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Pax Romana

Pax Romana

List Price: $29.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Nice Idea, Poorly Executed
Review: Having enjoyed Europa Universalis, I thought I'd give this one a try also. A game using the EU system set in ancient/classical Europe should work and be fun. However:

1. There is no campaign game, only a few scenarios: 5 "strategic" (i.e. no internal politics), and 5 "political".

2. You can only play as Rome (or, in the political scenarios, one political faction within Rome), not as any of the other major powers (i.e. Carthage, Macedonia, Parthia, et al).

3. There is too much nit-picking economic stuff to do, especially when you're trying to fight a war (that's what a staff is for!)

4. the game screws up things, at least it has on my HP Pentium4 with Windows XP (although it is supposed to be compatible with XP). I have not tried any political scenarios (not really into that), but in twice trying to play a strategic scenario about conquering the East: I have conquered every province in Macedonia but not been allowed to demand a single one of them in the peace settlement. And when I (very reluctantly) settled for another form of peace it merely said "Macedonia has made peace with Macedonia"! There have been other problems as well, such as armies that disappear, commanders that suddenly move to a different army, new units that are built in the wrong province, allies that suddenly become enemies for no good reason, and numerous smaller glitches.

5. Other complaints: As is the case with many newer games, the manual is woefully inadequate and the tutorial is not a lot better. I couldn't find any way to remove an army commander other than to supercede him with a higher ranking commander (if none such is available, too bad). News items, including important things happening to your armies and provinces, are all presented in small lines near the bottom of the screen; there is no way to have them presented in an attention-getting box, as there is in EU.

In summary: This could have been a very good game. But it isn't.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Nice Idea, Poorly Executed
Review: Having enjoyed Europa Universalis, I thought I'd give this one a try also. A game using the EU system set in ancient/classical Europe should work and be fun. However:

1. There is no campaign game, only a few scenarios: 5 "strategic" (i.e. no internal politics), and 5 "political".

2. You can only play as Rome (or, in the political scenarios, one political faction within Rome), not as any of the other major powers (i.e. Carthage, Macedonia, Parthia, et al).

3. There is too much nit-picking economic stuff to do, especially when you're trying to fight a war (that's what a staff is for!)

4. the game screws up things, at least it has on my HP Pentium4 with Windows XP (although it is supposed to be compatible with XP). I have not tried any political scenarios (not really into that), but in twice trying to play a strategic scenario about conquering the East: I have conquered every province in Macedonia but not been allowed to demand a single one of them in the peace settlement. And when I (very reluctantly) settled for another form of peace it merely said "Macedonia has made peace with Macedonia"! There have been other problems as well, such as armies that disappear, commanders that suddenly move to a different army, new units that are built in the wrong province, allies that suddenly become enemies for no good reason, and numerous smaller glitches.

5. Other complaints: As is the case with many newer games, the manual is woefully inadequate and the tutorial is not a lot better. I couldn't find any way to remove an army commander other than to supercede him with a higher ranking commander (if none such is available, too bad). News items, including important things happening to your armies and provinces, are all presented in small lines near the bottom of the screen; there is no way to have them presented in an attention-getting box, as there is in EU.

In summary: This could have been a very good game. But it isn't.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Veni Vidi Victis
Review: I came, I saw, and I was vanquished before I could even get to the game itself. Although it's supposed to work with Windows XP, I never could get the game to start: it would only show the demo preview and then crash. A big and expensive disappointment. I can't comment much on the playing mode of the game because I never got there: it seems I'm not the only one.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Aspirations of Glory, Technical Frustrations
Review: This could be a great game if it were not for the technical problems. It does have all the elements of a grand strategy game-battle, intrigue, commerce, diplomacy, random events,etc. The screenshots are very realistic. The interface is not hard to learn. And so on, and so on.... It really could be fun if you could play it. There are several technical problems that occur, from installation on. Check out the website at AntikGames for the forum to see. The developers are fumbling around now with a patch to solve the problems, but....shouldn't the game be brought to market ready to play and enjoy? This game was so hyped and anticipated among those who like Roman themed games. They should refund everybody's money.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: IT DOESN'T GET ANY WORSE THAN THIS
Review: This is the worst game "out of the box" I've ever played, more bugs than you can shake a stick at, crashes to desktop, no real useful or helpful tutorial or manual. You'll be pulling your hair out within five minutes of installation. This is yet another one of those "BUY IT NOW, WE'LL FIX IT LATER" games out of the box, EXCEPT this time, there's NO FIX for it, it's been almost two months and no patch fix that will make the game run correctly and fix the bugs and flaws is available yet and now some idiot moderator is just banning anyone that says anything bad about the game on the official forum. My suggestion stay away from this one completely. It's worse than SUK but I can't say that word here. ;)

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: IT DOESN'T GET ANY WORSE THAN THIS
Review: This is the worst game "out of the box" I've ever played, more bugs than you can shake a stick at, crashes to desktop, no real useful or helpful tutorial or manual. You'll be pulling your hair out within five minutes of installation. This is yet another one of those "BUY IT NOW, WE'LL FIX IT LATER" games out of the box, EXCEPT this time, there's NO FIX for it, it's been almost two months and no patch fix that will make the game run correctly and fix the bugs and flaws is available yet and now some idiot moderator is just banning anyone that says anything bad about the game on the official forum. My suggestion stay away from this one completely. It's worse than SUK but I can't say that word here. ;)


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