Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.  The Roman Empire stood as one of the greatest powers in the world.  For years, no one dared challenge the power of the Roman Empire.  Such a powerful force in the world gave the world a great peace since no one was foolish enough to challenge their superior army.

Such a large empire couldn’t be handled by one man alone.  Governors of cities were needed to handle the daily governing of the individual cities.  They helped set up the layout of the city and tried to make their citizens happy.  They conducted trade in other cities to get resources they lacked.  These tasks were assigned to those most trusted by the government.

In Glory of the Roman Empire, you are one of these governors assigned the task of running the cities.  Starting out small, your city grows in popularity, and your stature grows as well.  Your task is to find the right balance for your city, gathering resources, providing for your citizens, and building structures.

GotRE has some impressive graphics.  The game is fully 3D, so you can zoom in and out, as well as rotate the map.  From far away, you can get a general idea of what your city looks like.  Zooming in gives you a close-up look at how your citizens and slaves are moving about the city conducting their daily lives.  The citizens and slaves walk around running their errands and working at their job.  The textures have a nice amount of detail when zooming in, helping to make the city come alive.

When you start a new level, you see a picture of the city while getting a brief overview of your objective.  When the overview has completed, the picture fades and you see the actual placement of the buildings in your city.  This is a nice touch for your transitions.

A lot of the buildings look similar to each other, even though they have different functions.  This is frustrating, especially when you enter a new city and you aren’t sure which resources are being produced and where the buildings are located.  Also, I had issues with triangular portions of the screen going gray, completely blocking the level.

The music of GotRE sounds like something you’d expect to hear from that time period.  The strings and flute give a slow yet melodic theme, while the bass and drums provide the foundation for the music.  It almost has a calm, soothing, Zen-like quality to it.

There is a bit of voice acting in the game, mostly during the mission overviews.  The voice does have an authoritative tone to him, but it still sounds subservient, like an advisor should.  However, clicking on a worker doesn’t result in any feedback from them, not even a grunt.  While you can’t control them, even getting something like, “There isn’t enough wheat,” or “I could really go for some sausages” would go a long way to making the people feel more alive.

The sound effects are rather sparse.  In other RTS games, starting to build a structure would cue a sound, along with wood being sawed or something else appropriate.  GotRE is actually fairly silent as far as sound effects go.  Building structures don’t make a sound, you don’t hear cows moo or cows oink, and you don’t hear the clinking of glasses at the tavern.  When a new baby is born or some alert comes up, you do get a short sound. This helps you learn of the alert, but it isn’t all that useful.

Most of the game can be completely controlled using the mouse.  Moving to the edges of the screen moves the camera, while scrolling the mouse wheel zooms in and out on the map.  Hitting the middle mouse button should allow the screen to rotate as you move the mouse.  However, because hitting my middle mouse button would go to the next program, this method didn’t work.  However, using keyboard commands I was able to rotate the screen, and the keyboard has other shortcuts available for moving around the map.

The left side of the screen has a few buttons on it.  These buttons open up the Main Menu, take pictures, bring up the economy overview, display the settlement overview, show the quest buttons, and toggles the time.  The upper right-hand corner shows the mini-map when nothing is selected, but shows information about the selected object when something is selected.  A notification window shows up in the center of the top of the screen when an important message comes up.

The Build menu is brought up any time you right click on the map.  A circle appears with several circles around it.  Clicking one of the circles causes the middle circle icon to be replaced and new circles for the submenu appear.  Here you can select the structures you want to build.  They are grouped in sections like Public, Basic, Support, Food Production, and Monuments.  The biggest issue with this menu system is that it is sometimes difficult to figure out where the building you want to build is.  However, you eventually get used to it.

GotRE is different in that it is strictly a RTS city-building game like Sim City and City Life.  However, the game follows more in the footsteps of the Caesar games from the now defunct Impressions.  Set during the Pax Romana, you are in charge of a city, creating jobs for citizens, and keeping your people happy.

Each level in the main campaign has a certain number of objectives to complete.  Sometimes it is having a certain number of farms with a certain number of homes, while some are to build a certain number of structures, or another is to prevent buildings from being burnt down.  These are all straightforward and you can bring them up from the quest menu.

The biggest part of the game is managing resources.  The number of resources is absolutely staggering.  Wood, wheat, pigs, clay, olive, iron, gold, and fish are just some of the resources you’ll need to manage.  Not only do you need to collect resources, you need to have buildings to refine those resources and make them into goods that your citizens can use.  If you want to know what your citizens want to make them happy, build a tavern in the city and the bartender will keep his ear open to find out what the people want.  If you can’t provide what the people want through the resources of the city, Trade Posts can be built to establish trade routes with other cities.

While the number of resources seems daunting, the game slowly eases into how to build the structures needed for the different resources.  Also, the game does play slowly.  However, the toggle speed button is helpful in speeding up the game.  At first the game plays slowly enough that you might play with the game at high speed for a while.

Certain buildings have an effect on the city it’s built in.  The Arch of Triumph boosts troop morale and builds up the city’s prestige.  The Temple of Fortuna enriches the city.  The Fountain of Neptune provides the entire city with water.  These and other monuments are available to be built, but certain stringent conditions must be met before they can be built.

Several issues hamper the game though.  When laying down buildings, you can place the buildings in any direction that you want.  You are able to also build structures without any consequences with what you have built next to it.  If you build a tavern next to a pig farm, the citizens don’t complain about the stench while having a few brews.  As long as you have enough of what the citizens want, they’ll be happy.

Gamers who are used to this kind of game should have a pretty simple time with GotRE.  A lot of the game can be played with the speed toggled in high gear.  Resource management is the only concern, as there isn’t any kind of economy to worry about in the game.  Since there isn’t much of a challenge, gamers will get through the game fairly quickly.

GotRE is a short game, and a lack of addition modes besides the Campaign Mode drags the replay value of the game.  There is a Challenge Mode where you are given four missions at random with specific restrictions.  If you complete them successfully, you are given a score that determines how good of a governor you are.  This scare is then uploaded to the company’s servers so that you can compare your score to others on the Internet.

A Free Mode is available as well, where you can build your own city without having to worry about the usual building constraints.  Those who enjoy the sandbox mode of games like Sim City will appreciate this mode.

Still, once you have played through the Campaign Mode, there isn’t much reason to go back to the game.

Glory of the Roman Empire has a lot going for it.  In fact, it is a good game to introduce non-gamers to the real-time strategy genre.  Yet, those who have experience with real-time strategy building games should be able to get through GotRE fairly quickly.  If you are looking for something that you can play leisurely, then you might want to take a look at it.  If you want something with a bit more depth, you would be better off looking elsewhere.

Gaming Trend Score

66

1. Graphics: 72
2. Audio: 67
3. Controls: 78
4. Gameplay: 60
5. Value/Replay: 60
6. OVERALL:66