TL;DR – Rome Total War: Remastered is a pretty solid remaster and a great way of experiencing the game for the first time if you haven’t played it before. Returning Praetorians should consider waiting for a sale however as the tweaks are relatively minor.
Today I’m taking a look at an enhanced re-release of 2004’s classic release, Rome: Total War. For full disclosure, I was a massive fan of the original release of Rome Total War and still have my physical on-disc copies of this game – which turns out to have been a prudent move as you can now no longer buy the digital versions of the original game! Instead you MUST buy the Remaster, which is currently selling for £24.99 / $29.99 / 29,99€. The only respite for purists is that when you buy the remastered version, you also receive the original digital versions – but are they even required now that the shiny new remaster is out?
To it’s credit, the remaster does a decent job of updating the visuals to modern standards (although the unit fidelity is still behind more modern releases obviously) and more importantly comes with a range of resolution options that are more pliable for modern systems. You can now utilise ultra-widescreen and UHD resolutions, in addition to taking advantage of your 4K display by enabling more modern 4K textures (FreeLC activation required for them though, as they bloat the game size significantly!) The changes are honestly fairly subtle, but between these upgrades and the new resizeable UI the game is definitely more pleasant to run on systems with high end resolutions – in addition to being more “future proof”.
This wasn’t just a standard visual upgrade however, as the developers (Feral Interactive) decided to tweak some aspects of the gameplay, which has been a mixed bag in my humble opinion. On the one hand, it is nice to see that they attempted to make some modest tweaks to the formula without sacrificing any of the feeling (and indeed, limitations) of the old game. Naval battles are still decided via auto-resolve, the occasional rebel army/fleet still seemingly appears out of nowhere (so take care when repositioning a single unit or even small army on the campaign map) and diplomacy is still handed via physically sending diplomats around the map.
The major changes are that you can now access all factions from the start of the game (via an option hidden under advanced settings), you can now access an additional 16 factions which were previously only accessible via mods and you have an additional agent type – the Merchant. Honestly I found these new agents to be a waste of space, as the AI (and even rebels) spawn them en masse and all they do is clutter up the map while producing relatively little gold. While doing a bit of testing I found that my high level merchant added an astonishing 100 gold per turn, which is about the upkeep cost of the absolute lowest infantry unit you can keep as a garrison. With such a low rate of income, I found that the best use for my merchants was taking out other merchants belonging to enemy factions – but I found that these enemy merchants could be safely ignored as they can’t really do anything to you. Considering that you can spawn 1 merchant per city and that most cities will need at least a few filler units acting as a garrison (otherwise you’ll suffer public order penalties which can lead a city to rebel) they don’t seem particularly important, but at least the option is there I suppose.
The major caveat to these pleasant changes, which range from worthwhile to forgettable, is that the remaster now has two problems which are worse than the original Rome Total War experience. Firstly, you will experience more crashes to desktop (CtDs), although to Feral Interactive’s credit they have produced a few patches which have made the CtDs less present. With that being said, even four or five months after release I had one every 10 hours or so. Not a massive issue in the grand scheme of things, but as the game only autosaves on turn start and turn end and as each battle can take anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes, it’s entirely possible to lose an hour of two’s worth of progress if the crash happens at an inopportune time (e.g. during a turn in which you have had 4 battles and decided how to spend a stack of cash on your settlements).
Those thinking you can just skip those pesky battles will be forgiven for remembering that the game has an auto-resolve feature, however it is very, very random except in clear-cut cases. If you have a 95% win chance during a siege then it’s a no-brainer, but for any semi-balanced engagement you run the risk of getting absolutely slaughtered by an AI force that is outnumbered and outclassed. The auto-resolve is also extremely loathe to let enemy generals die, to the point that a single general can and will engage an entire army to… lose half his health and then retreat out of combat range. After he already retreated, so your army has wasted a turn chasing him around the map for no result. It is truly a cat and mouse game for those who are reluctant to load up a manual battle (Achievement hunters beware, the “auto resolve every battle in a campaign” achievement is going to be a colossal pain in the arse).
The other major issue with this remaster, is that it has made the path-finding and formations even worse. Now to be fair, it wasn’t perfect in Rome Total War either but it is now noticeably more sluggish. For the Greek civilizations this is especially galling, as they depend heavily on the Phalanx formation which is now extremely temperamental due to the need for seemingly every man in a unit to be in the right spot before they actually form the formation you need. Units now also flail around like morons for longer when you try to re-position them during battle, which is a double-edged sword that can lead to you or the enemy getting plenty of free hits in. These issues come to a head in the sieges, which feature tight spaces (which make formations a pain at the best of times) and plenty of bitter close combat back-and-forth fighting. Getting your troops to face the enemy, without letting themselves get flanked, while all this extra fannying about is going on can be simultaneously challenging and irritating.
Roman players (which are the recommended choices for beginners) are also hindered by these changes, as their frontline units have a very powerful free missile attack that can decisively change how a one-on-one fight pans out. Due to the aforementioned issues however, they now need more time to get ready as legate Hugh Janus holds up the whole cohort’s re-positioning due to getting stuck on a pebble. As this powerful missile attack has a very, very short range it is depressingly common for the formation fumbling to result in your Triarii charging an enemy, abruptly stopping to stand still while every, last, soldier finally gets their javelin out, then failing to use their javelins as they get counter charged by those loathsome Gauls. Fortunately you can disable missile attacks for them when they are selected, but considering how powerful these missiles are it is a shame to forego them.
Some of the other changes aren’t a downgrade per say, but they are somewhat underwhelming. The new loading screens are bland and repetitive for example (and you will be seeing them a LOT unless you are going for the aforementioned auto-resolve every battle achievement), while the in-game Wiki is extremely basic to the point that I had to read old forums to gleam information as it is just a glorified webpage that loads in the Steam Overlay browser. To access the expansion packs you need to mess around with the mandatory Creative Assembly launcher which boots before of the game, which isn’t really an issue but does add a bit of delay between starting the game and actually getting to play the game. For context the original version on Steam just had a pop-up when you hit launch, asking which one you wanted – now you need to wait for the launcher app to start, then hit a section within it, then select play to access the new expansions.
But at this point I’m nitpicking and to be fair, there are also some small minor changes which are helpful. The map camera controls are improved which is nice, but more importantly the tactical interface during battles from latter games has been added, enabling you to see more of the battle details at a glance (and make those pesky sight blocking trees get out of the way). There are also a few more tweaks on the campaign map regarding visual overlays and “heat maps”, but I barely used these – however it again serves the purpose of letting you see more information at a glance if you are so inclined.
At this point I’ve almost entirely been comparing the remaster to the base game, so if you haven’t played the base game and have stuck with me thus far then I can tell you that it’s still a great TBS/RTS hybrid. You train units, capture settlements, move armies and agents around on the turn-based map then switch to a smaller map for RTS battles (which are generated based on the local world terrain that the armies are clashing in) when your forces actually engage with the enemy. Each faction has been crafted with a fair amount of historical accuracy in mind, which leads to them having decently divergent rosters and thus leads to the armies having their own play-style and plenty of unique units. This extends to the settlements as well, with only certain factions having the ability to construct high-end fortifications and sanitation systems (which are near essential as cities gain “Squalor” as they grow, which makes them increasingly difficult to keep happy and thus non-rebellious). As such the factions are asymmetric if not entirely balanced, which makes the long campaign quite fun as your tactics and army compositions will need tweaking from foe to foe. Plus it makes the game more replayable, as each campaign will play out at a different pace depending on how good your end-game units are – the Barbarians are generally advised to go as quickly as possible for instance.
For new-comers I would highly recommend one of the Roman factions, alongside a warning to move QUICKLY as you WILL be required to face your erstwhile Roman comrades in a civil war scenario in the closing stages of the game. If you take your time, your fellow Romans will quickly sweep through the map and thus become quite challenging when you eventually have to slap them down. Similarly if you are desperate to play as, say, the Gauls or the Greeks then you had better move quick as the Roman factions function as a group in most diplomatic matters and therefore declaring war on one means fighting them all.
With my closing verdict, I would say that Rome Total War: Remastered is a worthwhile purchase for newcomers to the series and frankly does a better job of making you feel like an Emperor in waiting than it’s sequel. It has plenty of content due to the inclusion of the expansion packs and has a lot of re-playability and length due to the variance between the factions. For veterans of the series, this is a good if occasionally mixed remaster with a handful of pleasant Quality of Life features and some newly playable factions but otherwise not much in the way of substantial changes. If you already have the originals (like me) then it’s entirely optional of course, but I would still pick it up on a sale if only to give yourself an excuse to sink another 30 to 40 hours into a campaign.