Rome: Total War

Caesar the day

$9.99 Developer Feral Interactive, feralinteractive.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 9 or later

As the name suggests, there’s plenty of spear-togut action in this strategy game. Each fight takes place as a sprawling real-time battle involving hundreds of troops – it can take the better part of 10 minutes simply to maneuver a unit from one side of the battlefield to the other. As well as directing your soldiers’ destination and speed, you decide on whether or not they fire at will, if their ranks are tight or loose, what formation they take. You’ve even got to take terrain and weather into account. As such, victory might feel like a desperate last stab that’s paid off, but it never feels like sheer luck. If you’re more of an armchair general, there’s the option to “auto-resolve,” but it’s risky unless the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.

However appealing, though, these battles are just a portion of the game. You’ve also got your overarching strategy to worry about, visualized as a map with large figures symbolizing each of your agents – be they warmongering general, gracious diplomat, or underhanded spy. This element plays out in turnbased fashion, with you moving agents around Europe, scuffling over territory and warring/making peace with the 16 other factions (whose allegiances to one another are also constantly shifting). When it comes to taking cities, you’ve not only got the option of starving them out with a siege – slower, but potentially less imminently dangerous – but even of how high to set taxation once you’ve taken over. After all, an army may march on its stomach, but how are you going to feed it without coins coming into the coffers? Pretty much every decision here is on your shoulders.

All this depth does come with a trade-off. Rome isn’t an immediately accessible game and probably does benefit from a larger screen and the precise controls of a mouse. The wealth of options can feel more than a little daunting, too. Not one to entice casual players, perhaps, but there’s depth here to please even the most ardent of strategy obsessives.

the bottom line. A full-fat port of a Mac gem; an involving campaign, incredible depth, and near granular-level control.

We’re almost certain this is how real-life generals launch their attacks, too.

Have to say, we don’t like the Gauls’ chances here. Even if that reinforcement division in the horizon will take until Christmas.