Rome was one of my favorite games as I first experienced the RPG games. I loves the interactive nature of the game, and I found the different methods of interface to be fantastic! What made it so great is that you would play one level as an RPG first person player, and then you would take command of a group of troops and have a battle complete with strategy around how the mission had to be completed, where and how to engage the enemy and, at the time, great graphics in the battle between characters.
The fight scenes were like an Age of Empires game, where you control individual soldiers and the first person parts were like a Final Fantasy game, where you met characters and completed tasks and quests.
I love this game! The first level you have to disguise yourself as something other than a slave by stealing clothes at the bath and then you have to rob citizens of their money in order to buy a ticket on the last ship out before the eruption of Vesuvius. You learn that if you do not kill the citizens after you rob them then they will alert the police/centurions and you will die! After stealing enough money you board the ship and it lands
in Rome. Then you have to learn how to play dice, buy slaves, use the slaves to fight in the gladiator games to earn money, and eventually end up in the Roman army. You do battle, and earn your way back to Rome. You have to mount a political campaign to get elected to the Roman Senate.
This is where the cool complexity of the storyline meets with the fun of the first person gameplay. You can sponsor a play at the theatre that supports your candidacy, you can hire a guy in the Roman Forum to speak on your behalf and you can even pay people off to vote for you. Then you can go to the polls and track how many votes you are getting versus your opponent. I played this game over and over to see how quickly I could win the battles and how many votes I could get in the election. Every time I played I found another character to talk to or a new strategy to earn more money faster and get more advantages in my quest to become Caesar.
The final level is all based around a famous and explosive event in the history of Rome that culminates in your ascension to the throne. But it does require you to pay attention and take action in the correct sequence or else your efforts will not be rewarded with victory but you will find yourself executed and your rise to power cut short. This really was one of my favorite games and I think the multiple methods of gameplay combined with the storyline was unique and cool, and it really has not been duplicated since. Granted, the graphics are old school but the concept is fantastic and I feel like it is well executed in the game.
One of my all time favorites both when I originally played and now for the nostalgia!
