Warrior of Rome

Hail Caesar!

Beware the Ides of March only if you live that long. Brutus won't get the chance if you can't survive the four rounds of battle in store for you here. You are on a routine inspection mission, when you are suddenly ambushed by vicious pirates attempting to loot the island of Crete. You quickly round up your men and head into battle. You must destroy the pirate ships before they destroy all of your forts. Sounds easy, but it takes practice.

The pirates tell you of the overthrow and capture of your beloved Cleopatra. You must set sail for Egypt to save the queen and her land for Rome, your journey is fraught with disaster as you are bombarded on your ships by rebel ships and besieged by renegade troops as you set foot on land in Egypt.

You must fight to Cleopatra's castle and rescue your damsel in distress. It is up to you...Warrior of Rome!

Have you ever wanted to become the emperor of Rome? Thanks to the minds at Bignet, you can! Take all of your troops across the terrain so that you can obtain more of the empire.

The complaint rings out often these days: "This game didn't last long enough! I finished all 178 levels of Li'l Muffin's Death Rattle in two hours!" If you're among those who find themselves in similar situations, heed this: Warrior of Rome is a pure strategy war game that offers gamers countless hours of compelling play.

Many gamers are immediately turned off by war games. True, there's something intimidating about seeing an enormous map divided into hundreds of tiny hexagons (or in this case, squares), but there's little real difference between a war game and a computer role-playing game like any of the Ultima series. The terminology may be different, but the game play is nearly identical.

In Warrior of Rome, you step into the sandals of Julius Caesar himself. You start by fending off pirates on the isle of Crete. The second scenario is fought on the Mediterranean, ship-to-ship--and when two opposing ships meet, hand-to-hand. Land in Egypt and defeat the armies of Alexandria. The palace is the final and most difficult scenario. Your reward (?) for all your efforts will be Cleopatra, who may have a surprise or two of her own for you.

Each scenario takes place on a grid divided into hundreds of squares and featuring different types of terrain. Most of your time is spent on a close-up section, which scrolls in all directions. Some terrain is impassable, some simply makes for very slow movement. Both sides can create pit traps, which can seriously debilitate even the strongest units. Each unit has particular abilities: some are better fighters, some are better at digging traps, and so on. Crucial to success is knowing when to retreat or rest your units: movement, battle and trap digging all drain a unit's vitality. You can alter the "retreat strength" of each unit; for instance, set retreat strength to 20%, and a unit in battle will automatically retreat when it's lost 20% of its men.

Once you've entered into battle, you're moved into a full-screen representation of the fight, with gauges on the side of the screen showing each unit's dwindling strength. Your only option at this point is to retreat; otherwise, combat is a spectator sport only. Battle screens can be resized and moved, so you can continue to command your other units.

There are plenty of options allowing you to tailor the game play. There are three difficulty settings and all manner of informational windows can be set to appear automatically. Heavy use of the PAUSE button is a great convenience: you can pause the game, examine all your units, give them orders, then take off the pause button and see your commands executed. This way, there's never a need to make a snap decision.

At the end of a successfully completed scenario, you're given a password allowing you to jump right to the next scenario next time you play. However, there's no way to save a scenario in progress, which is a shame, since it'll take you many continuous hours of play to complete a single scenario.

The graphics, even during the close-ups, are not exciting. Due to the great amount of information present on each screen, characters and icons are extremely small. There are several interesting graphic touches, though, particularly in the introduction. The music was nicely orchestrated but extremely repetitive--however, this is forgivable considering the length of time that each scenario takes to conquer.

War games may not appeal to everybody, but Warrior of Rome is solid, lengthy and easy-to-play, and serves as a great introduction to the genre. It'll also entertain those who already have a fondness for war games, though it's a bit on the elementary side compared to many computer war games.