Product Reviews

Glory of the Roman Empire is a city-building game where you play the part of a Roman governor sent from town to town to sort out problems. For the most part, these aren't too tough to deal with, as the game is incredibly simplistic and you have very little control over your society.

Each town needs slaves and villagers to do the hard work. Rather than attract these elements to your town, you just need to build new houses, which are automatically filled. There's also no control over how these villagers or slaves operate. So if your stone mine is understaffed,

The objectives involve constructing a number of buildings while keeping your citizens happy. The very simple controls mean this is easy to do. For example, if your citizens complain about the lack of bread, you need only add a new bakery and make sure there are enough people around to stock it. Your citizens don't react to buildings or get scared away from an area, so you can stick a pig farm in the middle of your town without any recourse. This means your towns can just be built as you see fit, which makes the objectives very simple.

It's not all bad, though. Glory of the Roman Empire is a really easy game to pick up and the tutorials are excellent, so it's a terrific choice for younger players. The graphics are finely detailed and there's a wide range of buildings encompassing classical Roman architecture.

Just as a bit of fun, the game is a nice diversion. However, any experienced city builders will soon lose interest in the simple missions. For more involved city building, with the added element of some combat, Black & White 2 is a superior choice.