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So I Tried… Rome: Total War Gold Edition

So I Tried… Rome: Total War Gold Edition

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the PC version of Rome: Total War Gold Edition.

What I thought it was

I’ve seen enough to know that it’s a grand strategy game by Creative Assembly. Grand strategy is something I’ve never touched, since it sounds so damned daunting -- the point of it is to go through a period (or periods) of history, controlling the minutia of an entire country. Total War also stars a subject I find boring -- war. My brother was into that whole thing, probably given our family’s military background -- but as far as I was concerned the only thing I needed to know about war was ‘people died because world leaders are idiots’. But I’m willing to go out of my genre and subject comfort zones to try a game sitting unplayed in my Steam library… since March 2014...

2015 09 09 00002

"We're on foot and half naked, what good are those armoured horseback warriors?"

What it actually is

As suspected, a very in-depth strategy game that was unable to run on Windows 10. Well, perhaps that last part wasn’t expected… I found a fix here by Steam user herr pug; just turn off anti-aliasing. Turns out, screwing with the graphics options further will again cause it to lock up… However, I managed to get in and play for half an hour. A little more, actually, since I was curious how the battle ended.
You command the up-and-coming family of Julii , and have to protect Rome from the Gaul barbarians as well as other Roman families who want to rule the senate. Also, rule the senate.

2015 09 09 00003

"Oh... Right..."

Will I keep playing

I can’t see me putting the hundreds of hours into this that I know many people do. The graphics aren’t terrible, apart from the cutscenes, but it’s a very complicated game. I like being told what to do and given simple instructions, not told two hundred things and then thrown in the deep end. Was I supposed to send archers against horses, or explicitly never against horses? What was that bit about laying siege to a town -- why shouldn’t I aim for the buildings? It all works and plays great, I’m just definitely not the target audience. I long suspected as much, now I have proof...

So I Tried
Andrew Duncan

Andrew Duncan

Editor

Guaranteed to know more about Transformers and Deadpool than any other staff member.

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