Invading Barbarians and Rome: Total War

I’d played and enjoyed Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War, so I was happy to oblige when the folks from Sega asked if I wanted to try Barbarian Invasion, an expansion pack for Rome: Total War.

Like all the Total War games, Barbarian Invasion is divided into two modes: campaign and battle. The campaign mode features a vast map of Europe, the Middle East, western Asia and north Africa. You play one of a dozen factions battling for domination of the map. Each faciton has different victory conditions, but the basic idea is to occupy lots of territory.

The campaign mode is like a sophisticated version of Risk. You move armies and agents–spies, assasins and diplomats–around and manage your sundry city-states. The city management is easy enough, and if you tire of it you can have the computer auto-manage everything. However, sometimes I’d get frustrated by a populace’s actions–why are they revolting, and how do I stop it? Do they need better sewers, or just another temple to their silly pagan gods.

I can’t speak to the historical accuracy of the game, but the game art and cinematics feel heavily derived from movies like Gladiator, Troy and Kingdom of Heaven. I did like some of the details, such as how the Christians cause you a ton of trouble in the Middle East.

Campaign mode is a lot of micro-management, and it didn’t particularly float my boat. In particular, as my empire expanded, I had difficulty keeping track of all my units on different fronts. It would have been handy to have a warning system that notified me of ignored troops. Once you enter a battle, though, the game really sings.

The attention to detail on the battlefield is pretty incredible. There’s an avatar for every soldier in your army, which can get upwards of 1200 soliders, archers, calvary and siege engines. You can zoom in and watch individual soldiers hack away at each other, plummet off parapets and run screaming from the enemy.

Over the past couple of Total War games, the Creative Assembly team has perfected the battle field controls. It’s pretty intutive to select and give orders to troops, and to move the camera around the battlefield. I also appreciated the diversity of terrain on the battlefields, and how it accurately reflected the loca campaign-level terrain.

So, the battles are great fun. I feel a vicious glee every time I catapault some flaming balls of pitch among some unamoured infantry, or send heavy calvary into a mob of peasants. The macro-level campaign turns are the chores you do to get to the next battle. I’d give Barbarian Invasion a solid 8/10.

Thanks to Randy for the screenshot.