Recent reviews by Simba

Good game, worth it when on sale for less then $10.

Multiplayer chat got removed. Multiplayer land battles are one of the funnest aspects of this game, as it is basically a more polished and optimized version of Empire. Now there is no way to view who is online, communicate, or set up lobbies effectively.

Multiplayer chat has been removed, so it's much harder to set up multiplayer games now. Interesting trade mechanics and cool naval battles.

The current development team of Creative Assembly keeps removing the features of modding, multiplayer lobbies, and chat support from Total War titles of the past development teams. Avatar Conquest was the greatest implementation of multiplayer in any Total War game to date, and one of the best in any RTS game. It was reliant on communication of the player-base, drop-in battles, and required no further investment from Creative Assembly.

The mod manager is continuously broken with recent patches, with CA going so far as to update the older versions of the game to make it even harder to roll back the version of the game on Steam just to make it functional for replay value. Where are the patches for the mechanics of the game itself?

Creative Assembly has updated nearly every game released after Medieval 2, and caused huge issues for the mod managers and previously up-to-date mods in the process. Thankfully they didn't have good documentation or understanding of the Rome 1 and Medieval 2 engine and code, or else those would have been messed with too.

CA still profits from these older titles, and they are not invested in dedicated servers. Shameful display!

This game has great replay value and is a steal on sale. The controls and unit mechanics can be clunky, while the game itself can be somewhat unstable on modern computers (Always quick-save).

There are many great mods, including Lord of the Rings Third Age, Divide and Conquer.

Like Rome 1, it's not meant to be a historically accurate political and logistical button mashing simulator, but rather a fun and story-driven series of battles with the unique characters from the family of your faction.

The multiplayer scene isn't as alive or supported as it was some years ago, so setting up siege battles online does take planning, friends, or time usually.

The path-finding and user interface issues persist even after the final patch. Customization has somehow decreased relative to the original, in terms of key binding and ability to modify the user interface from the game files. The lack of ability to switch back to the original user interface formatting (which allowed for quicker game-play decisions and higher micromanagement capability) is questionable. I wonder if anyone at Feral (or the current dev team at Creative Assembly) was even active on the Rome 1 multiplayer scene at any point. People edited game files and had mods for simplified user interface options and quick-reaction key bindings specifically for competitive multiplayer. That could never happen with the parameters of this remaster, unfortunately.

The campaign list scroll seems to lack numbers for the info of settlements, and the ability to have to 2 scrolls open at once to have quicker micromanagement is somehow gone? Having the list scroll open on one side of the screen while opening the management pages for each individual settlement from the ascending / descending order based on public order VALUE / percentage (not just a red or green face) is no longer an option with this unnecessarily handicapped user interface in remastered. It feels like the type of questionable design downgrade made for Rome 2 at launch (watch Angry Joe's review of Rome 2 for reference).

Having one scroll open for hard values on the settlement list, and another open that can switch between the settlements that you right click on the list based on their status, was a basic feature of the original. How are we losing features to this day?

YouTube channels like Dolfy, Biscuits Total War, Prince of Macedon, Melkor, Guidea TW, Volound, Martin Commander, To Nerd is to Human TNH, HappyCompyTW, Angry Joe, and more would have been able to give insight on improvements during development.

The theme of the old main menu and loading screens, with silhouettes against a cloudy red background, was one of the greatest design decisions of all time, and it has also been taken away for some reason. There should at least be a way to toggle back to the menu and loading screen theme of the original, which Blizzard managed to implement in StarCraft Remastered.

What's worst is that multiplayer and co-op campaign received almost no support, despite multiplayer being the main priority from the Rome 1 community before release. Rome 1 multiplayer has been effectively locked behind a paywall by Remastered, for newer players that want to enter the community. There is no more $5 Steam sale option. The multiplayer scene has been effectively handicapped since there is no cross-play between the remaster and original (Blizzard also accomplished this with StarCraft Remastered), and the original has been removed from the market for some reason.

The multiplayer chat lobby and player list of those online (in general) is completely gone now. There are no more chat channels to see who is online to set up matches with the community while in-game. Once I am hosting a multiplayer match, I can't chat with the community in the main multiplayer chat room any more. There is effectively no way to communicate or invite players to games any more. The multiplayer scene is less alive than the original somehow, as a result of this. Crashing is now more common during multiplayer army selection while in a lobby. Clearly multiplayer was an afterthought for the game that brought the series into the spotlight for multiplayer battles with Prince of Macedon's online Rome Total War free for all battles.

They still have the opportunity to patch the game and add in more multiplayer or co-op campaign support, but I cannot give the game a positive review until then. If Creative Assembly could patch Rome 2 nearly a decade after release, surely they can work on supporting the Rome 1 multiplayer community instead of undermining it.

The custom battle map editor has also been removed for some reason. The map editor was a core part of the original, and always made online multiplayer interesting with new maps from different hosts. The level of complexity and customization has decreased, with no justification. Countless members of the online multiplayer, tournament clan, and dedicated Rome 1 community would have been more inclined to purchase this title if that was included.

It was also unsettling to see the release of this remaster coincide with mass copyright strikes on Rome 1 and Medieval 2 Total War official soundtrack content online. There were many creative and well-designed videos on YouTube that implemented the soundtrack of these games, but the release of this game somehow caused most to be taken down. There is no reason to get rid of that which promotes your game and people love, unless you want to fan the fire of players like with Three Kingdoms once again.

Even still, this is a good game and a decent remaster. It would just be ideal if Creative Assembly and Feral put more work into their games and patch updates before abandonment (Three Kingdoms).

This is one of the few Total War games where a Beta opening would have been completely valid to see what needs to be changed and refined, and yet it was not even considered.

Still one of the best Total War games on its own (many long time players argue the best or last great historical Total War title), but I don't know how SEGA / CA managed to change it from a standalone expansion to a 'saga' (first 'saga' release was Thrones of Britannia) and increase the price of the FULL game by chopping it into tiny pieces like most releases after Shogun 2, years later at that

Clearly there is not the same quality oriented collective goal-setting that CA used to have when they listened to criticism and respected promises to the player-base... seeing that they abandon older titles like 3 Kingdoms, increase prices on older titles, and so on.

Rome wasn't patched in a day, but it didn't fall in one either seemingly.

Good FPS with dedicated servers and many custom maps

The terrorist hunt is simplistic in a good sense, and is fun if you play with at least one other friend. The dialogue from the terrorists is some of the best I have heard from the AI in a cooperative game mode of all time and really adds to the atmosphere of it. Always a great game to unwind to.

Update: Unfortunately, Ubisoft abandoned multiplayer support for this title. There are workarounds for this, but multiplayer terrorist hunt is not the same on-demand experience as before.

This game is superb, and easily has hundreds of hours of game-play. Any person who has played this game would agree that it is amazing and a great way to enter the strategy genre. It manages to be exhilarating to play for those who are already veterans in the genre, and is one of the best games to have a RTS battle system combined with a turn based campaign map.

Multiplayer is still somewhat active to this day, and games can often be organized. There are many great mods for this game as well.

Where is multiplayer chat?

Gone, reduced to atoms. Online play can still be fun, but you might as well be playing with an advanced AI system / mod given that there is no way to communicate or set up thematic battles with the online community any more. Rome wasn't patched in a day, but it only took one patch to make the epic multiplayer become more bare-bones.

Creative Assembly has updated nearly every game released after Medieval 2, and caused huge issues for the mod managers and previously up-to-date mods in the process. Thankfully they didn't have good documentation or understanding of the Rome 1 and Medieval 2 engine and code, or else those would have been messed with too.