[Review] Total War: Rome Remastered, Fresh Older Face!

The early days of the debut of the Total War franchise became a moment that Creative Assembly immediately used to continue to mix quality strategy games. One title that is still quite impressive to this day is definitely Total War Rome, which is arguably the most iconic classic series in the franchise and is still played by many people today. Seeing the high interest in the game, the developer took advantage of this moment to revive the game through the remastered version.

Titled Total War: Rome Remastered, this is a classic strategy that is still built on a similar system, but with a variety of overhauls that include quality graphics and the addition of a Quality of Life (QoL) feature. See descriptions and selling points of the game’s promotional materials like in Steam Of course, it’s not enough, because there are many cases of “remastered” games that don’t meet expectations and feel like cash grabs.

We happened to have played the game in middle school, only for a moment, but the experiences we had at least were still stored in our memory. For this reason, we finally decided to play Total War: Rome Remastered and see how significantly it differs from the previous version. Instead of lingering, just take a look at our review summary below.

Before Play

Maybe we should discuss this first, because before starting the game there is a launcher that shows a list of all the games in the Total War franchise. Through this same launcher, you can access mod features and other settings to customize your gaming experience, such as setting up two to three monitors for a wider viewing space.

Total War: Rome Remastered also offers extra content in the form of the Barbarian Invasion and Alexander expansions whose play options can be selected via the launcher. So if you have finished playing the main base game, then you can jump right away to play the two expansions.

Pretty Smooth Graphics Upgrade

Well, for the graphic quality which is the main content portion of this remastered version, it must be admitted that it is quite good. Yes, actually, in terms of presentation, we didn’t really feel any difference, but after seeing the comparison from the trailer with the classic version, there was a very clear improvement. Whether it’s from the quality of textures to other graphic effects, in terms of presentation Total War: Rome Remastered managed to answer these expectations with clear evidence.

It’s just that we encountered complaints from the community regarding the UI display which is more like the mobile version compared to the original game. Because we haven’t played the mobile version, we can’t directly confirm it, but if we compare it roughly, there are similarities that can be seen.

Our main complaint in terms of presentation lies in the placement of pop-ups or important information stored on the Wiki in the game. You can only read the information after accessing some menus that feel like they require too many clicks. For a strategy game that sometimes demands focus and time efficiency, we think it would be better if the information was re-adjusted to make it more accessible. The overall appearance of the menu is not very neat and can be quite a headache, especially with the amount of text in some places.

Gameplay that still feels old

Then what about the gameplay? For this portion, there is almost no significant difference, which of course is according to predictions because this is a remastered game. The gameplay in Total War: Rome Remastered is divided into several main tasks such as organizing territories and strengthening the kingdom, sending diplomats for negotiations to spies, and sending military troops to occupy big cities and expand their territory.

Just like when we played it before, we must admit that we are really bad at playing complex strategy games like this, especially one that demands serious micromanagement. Fortunately, this game provides a feature that allows you to manage cities that are built automatically with the help of AI. Even though it’s practical, we don’t recommend that you enjoy the game this way because managing the strategy manually provides a lot more fun playing.

While building a city, you can perform various activities to manage it effectively. These activities include building facilities to defense systems to protect them from enemy attacks, to charging taxes that are useful as a source of income for your kingdom. While trying to occupy an enemy city that is still heavily fortified with a formidable army, you can even send spies on surveillance to strategize before launching an invasion.

Not all activities always involve fighting, because as we said this is a game that requires serious micromanagement which also includes efforts to build a successful empire from an economic perspective. To support these efforts, you can take advantage of the ability of diplomatic units that can be sent to various cities to carry out negotiations, seek reinforcements, exchange information and many other benefits.

One of the things we love most about Total War games like this is the option to control troops in real-time while in battle. This makes the course of each battle feel epic and tense, especially knowing that you have full power to control the combat power of the troops sent. Setting the formation and all that stuff is really fun, but unfortunately the AI quality in this game is still very poor. It’s clear that this is one of the most well-preserved parts of the original game, where the enemy is not very aggressive and often doesn’t even react when attacked by your troops.

Conclusion

In terms of quality Total War: Rome Remastered offers an overhaul and addition of features that are quite worthy of appreciation, including the smooth graphics quality and also supports 4K resolution. This is the best version that we can recommend if you haven’t played the original Rome: Total War. It’s just that this includes a remastered version that isn’t that impressive, especially if you compare it to Diablo II: Resurrected or NieR Replicant ver.1.22 which is more like a soft remake that was worked on seriously.

The shortcomings of the original game were also not completely gone, for example, such as the quality of the AI which is still very poor and feels inappropriate for today’s game standards. Its status as a remastered version is the main reason why we are still quite tolerant, because in general Creative Assembly still presents a new, superior version, although not in a significant range.

Excess	Deficiency
Better Graphic Quality	Gameplay still feels outdated
Added Quality of Life (QoL) features	AI quality is also still very bad
	Display UI and menus that are less comfortable to look at