Pax Romana
Want to be the next Caesar? Pax Romana is the latest game to give you a chance.
Tags: Pax Romana Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Mar 6th, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pax Romana (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
The Roman culture may have been indirectly responsible for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, but despite that, many folks throughout history have romanticized the historical period of Roman world dominance to the point that several PC games have offered gamers the chance to rise to power as the head of one of the most powerful civilizations in all of history, the Roman Empire.
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But becoming the next Julius Caesar is no walk in the Arboretum. Sure, you get to hang out with Egyptian hotties like Cleopatra, but even Caesar had his Brutus. The game Pax Romana, however, goes beyond the simple pop-culture knowledge of Roman history to accurately reproduce historical scenarios and challenge you with trying your hand at extending the Roman Empire.
Dreamcatcher’s game has several strengths, including the depth of their historical research and simulation, the multiple levels of their strategic game and the detail included in the game. But there are problems, too.
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The first problem is basic and outside the game itself; Dreamcatcher employs a “protection driver” copy-protection scheme that buries files and other crap deep in your computer, sometimes buried so deep inside critical files that you may never truly “clean uninstall” the program from your computer, once you get bored with it. Any game that requires you to reboot after installation to ensure the “protection drivers” are active before allowing you to play is taking the whole paranoia about disc-copy pirates thing a bit too far; and by too far, I mean specifically penalizing a paying customer by installing crap on your PC that gets buried so deep, it messes with other programs and may never truly be uninstalled. I’m all for discouraging software piracy, but *expletive deleted* over my PC is where I draw the line.
Okay, that said…
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Beyond the truly annoying copy protection measures (what’s so wrong with CD-Key Codes? It works for everyone else!), Pax Romana’s biggest problem is its steep learning curve. While deep and detailed, it’s hard to find your player character on the map, hard to learn the controls and hard to issue commands. Plus, the pace of the game is just very aggressive; if you set the pace anything above the slowest mode — five minutes equals one month — you spend time doing nothing but clicking on event pop-ups and critical things like elections and senate votes go by too fast to really control effectively.
The important thing here is to PLAY THROUGH THE TUTORIAL FIRST. The game is just too deep, detailed and difficult to figure out by just plunging in; the tutorial will orient you and it’s needed!
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Every possible obstacle and stratagem has been tossed in; but they all have both positive and negative fallout, so choose carefully. One of my favorite stratagems is the seduction gambit, but don’t worry, mom and dad — there’s nothing risqué played out on-screen. But boy, is it effective!
There are loads of historically-accurate campaigns to play through and several modes of play, meaning the game has depth to spare. If the concept of conquering Rome from the inside intrigues you, this is a great game for you.
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Just be warned about the paranoia-inspired copy protection scheme employed by Dreamcatcher; it’s overkill, annoying, but ultimately I think my computer escaped intact, post-uninstall. I hope.
But the game itself? Above average and fun for the intellectual gamer.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Lots of depth and detail, including historically accurate scenarios. + Challenge level is significant. + Intriguing game scenarios. |
6.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
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— Inconvenient “protection drivers” copy-protection scheme can really mess with your PC’s core files. — Controls fairly confusing, especially in the early going. — Challenge level can be too high for RTS newbies. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Despite annoying, invasive copy protection drivers, Pax Romana offers a deep, satisfying RTS sim that works on many levels … once you figure out the controls and how to win. PLAY THE TUTORIAL FIRST! | |
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Tags: Pax Romana
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Mar 6th, 2004 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
