![]() Faces don't look nearly as flat and dead, though the overall quality level is still below Rome 2 or Shogun 2. Weapons and armor, especially, look much shinier and more realistic. Though it wasn't made available for this review, Total War: Rome Remastered offers a free, Enhanced Graphics Pack that includes greatly enhanced textures – and it does go a long way toward bringing the look of the units up to a level of quality more like what you'd expect in a modern Total War game. The whole soundtrack is energetic, distinct, and evocative. Barbarian Victory is still one of my favorite tracks from any strategy game. Oh, and the music? It still totally slaps. You can also play as any faction right from the jump, whereas the original required you to beat each one while playing as Rome to unlock them – unless you want to do it the old-fashioned way. This made the trade-off for lower resolution fighty guys seem more acceptable, as I was able to orchestrate some truly titanic, ancient clashes. For one, there's a new "experimental" unit size that allows for even larger battles, in terms of the total number of troops, than even modern Total War games have without mods. There are a couple places where Rome: Remastered has added totally new features, and they're kinda neat. And it seems like Feral Interactive has gone out of their way to keep the look and feel of a 2004 UI when I would have rather they shined and polished it up a bit more. Getting more detail on how a specific building or unit ability works might be a pain or just impossible. But Rome: Remastered still doesn't offer up information as easily as its descendants. That's usually the part of older strategy games that drives me up a wall the fastest, since modern games have gotten so much better at it. The UI is definitely much improved, especially in terms of readability.The UI is definitely much improved, especially in terms of readability. A less obtuse public order system or a way to see at a glance how many men a unit needs to be back to full strength would have been nice. But it's missing so many years of iteration and refinement of the formula that I wondered if it wouldn't have been worth including some more substantial, gameplay-related quality of life changes. In some ways, Total War actually works better with this reduced scope. The fact that the map is smaller and there are fewer factions isn't necessarily the issue. The included Barbarian Invasion expansion was incredible in its day, but within the first handful of turns revisiting it, I was struck by the fact that it's basically a more primitive version of the excellent Total War: Attila, and I'd really rather be playing that. It felt like going back in time as an adult to beat up on my middle school bully. ![]() The enemy tends to play very passive and can easily be lured into Cannae-like traps over and over again. ![]() It's relatively easy to beat entire armies just by microing your cavalry well, for example. If you're coming from Total War: Three Kingdoms or Total War: Warhammer 2, the various Gauls, Greeks, and Carthaginians you'll match wits against here won't feel like much of a match at all. Strategy games in general, and Total War specifically, have evolved so much in the last 18 years that going back to the original Rome can be deflating. In most other ways, it's simply fallen too far behind the times.But in most other ways, it's simply fallen too far behind the times. ![]() It adds just a bit of extra immersion and sense of place if you can't ring Mithridates up on the phone to offer a trade deal. There are even a couple things in here I think the original Rome did better than the games that came after it, like having to physically send a diplomat across the map to treat with other factions. Dividing Rome itself up into three factions that are set off in three different directions to conquer, before ultimately meeting each other in a bloody civil war at the end, was a fantastically effective way to keep the late game challenging and interesting with fairly simple, transparent mechanics. Rome: Total War was ahead of its time in so many ways when it came out, and all of those great ideas are still here. And that's kind of a running theme with this remaster: they made an old game feel less old, but they certainly didn't make it feel new again.
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