Imperium Romanum (Statergy - City Builder, 2008)

A game that could have been so much more

Graphics - 8
Sound - 8
Gameplay - 5
Difficulty - 6
Overall - 7.5

Rome has always been a imagination point for many city building games. Imperium Romanum can be classified as another attempt to give life to an ancient city that has fascinated us for many a year.

The game is your typical city builder. Build your city, keep your citizens happy and fight off the occasional barbarian horde are the basic goals. My first impression of the game led me to believe that this one, unlike previous games such as the Ceacer series, would have more emphasis on warfare. But i was disappointed to find out that it was not.

One of the more interesting aspects of the game is the use of Tablets. Each Tablet represents an Event such as a Good harvest a Plague or even a hostile invasion. You would expect that these events occur based real time such as the mission time. But its not. In fact you, are in control of the events that occur in the game. This is done by clicking on the Tablets that are available on each mission. For example a barbarian tribe would not attack your settlement when a a given time has expired. Instead it will attack you when you choose the relevant Tablet.

The game looks great and does give out a very polished up feeling. But it lacks innovation that would shake off that "been there done that" feeling. The lack of a proper campaign and the use of Tablets to give out missions take you away from the real time feeling that all city builders should have.

The Bottom line

Keeping the bad points aside Imperium Romanum would be a good game for all newcomers to this genre and would provide a decent level of satisfaction for those who are more experienced.