mediocre
While the game is indeed very simple and easy to get into, it is incredibly tedious, and will take a certain degree of micromanagement. In the first few campaign missions, the game is wowing. The graphics are better than any other Rome-based city builder I have seen, the interface is simple, and there is minimal micromanagement. The smaller your soon-to-be metropolis, less micromanagement. But, you simply have to use micromanagement, as the game forcibly makes you enlarge your city. As soon as your city gets too large for just a few administrative and distributive buildings, the citizens start complaining about how they need this, that, etc. So, you must provide this or that, etc. for them. Then, maybe they, for some random reason, will catch the plague. Well you have to fix that! Or maybe a house will be on fire. That needs to be fixed too! Thus, you must lay out many scaffolds at once before you even think about houses. I liked how they incorporated slaves into the game, as workers, and how if you worked them too hard they would revolt. However, if you get a notification that a house is on fire, then it's gone. You can try to get a prefecture up to stop it, but it's already gone unless you begin rebuilding it right away. Add this to the fact that the learning curve may be a bit flat for you, and the game gets fairly boring fast. One of my favorite features (probably because I love Latin) is the ability to change the entire game lettering and wording into Latin, the ancient Roman language. The grammar is a sketchy at times (using "ad" in something such as "there are too many"), but overall it really does well. I would have liked to see some slaves that the Romans might have considered "exotic" (such as African, German, British, etc. people) as maybe a trade item.Read full review
