awesome. However, the implementation falls flat. The starting character level is inadequate, your character will simply die no matter what you do. Combat is absurdly difficult and it comes down to random dice rolls.

Great game, very engaging. My only gripe is that it ends. Hope the dev eventually works on a DLC.

PS
If you purchase this game and enjoy it, check out Never Second In Rome.

A lot of the negative reviews in for this game have to do with the RNG, and i get it, but there's a very easy fix for constantly failing skill checks. Personally i sacrifice a goat to RNGesus before every combat encounter.

For being the first text based RPG I've ever played it is hands down the best one I could have ever picked up as a history nerd. It perfectly encapsulates the ups and downs of campaign life (even when things can get a little repetitive). Although a hard game, I think it entirely adds to the experience. As you get further and further each life you gain points to then put forward to your next life, it's a pretty fun system.

Great and im excited for the next game

Very good game

I legit had the same stats on almost everything, the only things that were different were that some were higher and I failed skill checks that I passed when they were lower, why are skill checks RNG? why is everything RNG?

Weirdly neat rogue-lite

A big game in a small package!

Fire

Great game.

I've never played a text based game before, and would never have expected that I'd sink so many hours into one, although I'm very glad I did.

The art and atmosphere is fitting and enhances your experience, the story and setting appears to be quite accurate and educational, and it has a ton of replay value as there are multiple-choice events, items to find, and the amount of points you get in character creation is based upon the score you have gotten in prior play-throughs.

The only frustrating thing about it is the combat. Since it's completely chance based, aside from your stats altering the odds, you can get quite unlucky, and considering how statistics work, about half of the time you will. This can lead to situations where you will miss multiple ninety-percent chances in a row, which of course feels quite terrible. Thankfully, such unfortunate situations are fairly uncommon, and the rest of the game more than makes up for it.

It's wholly worth it at full price, and especially so if you get it at a discount like me. I'll definitely be looking for more games like this one!

Your turn: Miss, Miss, fail, miss, fail, success fail, fail fail fail fail....
Enemy: hit hit hit hit fail fail hit hit fucking hit gegner killt dich.

Kampfsystem ist intransparent as fuck. Ich war noch nie so froh schnell gestorben zu sein wie hier, endlich vorbei

A tremendous choose-your-own-adventure book with a nail-biting turn-based combat system built on top to give it some zest.

Worth the price of admission. I almost beat it my first run, but then it turned into that rogue-like-like thing where i get owned in fight 2 like 10 times.

Pretty awsome game if you ask me! Can't wait for Never Second in Rome to come out!!!

The amount of times I missed a 70% chance is disgustingly unfair and unfun.
Even missing 3 recovers at 60% in a row, just to lose all of my stance and miss 3 again is not just bad luck but bad game design.

as someone who has had multiple play throughs in this game and got all achievements i must say this is a masterpiece of a written text style game i really enjoy it and i have memorized all the correct dialog options to get the most awards/score this game for its genre is a 10/10 i highly recommend to anyone whom is a fan of roman history to give it a try tho it is heavily rng if you need to cheat engine can help to make the rng a little bit easier if that is your style

I understand it now

There is no other game made me feel this intense over failure and success alike. It is quite simple and addictive.

Attack Torso (%80 chance) - MISS
Recover - Failed
Attack Torso (%65 chance) - MISS
Recover - Failed
Urge to bite the screen so my character Dumbus may land a hit - Resisted

Fantastic CYOA with a grounded feel to it. Combat system is clunky to get into but once you do there's some really fun fights. Would highly recommend

Pretty good game for the price

Great game for those who can read and have a good imagination. Even better for those who've studied classical antiquity.

Good

Nice text roguelike. One... more...game...

Fun game, but your rng rolls are very very broken. Missed a 50% recover roll about 9 times in a row.

RNG worse than xcom's
super frustrating
ESPECIALLY when everything is RNG
even the marketplace is RNG ???


i don't understand why stance heals suck so bad, stamina heals are even worse especially with the fact that you can't even heal in this game

enemies are always good. don't even bother helping your troops in mini stories or choosing heroic choices here when you'll be stacked against 2 enemies that are scaled against you, ALONE

if you love rng, love restarting from the beginning to even progress the story, and you got a patience of a saint, then this game is for you. otherwise don't bother.

i don't even post reviews but the headache i got from this game forced me to.

Legit one of my favorite games of all time this thing was a banger

Just wanted to do my due diligence and put this recommendation here. This game truly is a gem. Amazing writing, accurate and historical, and very well-fleshed-out mechanics. I highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Roman Historical games that put you right in the middle of it.