Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar (PC) Review

By Jordan Hurst 08.10.2014

Review for Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar  on PC

No-name strategy games don't exactly command a lot of respect. The genre already requires a unique mindset to really enjoy, and with most fans already engrossed in the nuances of heavy hitters like Total War or StarCraft, the audience for lesser-known titles is smaller than the audience for Western-developed visual novels. On the surface, this seems unfair; video games have repeatedly proven that too many cooks make the broth dull and interchangeable, and even a half-decent strategy game requires more development effort than a game of any other genre, so why not give smaller developers a chance? Simple: strategy is a large-scale genre by definition and the enormous amount of testing, balance, optimisation, and/or graphical spectacle required to make it engaging practically demands a large development team. It should come as no surprise then, that an unknown like Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar is nothing more than the crude, monotonous product of over-ambition.

While the circumstances of its creation raise suspicion, there's nothing obviously wrong with Hegemony Rome. However, in less than an hour of playing, the severe flaws in its mechanics become all too apparent. Like its predecessor, Hegemony: Phillip of Macedon, it puts a much-needed spin on RTS gameplay by replacing military might with supply lines as the most vital strategic component, and it has an inexplicably awesome feature where the presentation smoothly transitions from "real" events to illustrated representations designed to look like a strategic map being used by Caesar himself. It also contains the intense complexity that strategy gamers often clamour for, but that just leads to the game's biggest problem: it's all complexity, and no depth. Despite the mountains of statistics and information heaped on the player, the number of legitimate options available is extremely small. Once it is determined how the game's systems work, and what actions should and shouldn't be performed (which takes a while, because neither the tutorial nor the in-game manual is very thorough), gameplay devolves into a pattern of attacking, building, and resupplying, ad nauseam. In fact, the game could have functioned as an introductory RTS if it didn't convey everything in such obtuse, overwrought form.

Screenshot for Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar  on PC

By far the largest reason for the gameplay's monotony is its unbearably restrictive structure. Buildings can only be placed at predetermined locations, and the playable area of the map expands in only small amounts as objectives are completed - objectives that are often oddly specific one-command tasks. All of these things force the campaign to play out in only one way, and while that way is probably the most historically accurate, it's certainly not the most entertaining. There is no strategy to be found in a war game whose battles are always waged on one front, or where specific supply routes are definitively more efficient and easily identifiable as such. Imagine playing a match of Sins of a Solar Empire with all planets arranged in a straight line (and with a more done-to-death setting) - that's the gist of Hegemony Rome. Even the usual satisfaction of witnessing the player's territory grow is absent, because all possible avenues for growth are predetermined and regulated. As a result, while success in a well-made strategy game can be one of the most rewarding feelings in gaming, success in Hegemony Rome feels like managing to stay within the lines of a colouring book.

Turns out that Sandbox mode is the only worthwhile part of the experience, mostly because, true to its name, it does away with almost all of the rigidity of the campaign. It does keep the predetermined building locations and extremely simple objectives, but the objectives are made not only tolerable, but outright laudable thanks to a hearty degree of customisation regarding type, frequency, and rewards. No amount of customisation can truly redeem the gameplay, however, as it still suffers from its second largest problem: pacing. Hegemony Rome is in desperate need of a fast-forward button. The seamless transition between the presentation styles of traditional RTS and grand strategy sounds cool on paper, but since the gameplay only exists at the RTS level, the incompatible differences in scale become very apparent, as the most common player action during gameplay becomes waiting. Even the game's most promising mechanics are ruined by its lethargic pace. For example, "unit" here refers to brigades of 20+ infantry that can be reassembled at friendly cities and retain their experience and officers as long as some of them manage to avoid capture or execution. That sounds great, except that units must be reassembled at their "home" city, which is invariably on the other side of the map, and getting them back to where they need to be can take up to ten minutes depending on how much territory is controlled.

Screenshot for Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar  on PC

Even so, at least in Sandbox mode, there is no need to put up with the game's pointless attempt at narrative. Giving a historical game a plot is always problematic, because it can't exactly be original, but it should still be engaging or, at the very least, understandable. Hegemony Rome instead tosses out Latin names for factions, locations, and people left and right without any explanation of what they are and why they are significant, and then drops straight into battle. All of the game's cut-scenes and dialogue could be replaced with "…and then Caesar conquered everything," and nothing would be lost. Yes, that's a pretty accurate summary of the real events, but historical games are supposed to be a more interesting method of learning history than reading a textbook, not less. For players that want to know the significance of anything they are doing, the game offers a thorough in-game encyclopedia of featured historical figures. It's an appreciated inclusion and it shows that no matter how flawed its game turned out to be, Longbow Digital Arts truly cared for the project, yet it does nothing to improve the overall experience when Wikipedia already exists and isn't charging users US$30 to interrupt their education with terrible gameplay.

Screenshot for Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar  on PC

Even when it comes to technical functionality, Hegemony Rome can barely support its own weight. The interface is a mess; it's full of redundant information and pop-up windows that cover half the screen, the tools for controlling multiple units simultaneously are completely inadequate, the icons/figures (depending on the current map perspective) denoting unit types are impossible to differentiate at a glance, and the transition between perspectives is so abrupt that it's more disorienting than anything. Furthermore, the AI can border on embarrassing, with units that can sometimes be flanked by marching a few feet wide of them and then turning 90 degrees and attacking. For what it's worth, the game is less ugly than expected, given its small development team and sheer number of objects on-screen simultaneously, although it's still animated horribly. That's when it's animated at all, as some actions only consist of units staring at their target until it does what they want it to. The music is passable, and certainly thematically appropriate, but it still frequently and audibly cuts out, likely due to poorly-implemented procedural song selection. Similarly, the sound effects and voice acting are of rather high calibre, but the game makes the mistake of using the same sound effect to signify at least three different things, making it nothing but useless noise. To top it all off, the game isn't even stable; it crashes every thirty minutes or so without fail, an annoyance exacerbated by enormous load times.

Screenshot for Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar  on PC

Cubed3 Rating

3/10
Rated 3 out of 10

Bad

The nicest thing to be said about Hegemony Rome is that it has some interesting ideas and, by extension, is decidedly not the Rome: Total War clone that many will probably assume it is. That isn't any sort of recommendation, though, because its interesting ideas don't work. It's a tiresome, restrictive experience that feels like the theme park version of Caesar's greatest conquests, bloated with unnecessary numbers and details to make it seem like something more important than it is. Anyone who isn't already part of the historical strategy niche will probably ignore the game on instinct, and in this case, that instinct is entirely correct.

Developer

Longbow Arts

Publisher

Kalypso

Genre

Strategy

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  3/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

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