Rome: Total War™ - Collection

Love this game. One of the best strategy games of all time.

very fun

The first of many Total War games to try, Rome initiates the internal Julius Caesar in you. I've played the Greeks too and conquered with them as well. I also love the simple interface.

One of the classic strategy games of all time. Many fond memories of being a teenager playing this having been a Roman Empire nerd most of my life. Lots to manage and learn. Not as polished as later Total War installments but still great playing value especially if you have a personal connection to the history it simulates

great fun game with lots of playable nations

Roman Revolution

Rome: Total War is one of the greatest real-time strategy games ever made and one of the greatest video games ever made, period. It certainly occupies a special place in my heart, being my introduction to the series and kickstarting my lifelong interest in all things historical. The game is a watershed for the series where the gameplay solidified into its modern form and pushed Total War into the mainstream; a prerelease of the game even featured on History Channel’s Decisive Battles and the BBC’s Time Commanders.

Rome’s contribution to the series is to upgrade the campaign map from a board game to a fully rendered 3-dimensional world. Armies, agents, and navies now traverse the landscape in detail with movement points limiting how far they can move per turn. Each “tile” or space on the map corresponds to a specific battle map reflective of the local terrain and army positions when the battle begins. Settlements also occupy their own space on the map and are the hub from which you control provinces – capture the settlement, own the province. They come with new considerations; while public order and taxation remain your primary concerns, population is introduced as a prerequisite for recruitment and upgrading your cities. Like battlefields, settlement maps are reflective of what you construct, and it can be fun to watch your cities grow (you can even explore settlement maps outside of battle!).

The new campaign paradigm places new emphasis on strategic terrain and positioning of armies, opening up a host of new strategies not possible in Shogun or Medieval; you can hold river crossings and mountain passes against hordes of enemies or pull off large-scale pincer attacks with multiple armies. The marriage of campaign and battle maps also rockets the series to new heights of graphical immersion. Launch an amphibious assault against an army or town and you will likely see your navy anchored offshore; hold off the enemy some distance from a city and you will see the walls far away in the distance – Rome is the first Total War to make the game world come to life in the big and small details. It’s also immensely appealing to look at, coupling the rich colour of Medieval with the regional diversity of the classical world, from the dark forests of Germania to the sands of Egypt, while winter blankets the north in freshly fallen snow.

Rome can also claim one of the most diverse faction and unit rosters of the franchise. The Romans are favoured with an exclusive campaign mechanic: three separate factions must compete for territory and favour with the Senate and People of Rome before making a bid to seize total control in a massive civil war. It’s the defining campaign experience but the other factions hardly suffer. All eleven playable factions feature unique start positions and rosters spanning the full spectrum of classical Europe, from the heavy infantry legions of the Romans to the heavy cavalry and horse archers of the Parthians, offering plenty of challenge and replay value.

On the battlefield, these armies look and feel more impressive than ever. No longer mere sprites, your men are now flesh-and-blood (read: polygonal) soldiers. Unlike the stop-and-start jitter of sprite animation, units have weight and momentum behind their movements, while varied and reactive combat animations give battles a lifelike spontaneity. I’ve always appreciated the fidelity of Rome’s battles but playing it in turn after Shogun and Medieval drives home the sense of mass and scale behind the armies in the game and it translates into some of the most satisfying combat in the series, benefiting from a modern control scheme (selection and orders on separate buttons!) and egged on by meaty sound design and Jeff van Dyck’s finest work yet – one of the greatest soundtracks of all time.

Even a classic has its foibles. Diplomatic options are expanded but rarely come into play with a stubborn and often illogical AI who is quite happy to broker and break peace in the same turn. Unit pathfinding can leave me scratching my head, especially in the maze of city streets. Some settlements also appear to have inherent bonuses or penalties to income or population which can be frustrating when a city refuses to stay in the black. Your characters can be used as governors to manage these issues but, as in Medieval, characters are a mixed bag and might be even worse in Rome.

Characters are not as involved as in Medieval – there’s no loyalty or civil wars to worry about and marriages are taken care of in the background – while attributes are streamlined into Command, Management, and Influence. But it’s their traits that again prove the greatest frustration. No longer based solely on chance, characters accrue points based on their circumstances to eventually generate traits, and many of these are tied to being garrisoned in or governing settlements and the presence, absence, or level of buildings there. Characters are therefore guaranteed to develop negative traits in the early game or anywhere there are low level cities. It is possible to counteract or “cure” some traits, but the result is a system which effectively punishes you for using characters as governors, and it's a stain on an otherwise fantastic experience.

Rome: Total War remains a defining game of the series and a classic of the RTS genre. It’s the first Total War to feature the turn-based campaign and real-time battles in their modern forms and an outstanding amount of variety and replay value you would expect from the setting, even as it suffers from some frustrating mechanics and some unpredictable performance on modern systems. It may not be the most challenging game in the series, but it will always serve as fitting entry point into Total War.

Just great fun with plenty of options for replay.

Old but gold! Especially with the Alexander expansion, this game was fantastic

Great Game Best one ever from ca

its a good enough game for its time.

goodie but an oldie. dated graphics but still so satisfying. nothing beats taking over the world in this staple.

Great game, truly timeless. been playing this since it originally came out all those years ago

You are in command> As you conquer, the game promotes you

It might be a old game but I personally think it’s still hella fun to play from time to time!

Great game, lots of fun history and war into one.....

Army guys are really cool, especially romans

very fun game, also has manual controls that give you command of each legion.

Rome Total War was my first exposure to the Total War franchise. The Total War franchise surprised me with complexity and depth that demanded more from me as a player. Since I started playing Total War over a decade ago, Rome Total War has been a satisfactory challenge that rewards deep strategic thinking. The bigger pay offs hit when an Imperial Campaign turns into success. I have not played the Remaster so I can't speak on it. This one still entertains and I can lose track of time from playing it.

This is an absolutely fantastic game! The graphics may scare away some, but the gameplay is unmatched. Unlike others here, I started playing this game for the first time within the last year, being my first foray into the Total War series.

I do have some issues with the game, but I forgive these easily due to its age. My primary issues are with population management. While I do enjoy the grand strategy side of controlling your populace, cities can quickly grow out of hand and start rebelling. In order to overcome this, you must limit upgrades that may add too much to population growth. Even still, it is inevitable that cities far from your capital will expand beyond your control and rebel. These cities can be easily recaptured, but it is a pain when the real fun comes from pushing into enemy land.

What this game does excel at is spectacle. Battles feel epic, despite the age of the game, and the commander speeches before these battles just adds to this feeling. Moreover, there are so many unit types that you must learn new tactics in order to deal with them as you progress across the map and from civilization to civilization. Rome Total War captures RTS mechanics in a way such that feels right. Battles are nicely paced between calm, slow approach periods and frantic clashes and skirmishes where your strategy must change on the fly. Pause, play, and fast forward buttons are a welcome design inclusion to speed up slow segments and slow down chaotic mosh-pits.

The grand strategy side of the game may not be the most in depth, but it blends well with the RTS side so that the whole experience feels cohesive. Without the grand strategy side, Rome Total War would surely be a lesser game.

All in all, a fantastic game. Veni, Vidi, Vici friends.

Does Not Work. No Matter What A Demon Says.

a bit dated and with some bugs but still an awesome game.

i still can play this game, been playing it off and on for 18 years since i was 11 :) peace out, rock on. AND TRY THIS BLOODY GAME!!! :))))))))))))))

If you like strat games and WH you'll love this game tbh.

Still like when I played on a disk as a kid, except it lags a lot, the loading screen/main menu is blurry, and skirmish mode is unresponsive for a couple seconds. 7/10. Still classic and classy.

perfect strategy game in my opinion

Best game I played in my life. Defenetly made by perfectionists, no clear disadvantages, maybe graphics or AI, but it is game of 2004.

If you can some how get your hands on a copy of this game I honestly prefer it to the remaster. Whilst the game is harder to mod you get the more raw and uncensored version of the game yes it has its issues but honestly a lot of them carry over to the remaster anyways the original will always have its place!

Brings back childhood memories and I love the simplicity of this game compared to Rome total War 2

I like that you can work at the hi level (strategic) but also go down to the tactical level for battles (where you can manipulate individual units and see the battle effects graphically).

Got it on sale years ago for 3$ i still love playing it occasionally regardless of its age.

antikalığından dolayı tekrar giremedim ama zamanının efsanesi, internet kafelerin gülüne bir selam da çakmak istedim

There's a reason this game is a classic. When it was released, the measure of a PC was whether you could play RTW on highest resolution. Now you can literally play it on a mobile phone. There are still tens of thousands of folks playing this game regularly. One of the most awe-inspiring grand strategy games ever produced.

Is it balanced? No. Is it historical? Kinda. But it's great and it is the standard to beat even today. Enjoy.

Enjoyable...second total war game i ever played. It brings back childhood memories.

Best Total War Game ever!!!
I enjoy every moment when I play this game.

for the glory of rome

Any true Roman would already be playing the game instead of reading these reviews. So how's it feel to be a filthy barbarian?

My first introduction to Total War was during a history lesson in school, where my history teacher had taped on VHS an episode of Time Commanders for us to watch when we were learning about the Romans. Ancient Rome was a period and a place I loved learning about, so discovering there was a game about it was great, and much pestering to my Mother later I secured a copy of it.

In many respects I am glad I don't have a tracker to see how much time I spent playing off that cd-rom, it's probably hundreds if not thousands of hours, I played the game to death during at least one summer holiday period on my parents laptop, and don't even want to think how many Scipii playthroughs I did simply because my favourite colour is blue, but this game will always hold a special place in my heart, and certainly a game I look back to that helped further my interest in all things Rome, an interest I still hold now as an adult.

Fortis cadere, cedere non potest.

they screwed this up so bad it almost hurts. they are the most incompetent bunch of fuck up on the planet. literally broken pathfinding and scripted ai that wont attack until one of your units are wiped out.
they broke this game so bad is it was already made about as bad as you possibly could. Its almost impossible to imagine how you could screw up a relaunch of a 20 year old product and break it EVEN FURTHER. but CA found a way.
CA devs should all find new work in something they would have better luck at. like flipping burgers or spewing out re-skinned units as "dlc's" to the lemmings.....
cough warhammer 3 cough

kept crashing!!! very disappionted

The OG Total war experience with the best grand campaign mechanics from economy to population growth to city building to army recruitment. There is no similar xp

Game is about action and conquest with minimum attention paid to politics and intrique.

Clearing out the backlog
I bought this game almost a decade ago and I remember at that time I was buying just about anything that was cheap and had a high steam rating and frankly of the few total war games I've tried I have not deemed any good enough to put even a full hour into them, frankly I just don't like them, they are not my type of game

My favorite game. Playing it for 20 years.

Not overly required for micromanagment.

mos goated game of all time especiallyn with mods

This game is fantastic and i love it. Its partly nostalgia, it is the first Total War i spent serious time with (hundreds of hours more before Steam), but even if i try to look past that i do think it might be the best entry in the series. The campaign map play is interesting but not overwhelming, the "game feel" of battles is great, the unit variety is great. I have much more fun with this than Rome 2, still after all its improvements.

Pahfinding in siege battles is TERRIBLE though.

I've been playing Rome: Total War for almost 20 years. It's my go to easy to play game that provide value when I play it. Its complex enough to be fun and engaging but not too much so that it gives you a headache. The engine this game was designed with is still my favourite, despite the poor graphics compared with the modern Total Wars, its still the best looking and most fluid.

Despite it's age and quirks, this is still arguably one of the best historical Total War games alongside M2TW.

other reviewers are right, i got this game from buying rome total war REMASTERED and this one is BUGGY ASH, every minute or so crashes or requires a shutdown of a system. it came for freee with a game so i dont mind that much of it

game no longer launches on newer versions of windows

video screen just flickers. unplayable