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Embodiment the decay of the video game industry.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 37
Date: April 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Rome: Total War is the perfect example of the decay of the video game industry. Don't get me wrong, I'm no liberal violence fearing Lieberman slave, I've been an avid gamer my entire life. And I have played the Total War series with a passion since the first game, Shogun: Total War. This background information will provide some credibility to this review, as it's not just going to be another pissed off customer giving 1 star for no apparent reason other than the fact that they never took the time to play through the tutorial and learn how to play.

Rome: Total War is a great game for the first day or two that you play it. Huge armies to command, lots of cities to manage, and lots of opponents to conquer. You'll encounter a couple bugs in the first few days, but you'll shrug them off and continue.

Then after the new purchase happiness wears off, you'll be overwhelmed with perhaps the buggiest game ever released on the market - well, aside from Soldner of course. When you tell a group of soldiers to go attack an enemy formation and your soliders just sit there and do nothing, click after click, the frustration sets in. When you tell a battering ram to go bash the gate in and it just sits there doing nothing, then you start to lose patience. When sieging cities, AI pathfinding is atrocious. They will usually take the least direct route to your desired location. Often times the AI cannot process a route to where you told them to go and so your units will sit around, and do nothing. Sieging cities is neither fun or epic-feeling, as your soldiers act like fools. It is not unlikely to be commanding troops on top of walls and tell them to move down to the streets below, and instead of locating the nearest staircase they will run off the walls and fall to their deaths. When fighting battles along rivers with a bridge in the middle, it is very common to see you tell a unit of cavalry to cross the bridge to the other side, and instead they simply ride straight for the river, miss the bridge, and gallop into the river and drown. What's the point of playing?

Managing cities becomes impossible later in the game. There's a concept in the game called "squalor". Lots of factors, such as location, distance from capital, resources, garrison size, and crime all contribute to a percentage which tells the player how likely a city is to rebel. The problem with managing 45 cities is that squalor becomes impossible to deal with. The game massively over exaggerates rebelliousness so that later in the game, having half your cities rebelling every turn for no sensible reason without any solution is not an unlikely situation. Many players choose to actually cheat or download modifications to the games' files, because this is the only way to have an enjoyable game experience.

Even patches don't fix the game. They just introduce even larger bugs into the game.

[...]

A huge patch was released recently, but players of the game know how many new errors it introduced. Horse mounted archers, critical units in the game, could no longer fire on the move - one of the integral tactics of many factions within the game. A fun new saved game bug was introduced, where all AI was reset when you loaded a game. So basically, whenever you loaded a game, you'd be dealing with brainless AI that ususally just sits around and lets you roll over it.

[...]

The only saving grace of this game is its music score. Though the poor AI takes the epic feel away from the game, the music sure lends some atmosphere. The musical score in Rome: Total War is brilliant. I recommend buying the game's soundtrack instead of the game itself.

In summation, this game is not worth buying. The developers took minimal repsonsibility for their errors and blamed many of the bugs on players, insisting they were playing the game incorrectly.

[...]

My solemn recommendation is as follows: do not buy this game. Save your money for something useful.

The Real Deal

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 44
Date: April 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

There are literally hundreds of errors in this game. Many of the true fans such as me have fixed many, many of them and yet others we can't unless we break the law (Which I will do soon if it comes to it just to prove the excuse about the "cost" being too much is also a lie).

Additionally the official website support is a world class failure of the first order. [...]

The title was unfinished when it was put on the shelves in time for the Xmas rush last year - plain and simple.

[...]

A short list of community verified issues and bugs:

A. BATTLEMAP

(1) Tactical AI:
* Suicidal generals: persistent reports of generals charging entire enemy armies without support.
* Tactical AI still fails to take adequate measures in avoiding missile fire.
* AI-controlled infantry sometimes maneuver like cavalry units when engaged; repeatedly charging/disengaging and running in circular paths through loose formations. If a feature, implemented poorly with units that have poor charge attributes.
* AI-controlled units guarding the town centre sometimes fail to turn and face approaching enemy units.
* AI siege attackers: AI-controlled reinforcements continue to pursue enemy units that have retreated behind city walls; AI siege armies do not always retreat after their siege equipment is lost.
* AI-controlled units sometimes remain idle while being issued repeated movement orders; "move" or "move out" orders can be heard in an almost continuous loop. Occurs most commonly with AI formations preparing to attack over bridges.

(2) Unit movement/path-finding:
* Generally poor unit navigation in cities and around bridges: individual soldiers often break formation and become lost in streets/alleyways; soldiers still run into the water and drown during bridge maneuvers; bugged path-finding around Egyptian arches.
* Scenery interaction: units often become stuck in narrow passages, between rocks/trees, in siege towers, and amongst massed formations; rare reports of soldiers walking through walls and closed gates; soldiers in siege towers and on ladders occasionally fall through solid wood.
* "Ford" river crossings are sometimes impassable.

(3) Unit functionality:
* Horse-archers: reports from some players that bow-armed cavalry fail to fire on the run when skirmish mode is engaged. Possibly related to bugged animation cycles; units go through the motions of firing arrows but arrows are not (or rarely) released. Cantabrian circle still functions fully. Javelin-armed cavalry are unaffected.
* Various problems associated with the use of multiple selected (ungrouped) units: aberrant maneuvers provoked on move command to several selected units; ignoring attack orders; incorrect processing of attack orders given to multiple unit selections comprising a mix of ammo-depleted and range-capable missile units (all engage in melee, despite the cursor highlight suggesting that ranged attack is available for some units).
* Various problems associated with the use of grouped units: unselected units comply with commands issued to other units in the same group; grouped cavalry does not run at the speed of the slowest unit, but at that of the quickest (eg. grouped cataphractoi and horse-archers will run at horse-archer speed).
* Phalanx mode: soldiers sometimes do not hold formation adequately in phalanx formation, when ordered to attack, soldiers shuffle around and break formation; phalanxes have trouble attacking uphill, even on gentle inclines.
* Canine unit (wardog/warhound) "formations" cannot be selected or attacked, even when their handlers are defeated or routed off the battlefield.
* Javelin infantry may become stuck and refuse further orders when ordered to launch missiles or change formation.
* Hiding in long grass is possible on snowy maps and in places where no long grass is visible.
* Bridge routs: occasional recurrences besides documented changes in v1.2.
* AI-controlled reinforcements are sometimes inappropriately flagged "not yet arrived on battlefield" and cannot be selected/attacked.
* Disappearing ladders: on rare occasions, siege ladders do not appear on the battle map if constructed in preparation for a siege assault.
* Fighting on city walls: soldiers deployed on walls sometimes shuffle around and fall to their death on pressing "start battle"; units deployed on walls "fight to the death" even if their adversary is on the ground below; units "fighting to the death" sometimes do not fight back when engaged in melee.

(4) Interface/graphics:
* Minimal UI: cut-scenes reset map and card visibility settings if they were originally toggled off; upper edge of screen blocked from cursor interaction when buttons are toggled off; message tiles often obscure the left-most unit card when toggling cards off and on with active messages; sluggish/unreliable response to time control hotkeys when MUI is active.
* Coastal tiles: frequent reports of large grey angular coastline tiles in the distance when fighting in coastal regions, relating to the presence of coastal structures such as ports/cities.
* Victory screen: rare reports of victory screen failing to appear after all enemy units are defeated/routed.

B. CAMPAIGN MAP

(1) Strategic AI:
* Unit construction: occasional reports of AI favoring mass construction of low quality troops early on in campaign games.
* Naval units: rare reports of the AI conducting single-turn blockades frequently and indiscriminately.
* AI incongruity on reload: reports that reloading a saved game "resets" AI priorities/flags provoking inconsistencies in diplomatic behavior and strategic planning.

(2) Diplomacy:
* Illogical AI behavior: requesting ceasefire with considerable concessions, only to attack next turn; refusing "unfair" diplomatic offers only to accept less advantageous agreements immediately afterwards.
* Labile diplomacy: occasional reports of AI factions frequently signing and breaking treaties.
* Protectorates: multiple problems related to protectorate system and status of ex-protectorates.

(3) Characters:
* Generals get checked twice for trait awards in manual battles.
* "Scarred" trait: over rapid trait progression with repeated battles (GeneralHPLostRatioinBattle works in one way for manual battles, and differently for autocalc; manual battles without engagement always trigger battle1/battle1r).
* Senate offices: ex-office trait is not registered following reappointment to a previously held office ((office)again triggers giving twice as needed).
* Coward trait: is not given if the general avoids combat in battle (GeneralFoughtinCombat always returns true, causing trigger battle4 to never go off; trigger needs revision as if it worked properly the coward trait could by gained simply if the enemy retreats).
* Rare reports of spies acquiring traits specific to generals.
* Isolated reports of family members who die in battle described to have "died peacefully" if they weren't generals during the final battle.
* Transferred retainers are sometimes not immediately deleted from the retinue of the donating character (corrected by closing and reopening the character description).
* Character portraits: continue to age after death; portrait images can sometimes be replaced by inappropriate/non-portrait pictures.
* Disappearing characters: issuing a move/attack command to selected units within a stack, then stopping them prior to reaching their intended destination (by pressing backspace) makes the general in the original stack disappear; losing the commanding general out of two (or more?) family members in a battle may lead to disappearance of the surviving character(s). In either situation the description for the disappeared character states "died peacefully".

(4) Economics:
* Paved roads sometimes do not provide the correct land trade bonuses.
* Colossus wonder does not provide the correct naval trade bonus that its description states
* Financial reports continue to calculate diplomatic tribute from ex-protectorates or when active protectorates are bankrupt and cannot provide the required diplomatic tribute (in either case no actual tribute is received for the turn).

(5) Land/naval warfare:
* Multiple-army sieges: only the attacking stack is represented in battlemap/autocalc during attacks on a settlement besieged by several stacks.
* Naval warfare: battle outcome summaries do not correctly register the number of ships sunk in a naval engagement.
* Elephants killed in battle by their riders are resurrected on returning to the campaign map.
* A distorted coast-line battle map is loaded when fighting on the road east of the port of Sidon (the depressed terrain one grid south of the small hill).
* Naval/land units sometimes become stuck at certain points in the map and cannot be selected (eg. fleets at the port of Corinth).
* Lost siege supplies: if an attempt is made to relieve a besieged AI army prior to its supply time limit, it is sometimes incorrectly flagged to be at the extent of its supply and will "fight to the death" as reinforcements in the subsequent battle. This also means that the siege succeeds automatically if the relieving army is defeated before the reinforcements arrive.
* Diplomats/spies/assassins are capable of blockading retreating armies.
* Gates of Syracuse: isolated reports of permanent damage refractory to repairs/upgrades if opened by a spy during a siege.
* If a rival faction enters a protectorate agreement under the player, any player-led sieges of that faction's settlements will be deactivated but the besieging armies will be unable to leave.
* Rare reports of entire stacks teleporting to distant parts of the map when disembarking from a fleet.

(6) Unit statistics/properties:
* Praetorian Cohorts are available prior to Marius reforms.
* Pharaoh's Guard flagged as carrying shields contrary to unit models.
* Egyptian Desert Axemen have high armour attributes contrary to unit models.
* Lon

Those with anything other to do than play a game: AVOID

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 32
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Unless you can play this game for 6 hours at a time, don't waste your money. If you can, it *can* be a great game. If you need to do things like work or eat or such, then this will be an unfortunate waste of money.

Now, I would normally keep my opinions to myself, but seeing the tremendous disrespect that Creative Assembly, the game's developers, have shown to their customers, I have decided not to be silent.

The problem that plagues this game has been mentioned, so I'll just refer to it as the Loadgame bug. Now, if they were unable to fix the bug due to financial difficulties or low sales, I would still be unhappy, but understanding. As it has sold very well, their refusal to even read what the bug actually is, much less test it (and of course forget about them fixing it) has no legitimate excuse, insofar as I am aware.

Now add to that what is now an instant shutdown on any mention of such a bug on their forums. Add to that posts from the developers themselves to the effect you don't know what the AI is doing, so you are incompetent to judge if it is or is not a bug. Add to that moderators who tell you that if you encounter the bug it is YOUR fault for being so presumptuous as to actually *load* a game.

There is no chance of this problem being fixed.
None.

So unless you can play for at least 6 hours straight, don't bother with this game.

The game is quite unfinished.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 26
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game had such potential. Even now, if the developers wanted to, it could surpass by leaps and bounds every other game on the market now and probably in the next three years. However, the developers rushed it out of the door. Now, this is a normal practice these days. However, unlike many developers, Creative Assembly gave the game minimal patch support.

The game currently has several huge flaws, one of which actually makes the game unplayable. When addressed on this issue by the community, the developers replied that the bug did not exist. They did not answer questions asking them whether they had performed the simple test that displays the bug. In fact, all threads at the official forum pertaining to the bug were locked, a very telling tale.

Almost worse than the bugs is the deliberate historical inaccuracies and downright unrealism. Even were all the bugs fixed, I could not recommend this game to a serious gamer. While it's fun, except for when you encounter the bugs, it's a joke in the realism and history departments.

So if you are looking for a working game, a game realistically depicting Roman-era warfare, or both, then this game is not for you. If, however, you would like a buggy, half-finished, and unrealistic game made by developers who have almost no communication with the customers and even less scruples, then I recommend buying the game.

Rome needs work

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 26
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had purchased all of the previous games in the Total War series and had high expectations for RTW. While the game is certainly visually stunning, it contains numerous bugs that the developers and others refuse to acknowledge. There is the save game bug mentioned in other several reviews, and there are also several bugs in the battle mode of the game. One of these frustrating bugs occurs when you select multiple units and direct them to attack a certain unit. Often, the selected units will attack the closet nearby enemy unit rather than the one they were directed to attack. Another bug in the battle part of the game is that when you direct a group of selected units to break out of their special formation, not all of them will. There are also bugs in the muli-player part of the game. The game state will often diverge on different player's machines, and they will fight in completely different battles. After having "murdered" an opponent in a MP game, they will often boast that you were the one who lost. And your replay of that MP game will sometimes show the opponent's version of the battle, the one that in which they won. These issues with the game are the reason I feel compelled to give it such a low score. Visuals do not make a game in my view, game play is what does. And RTW fails to live up to the standards of expectional RTS gameplay set by the previous games in the series. This game has a lot of potential, but I'm afraid that it may never be realised. Rome wasn't built in a day, and RTW is analagous to the eternal city after the first day of its existence. It's not yet finished.

immense potential... squandered

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 25
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a painful review to write. I really love this game. I really do. But it's like loving an abusive spouse. The way the company chooses to support its product and the way they have gone about public/consumer relations is deplorable. [...]

[...]

It is a shame because I loved Shogun:Total War, and I really had faith in the developers. No longer. If they cannot even admit that the save/load function is severely flawed, let alone dedicate the resources to fix it, what response do you think they should expect from their end-users? The saddest part of all this is that there are obviously very good people in the company, and you can see they poured their heart into what easily could have been one of the best strategy games ever made, only to have that vision squashed by whatever corporate maneuvering has occured to bring us all to this low point.

Potentially amazing game ruined by uncaring developers.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 25
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game could have been a great, but it was rushed [...]

There are many bugs. First, horse archers (a numerous unit during the ancient times) should be able to fire while on the move. They used to be able to, but the recent (and "last) patch broke that ability so the entire speciality of the horse archer is ruined by the bug. The even worse bug, that everyone has heard about, completely stupifies the AI, making it pointless to play since there will be no opposition forever. If you save or load ONCE, the ai collapses, breaking off any city under siege, deleting any offensive goals, and having their diplomatic system stop. If you can play this game in 12 hour instances without saving or loading ONCE, this bug won't really affect you. But who can do that? Creative Assembly has stated that this bug does not exist, despite thousands of fans confirming it over tens of thousands of hours. They have no intention of fixing their game.

This game isn't worth the money, especially since it will be rewarding game developing practices like this.

Could have been great

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 24
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game had the potential to be one of the best strategy games of all time. Unfortunately the gameplay is ruined by several glaring and massive bugs that disrupt the single player game and ruin the multiplayer. Perhaps another patch would fix it but at this point it seems unlikely that the game will recieve any more help.

Great game in concept - but oh, the implementation

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 32
Date: April 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off, I have to give kudos to the CA for what they tried to do - to build a gorgeous, extendable game that would model Roman Empire in it's full glory. Unfortunately, the bugs which they have not corrected (stumbling AI, strange pathing behavior, incorrect unit values) make the whole experience very frustrating. With much regret, I had to put this game aside.

Would be great if...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 25
Date: April 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game could very well be the pinnacle of turn based/real time strategy hybrid. Unfortunately, its crippled with a debilitating bug that makes it unplayable if you can only play 1 or 2 turns at a time. Everytime a game is loaded, the AI lifts every siege on the map. An average siege is at least 2 turns, thus if you load the game once every 2 turns no cities will ever change hands by the AI. This bug not only affects your fights against the AI, but the AI v AI fights as well, meaning no enemy terrirories ever get big enough in the end game to challenge your empire. This bug also causes the AI to become a protectorate of you, if you ask on the turn after you load the game.

So far The Creative Assembly have indicated that the bug is in fact a feature and will therefore not be fixed. Anyone who doesn't want to leave the game on 24 hours a day, or can only play a turn at a time should lament this bug and CA's decision to not fix it, but avoid spending money on it because of it.

[...].

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