There is no real story in Glory of the Roman Empire. You’ve got a Campaign mode, Challenge mode and a Free Builder mode. In the campaign, you’re thrust into the sandals of a Roman governor and tasked with governing numerous cities throughout the growing Empire. Challenge mode gives you numerous objectives that you need to complete, with success or failure determining a score, which you can rechallenge and/or post on an online leader board. Meanwhile, free builder mode opens up a little sandbox for you that allows you to build a city without any particular objectives. There's no multiplayer, and there are no other modes, but the campaign is quite beefy.
Behold, the marvel of the ancient world.
The draw with Glory of the Roman Empire is that it's meant to be accessible to everyone. As it stands, pretty much anyone who can operate a keyboard and mouse and has an adequate grip of the English language should be able to play this game without too many difficulties. In the first campaign, your hand is held throughout a run down of the basic actions that are available to you, including the art of picking up and putting down buildings, and the basics of you making sure things are running smoothly. The campaign starts in one city and has you building it up and, after a few campaigns and more learning of “difficult” actions, your skills as a governor are recognised and you’re sent off to help fix up other townships. Eventually, you’re left to zip around the Roman Empire to any city that claims a need for your expertise.
The campaign is objective based, so at the beginning of each mission, your objectives are spelt out to you and you’re pretty much left to deal with them as you see fit. The objectives are hardly endearing, as they primarily revolve around building structures or “satisfying” the needs of your citizens. Often the completion of an objective will be based on you setting up the right infrastructure and simply waiting for the game to complete it. The design of the game is incredibly simple and streamlined, so much so that it makes the game very accessible. Unfortunately, it’s also so simple and streamlined that it takes away some of the appeal that city building is meant to have.
To the credit of the game, it’s driven by a simple and intuitive interface. On the left hand side of the screen you have access to important particulars, such as details on your economy and on your objectives. On the right you've got a mini-map of the region, and across the top is where you're given notification of important occurrences or periodical tips. Every time you click on a building or person, their information is summarised in a column on the right side of the screen. Within this information set, you can perform actions, such as stop or continue work, but for the most part it’s good for cycling through people and buildings to find out what needs to be done. The controls are primarily delegated to mouse, but there are a few movement and hotkey commands that can be issued through the keyboard. You can access simple and bountiful information on most aspects of the game at the click of a mouse button.
Lively neighbourhood.
Building is a very simple task as well. Clicking the right mouse button will bring up a circular menu that has all the different types of building options. Clicking on the desired building type will open another circular menu that has the buildings. For example, under one menu you’ll have houses, under another you’ll have production buildings such as farms, and public buildings such as taverns. There isn’t much tactical placement required other than a small consideration of neighbourhoods or production placements. Virtually every building has a circle that emanates from it and that circle represents the neighbourhood that it covers. If a house is built in a neighbourhood that isn’t reached by a commodity such as bread or meat, the people who live in that house are more likely to complain that they don’t have that commodity. Other considerations include the placement of production buildings - for example, stone quarries ought to be placed near stone mines, with citizens more likely to work at sites that are closest to their homes.
Glory of the Roman Empire eliminates a lot of the micromanagement that would otherwise take place in other games in this genre. On the one hand, managing people’s needs is as simple as observing what the person/people want, e.g. bread, than heading over to the required production building (bakery) and making sure that there is enough bread there. Then it’s either a matter of restocking supplies, gaining/adding workers, or just waiting for them to satisfy themselves. On the other hand, the amount of automation and simplicity leads to a game that is very easy and at times, incredibly dull. At the end of the day, this simplistic, casual approach backfires. Too often a player is left to just sit around and wait for things to happen.
There are other problems that stem from this. The easy and friendliness of the game make it a quite charming introduction for anyone who has never played a game of this type before. However, for anyone who considers themselves remotely experienced with anything from SimCity to Caesar, there's very little reason for you to play this. Then there are the issues of automation. The game does a very good job of keeping things going, but there are a few too many occasions where you’ve completed a task but the AI has yet to recognise it - you barely have to pay attention or learn about too much of the intricacies such as the game's "economy". Probably the biggest downer with the game is that, despite the name, there is little to no glory to be had from playing through the game. It doesn’t aim high enough and there is a distinct lack of endearing occurrences. There are a few good moments - primarily when you're exercising your divine governing rights - but for the most part, it’s casual sailing. Despite the Roman setting, there isn’t quite enough actual “Rome” in the game. It pales when compared to the historic value and depth from a multitude of preceding titles.
Anyone got popcorn?
Graphically, Glory of the Roman Empire manages to maintain a unique and non-demanding style. The settings are fairly similar to one another, but the landscapes have some nice details, such as flowing water and waving trees. Some areas can be distinguished by landmarks, namely Pompei, but for the most part, a city will look how you make it. In terms of actual Roman design, it looks authentic but we feel that it could’ve been taken further. Despite being technically sound, the visuals suffer from a distinct lack of variety. Sound-wise, the sound effects are somewhat basic and are a throw-back to early Age of Empires titles. Voicing is restricted to your “advisor”, and the citizens are a bunch of indistinct mumblers. There are a few tunes but you’re likely to hear them all in the first few hours of play. The build that we played ran without any distinguishable issues or problems.
If you have never played a city/Empire builder or other similar titles are too complicated for you, Glory of the Roman Empire offers an easy, casual game for you. It's not a bad game; it's just that it ends up on the wrong side of easy. Even inexperienced players are likely to cruise through the game’s campaign without too many hassles. That, and other than a friendly and intuitive interface, the game offers little new to the genre. If you’re expecting anything with historical depth or meaning, look elsewhere. If you’re an experienced Empire builder, you're better off waiting for some of the bigger titles that are set to be released in the next year or so.
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