The History Channel Great Battles Of Rome Preview

I love history, the Romans and strategy games. Therefore, I was looking forward to playing Great Battles of Rome from The History Channel. There is a lot of history in the form of some great videos, but the strategy aspect isn’t as deep as some may expect.

In Great Battles of Rome, players embark on campaigns that are based on real battles that Rome fought over many centuries. These battles are fought as a series of skirmishes during a campaign. Winning them allows players to promote their units’ skills and to recruit more units. The battles are fought in real-time, but the battles are planned out in turn-based style play before the actual fighting. This sounds pretty cool, but the commands are too simplified to allow for much finesse. The battlefield is small, too, and the units can only be moved within a tight-fitting space.

While much of the battle is planned beforehand, commands can also be issued on the fly. This uses up special command points, though, and so they have to be used sparingly. Once the battle is coordinated and the fighting begins, there’s not much time to use these commands. In most battles the enemies are soon routed unless the General squad dies, regardless of the positioning of your troops.

There is a tutorial campaign which does a good job of explaining the control system. This control system is pretty basic, though, and many players won’t need the tutorial. The interface is intuitive and easy to understand, but again, this is due primarily to the small amount of actions available. The commands mainly consist of a few types of attacks such as hold and charge, and three different formation options for each unit stack.

The interface allows users to zoom in and out during battles, which gives users a good view of the battles. However, the graphics have minimal details besides the animation of the units. The backgrounds and battlefields are drab and barren, and unpopulated with anything remotely interesting. The units are designed with more detail and look fairly nice close-up, but their movements are very basic and stiff while in battle.

Great Battles of Rome doesn’t offer much to players besides the ability to plan and fight the battles. There is no city-building, no resource collecting, nothing to do besides fighting. If the fighting were more involved and elaborate and required some actual strategy as in Rome: Total War, then this would be an interesting game. But as it stands, players will position their troops, watch the battle for about a minute and a half, upgrade and promote the winning troops, then fight some more. That is all there is to do besides watch the history videos.

Great Battles of Rome is a very light strategy game that won’t tax anyone’s brain, but it may please someone.