Imperator: Rome

Huge, inventive and the reason I'm sleep deprived. It's brilliant.

Imperator: Rome is an example of how hard it can be to reconcile gameplay and history. On launch, the game failed to deliver the mix that players expected from Paradox. The Marius update, especially with the tweaks to warfare, is closer to the historical record while also offering gamers plenty of agency. Heirs of Alexander is a good paid expansion, even considered apart from the free update. The Diadochi wars are fascinating and complex. I played quite a bit as the Antigonids and I still have options to explore. The other successor kingdoms have the same amount of content. For anyone who exhausts the stories of the Diadochi, there's more to discover and more places to conquer when playing as Rome, Carthage, and the rest, making Imperator a joy to return to.

It’s basically a very good game, especially if you have patience and a good head for numbers.

Imperator: Rome is one of the best grand strategy games on the market.

Imperator Rome is a monument of the strategy game. Surely one of the most complete games from Paradox. It is a real journey for the mind and it will make you experience Greek-Roman antiquity as in way that has been too rarely been used in video games before. A pure jewel.

it’s hard not to be very impressed with what Imperator: Rome has to offer. The feel of the game is exactly what Paradox promised: a true test of management of early civilisation on the brink of modernisation. You can develop your nation and expand to your heart’s content – but like the mighty Romans, you must constantly look outwards to your neighbours and inwards to your own people for threats and disturbances. Imperator: Rome truly has the depth and versatility to become one of Paradox’s finest.

Imperator: Rome feels like it's yet another step in Paradox's attempts to make the perfect grand strategy game. It pulls bits from Paradox's storied past in the genre and adopts it for the ancient era. Because of this, it doesn't feel like past releases where the game does one thing fantastically and falters in the rest of the mechanics but instead refines past mechanics into a marble bust of megalomaniacal fun. Ave Imperator: Rome!

Imperator: Rome brings together in a single game the best ideas of the two great works of Paradox: Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II.

Imperator Rome is a great example of an entertaining historical game developed by Paradox studios. I was able to manipulate the fates of great empires and easily engage in wars, coups or intrigues. It's a difficult game to review because you want to play it all the time.

Imperator: Rome is Paradox's new grand strategy, an absolute certainty in the genre.

Quotation forthcoming.

Another big game from Paradox Studios.

Imperator: Rome is a classic, old school strategy that offers a gameplay so deep that only professional strategy players might have a chance with it. If you are a fan and you are dying for a solid strategy title like good old days, this is what you've been waiting for.

Most of the time it feels fascinating to shape an ancient civilization. You have a plethora of options at your disposal but sometimes it can become frustrating with the amount of detail you are involved with. That the presentation is very static doesn’t help either.

What Imperator: Rome does, it does impeccably well. Like Paradox games have been doing for years now, it will devour hours and whole days of your life, and you will give them willingly. But you will have to work for it, learn it like a foreign language. But it is worth it, and the more time you put into learning it, the more you will come to appreciate it. Even Rome wasn’t built in a day.

As Imperator grows in scale from its Clausewitz cousins, so too it grows in depth and ultimately in unwieldiness. But there's a grand strategy with aeons of play in it for you.

Imperator: Rome packs more interesting strategic systems and detail into its vast historical sandbox simulation than its interface can fully handle, but they produce some excellent political scheming and warfare.

Everything seems rock solid, but those who had hoped for a new impetus will be disappointed. Veterans will find their way around quickly, but newcomers will continue to struggle because many rules are under-stated.

Imperator: Rome has some rough edges and it's not quite up to par with the excellent games Paradox usually churns out, but at the same time, it is still a challenging and rewarding experience that's bound to keep you engaged for long stretches.

A very Paradox game, in both a good and bad way. It has all the hallmarks of a good game, and I look forward to seeing continued development as time goes by.

There’s great potential in Imperator, but the game is hamstrung by a lack of content, historical inaccuracies and surprisingly tame peace mechanics.

The learning curve is high and the interface a bit confusing, but in the end Imperator: Rome is a good game for all grand strategy fans.

Rome: Imperator is one of Paradox’s biggest and best games - it also has a bigger focus on military expansion than their other games.

I’d like to believe that in time, with a few DLCs, Imperator will become a worthy Antiquity simulator. Still, it’s a worrying sign that a brand new Paradox game has basically no original features at its launch. [Issue#238, p.66]

The new Paradox big-strategy can draw you in and offers some time of entertainment, but is far from satisfying your imagination of an ancient leader. [Issue#295]

Imperator: Rome combines the quirks and mechanics of multiple Paradox titles, but it lacks the charm and depth to stand out on its own. It wore the trappings and regalia of Marcus Aurelius, yet, once removed, out came Commodus instead.

Imperator: Rome has its moments, and some excellent foundations. But while there’s always the promise of what’s to come, right here and now there’s plenty to be found wanting.

Imperator attacks confused players with tons of buttons and information, but in reality it’s one of the most vapid and boring strategy games ever created by Paradox Interactive. The world map is very pretty, though.

Imperator: Rome is another showmanship of Paradox’s greed that is manifested through their DLC politics. In its core, it is a good game with some intuitive ideas that are resolved through a very interesting time period, but it falls short in almost all fields where its mechanics are clearly left unfinished for some DLCs to fulfil them.

Imperator: Rome feels undercooked. As it stands, it's a strange mish-mash of several of Paradox's existing (and, let's be honest, superior) games without much to distinguish or recommend it. Paradox recently outlined a "One Year Plan" for the title in an effort to reassure players that they are aware of its shortcomings and intend to address them. That roadmap appears insubstantial to my eyes, but we'll see when we get there. For now, Imperator: Rome remains a decidedly modest strategy game.