Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles

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.