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IGN Review of History Great Empires Rome
We've seen Cartoon Network take on the racing genre, we've seen Food Network launch a line of cooking sims, and we've seen Nickelodeon splash its signature splotch of orange goo across boxarts for years -- it's not new for a cable television station to use its brand power to branch out into the video game industry. What is new, though, is that History Channel is now part of that group.
History's Great Empires: Rome is a budget-priced strategy design published by the relatively under-the-radar Valcon Games -- but potential purchasers are sure to more readily recognized the stylized letter "H" placed up high on the box. The History Channel's logo. Fans of the network know the care and detail that go into its programs, and how accurate and well-presented its re-creations of historic battles and military campaigns are when seen on shows like Battles BC and Patton 360.
It's a shame, then, that that same level of quality doesn't quite shine through with Great Empires: Rome, here on the DS. Now, it's clear from the start that this was never meant to be an epic project -- it's on sale for less than 20 bucks brand-new, so it hasn't been positioned to compete against the highest-end strategy and RTS titles on Nintendo's two-screened system. But, still. Even giving it some grace for that reality, it's still pretty rough around the edges.
You're given a selection of six different scenarios to play in Great Empires: Rome, most of which cast you as the commander of the Roman army and task you to expand the empire by invading and annexing neighboring kingdoms. This plays out in traditional strategy style -- you spend a lot of time in menu screens, micromanaging troop numbers and available resources, recruiting new fighters and preparing your forces for war.
You also make choices for how to develop the major cities within your empire, deciding what kinds of structures to build -- lumber mills to bolster your wood production, farms to focus on food. You can even invest in shady establishments like bordellos, in the hopes that they'll attract mercenaries to your towns that you can then conscript into service for your army.
So the core aspects of any good military campaigning strategy title are here -- it's just that they're a little tough to interact with. The touch screen interface is a bit unwieldy, making it difficult to select what you want with your stylus -- you'll frequently have to tap at things a couple of times to get them to register. And even then it's difficult to tell whether you've successfully selected something, as the visual cues are scattered at best -- it seems some things that should trigger the appearance of a cursor or highlighted icon or something just don't.
The small size of the art assets, too, further complicates the issue -- the little icons for your armies on the world map are so small that you won't be able to select one if it's behind another one, overlapping on the display. There's an arrow button you can push placed over on the right side of the screen that can help out, but that area's confusing too -- an array of various symbols and graphics like a globe and hourglass that correspond to various choices you might want to make like advancing to the next day or checking your armies' compositions, but none of it ever comes across very clearly.
Strategy titles that falter in interface or menu design are sometimes saved by the compelling design of their combat systems, which help to make you forget about some of the issues afflicting the non-time-sensitive aspects of the game's gameplay. Great Empires: Rome, though, doesn't gain much ground with its battle sequences -- because they're just as dull as the rest of the package.
It's completely hands-off. At the beginning of a skirmish between your forces and the enemies', you'll align your men on the battlefield and select their formations, along with some very basic strategy like how fast they should move out. But after that, there's nothing more you can do -- the computer takes over and the battle just plays itself out in front of you. You can't redirect men who are heading the wrong direction, or change your attack plan on the fly or anything. You just sit back and pray that the formations you chose were agreeable enough to the AI, so that it decides to allow your army to win over its own.
There are other strategy games in the past that have selected that same style of combat, so it's certainly more of an intentional game design choice than it is an error of any kind. But it just isn't all that much fun, in this particular game. The little sprites representing your warriors trundle around trading blows with the enemy, and all you can do is move the camera around to watch. You can't skip battle scenes, either. You've got to sit through it all.
Last of all, History's Great Empires: Rome offers up a quarter of quickplay mini-games to add a bit more value to the package -- but, again, I don't think they really do the trick either. There's a trivia game knocking off Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? called Who Wants to Be a Legionnaire?, which is pretty clever -- but you won't be walking away with much virtual money unless you really paid attention in 7th grade history class. The questions are tough, and all center on obscure facts about ancient Rome.
Even more difficult is the geography mini-game, which gives you control over a small soldier walking on a map of the ancient world, names an ancient city, and gives you about 20 seconds to march him across the screen to the correct geographic location. If you know where Byzantium, Edessa and Syracusae are off the top of your head, you'll be good to go. If not, you'll either learn a lot of just get frustrated.
And the last two are a common sliding block puzzle and Sudoku. Except that the Sudoku design uses all Roman numerals, instead of the standard "1, 2, 3" and so on. That just gets annoying, as you're straining your eyes to see the difference between VI, VII and VIII when they're all mashed together in the little grid boxes. Not the greatest idea.
©2009-07-01, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
History's Great Empires: Rome is a budget-priced strategy design published by the relatively under-the-radar Valcon Games -- but potential purchasers are sure to more readily recognized the stylized letter "H" placed up high on the box. The History Channel's logo. Fans of the network know the care and detail that go into its programs, and how accurate and well-presented its re-creations of historic battles and military campaigns are when seen on shows like Battles BC and Patton 360.
It's a shame, then, that that same level of quality doesn't quite shine through with Great Empires: Rome, here on the DS. Now, it's clear from the start that this was never meant to be an epic project -- it's on sale for less than 20 bucks brand-new, so it hasn't been positioned to compete against the highest-end strategy and RTS titles on Nintendo's two-screened system. But, still. Even giving it some grace for that reality, it's still pretty rough around the edges.
You're given a selection of six different scenarios to play in Great Empires: Rome, most of which cast you as the commander of the Roman army and task you to expand the empire by invading and annexing neighboring kingdoms. This plays out in traditional strategy style -- you spend a lot of time in menu screens, micromanaging troop numbers and available resources, recruiting new fighters and preparing your forces for war.
You also make choices for how to develop the major cities within your empire, deciding what kinds of structures to build -- lumber mills to bolster your wood production, farms to focus on food. You can even invest in shady establishments like bordellos, in the hopes that they'll attract mercenaries to your towns that you can then conscript into service for your army.
So the core aspects of any good military campaigning strategy title are here -- it's just that they're a little tough to interact with. The touch screen interface is a bit unwieldy, making it difficult to select what you want with your stylus -- you'll frequently have to tap at things a couple of times to get them to register. And even then it's difficult to tell whether you've successfully selected something, as the visual cues are scattered at best -- it seems some things that should trigger the appearance of a cursor or highlighted icon or something just don't.
The small size of the art assets, too, further complicates the issue -- the little icons for your armies on the world map are so small that you won't be able to select one if it's behind another one, overlapping on the display. There's an arrow button you can push placed over on the right side of the screen that can help out, but that area's confusing too -- an array of various symbols and graphics like a globe and hourglass that correspond to various choices you might want to make like advancing to the next day or checking your armies' compositions, but none of it ever comes across very clearly.
Strategy titles that falter in interface or menu design are sometimes saved by the compelling design of their combat systems, which help to make you forget about some of the issues afflicting the non-time-sensitive aspects of the game's gameplay. Great Empires: Rome, though, doesn't gain much ground with its battle sequences -- because they're just as dull as the rest of the package.
It's completely hands-off. At the beginning of a skirmish between your forces and the enemies', you'll align your men on the battlefield and select their formations, along with some very basic strategy like how fast they should move out. But after that, there's nothing more you can do -- the computer takes over and the battle just plays itself out in front of you. You can't redirect men who are heading the wrong direction, or change your attack plan on the fly or anything. You just sit back and pray that the formations you chose were agreeable enough to the AI, so that it decides to allow your army to win over its own.
There are other strategy games in the past that have selected that same style of combat, so it's certainly more of an intentional game design choice than it is an error of any kind. But it just isn't all that much fun, in this particular game. The little sprites representing your warriors trundle around trading blows with the enemy, and all you can do is move the camera around to watch. You can't skip battle scenes, either. You've got to sit through it all.
Last of all, History's Great Empires: Rome offers up a quarter of quickplay mini-games to add a bit more value to the package -- but, again, I don't think they really do the trick either. There's a trivia game knocking off Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? called Who Wants to Be a Legionnaire?, which is pretty clever -- but you won't be walking away with much virtual money unless you really paid attention in 7th grade history class. The questions are tough, and all center on obscure facts about ancient Rome.
Even more difficult is the geography mini-game, which gives you control over a small soldier walking on a map of the ancient world, names an ancient city, and gives you about 20 seconds to march him across the screen to the correct geographic location. If you know where Byzantium, Edessa and Syracusae are off the top of your head, you'll be good to go. If not, you'll either learn a lot of just get frustrated.
And the last two are a common sliding block puzzle and Sudoku. Except that the Sudoku design uses all Roman numerals, instead of the standard "1, 2, 3" and so on. That just gets annoying, as you're straining your eyes to see the difference between VI, VII and VIII when they're all mashed together in the little grid boxes. Not the greatest idea.
©2009-07-01, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved