This game is actually a lot like chess! It’s a games designed to simulate pitched battles in the Ancient world. There is a set of armies available from the earliest times until the fall of the Western Roman Empire, in 475 A.D.

You can design the terrain and/or units, set-up each side’s troops and then it's just on to the battle. You are doing nothing but fighting the battle you created.

There are also some pre-designed scenarios and maps for your enjoyment.

Screenshots

Credits (DOS version)

Robert T. Smith

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 73% (based on 7 ratings)

Players

Average score: 1.7 out of 5 (based on 7 ratings with 1 reviews)

Those were the days!

The Good
I liked being able to build my own army. Selecting the units that I wanted and then deploying them and mashing the enemy to bits. I liked the simplicity of it, no nonsense, no frills stonking. The shear number of civilizations and units were impressive, even by today's standards. It was all about gameplay, not fancy graphics or animation, just well thought out tactics.

The Bad
Multiplayer was awkward. At first it was a little hard to grasp, so many units to control and little info about them, no manual as I recall.

The Bottom Line
This is what Rome, Total war strives to be in gameplay and fails...Just. A tile based strategy game that I cut my teeth on way back in the late 80's when I was just a spotty 23 year old. It was a tile based game that you played for hours and hours, through various preset campaigns and then with a custom builder pitching any army you wanted against any other. Fantastic stuff for it's time and many of the innovative ideas you think you see in the total war series of today, well, lets just say that they aint as innovative as you might think, Ancient battles did it over a decade earlier, only not a s pretty.

ZX Spectrum · by Wayne Smith (2) · 2006