" Over 20 years after its original release, Rome: Total War is still one of the best strategy games I have ever played."
Singleplayer.
Co-op Multiplayer.
PvP Multiplayer.
I was first introduced to the Total War series after watching the excellent BBC show Time Commanders, which allowed competing teams of history buffs to partake in historical battles to repeat or change history; the show featured battles created by a pre-release version of Rome: Total War, which due to the BBC’s strict licencing policy was not named at any time, however, The Creative Assembly were credited in the credits with having supplied the engine used, even if it was once again not mentioned by name.
As a teenager with a keen interest in history, the entire concept captivated me, and I eagerly got my hands on a copy of Rome: Total War as soon as possible. From the moment I first booted it up, It captivated me and still captivates me over 20 years later.
While I have enjoyed almost every Total War game with the exception of Total War: Rome Remastered (which is one of the most disappointing remasters I have ever played), some of The Creative Assembly’s earliest releases are truly timeless, with Rome: Total War, Medieval II: Total War, and Empire: Total War, being widely regarded as some of the best strategy games of all time, placing them in the same league as amazing titles such as The Age of Empires II, Warcraft III and Starcraft II.
While some of these titles need a little tinkering and tweaking to get running on modern hardware, the reward is worth the effort, even if Rome: Total War’s UI looks stretched and textures appear muddy on 1080p; I must admit, after playing for around a dozen hours, I no longer took any notice, as I was frankly having a great time, even if performance wasn’t the best.
Due to compatibility issues with modern hardware and drivers, Rome: Total War has abysmal performance on most modern PC, which can see FPS drop to single digits during battles, while the remastered version does not suffer from this issue, and I enjoy a near-constant 144FPS during battles, outside of battles, which look and feel great in the Total War: Rome Remastered, almost every other aspect of the game is hopelessly broken and at the mercy of modders to fix.
While not every aspect of Rome: Total War holds up as well as it should (diplomacy is very basic and essentially pointless), for the most part, every core aspect of the game works very well, and while I find having to manually retrain/replenish troops less user friendly than the automatic replenishment when in a friendly territory we see in newer Total War titles, for the most part, with slightly better visuals, and a functional diplomacy mechanic, I would happily buy and play Rome: Total War if it launched today, that is assuming it performed at least as well on modern operating systems as it did on Windows 98.
While players of modern strategy games are used to DLC radically changing up how a game is played, back in 2004, this was less common, or rather, it was less common for an expansion pack to allow a game to be played in a drastically different way, such as was the case with Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion and Rome: Total War – Alexander, which radically change how Rome: Total War is played, with the former allowing players to experience the fall of Rome, with new factions, technologies, buildings, units, religions and mechanics, while the latter allowed players to step into the sandals of Alexander of Macedon (Alexander the Great) and relive his conquest of the ancient world.
Both of these expansions were feature-rich and very meaty, with players who wish to expierance the entity of both easily looking at a commitment well north of 200 hours on medium difficulty.
This is most impressive indeed, especially when you consider the technical limitations of the time and the relative obscurity of strategy gaming as a hobby outside of nerd/geek culture.
Despite Rome: Total War being over twenty years old, the modding community is still very active, with new mods being released and popular mods receiving updates even in 2025.
The fact that Rome: Total War still gets new mod releases over twenty years after its release is proof that the community is still very much in love with the original Total War: Rome, even if its developers were willing to delist it in favour of Total War: Rome Remastered, a far less enjoyable (albeit much prettier-looking) game.
Unfortunately, as of 2025, the only way to buy Rome: Total War is to either purchase Total War Rome Remastered, which includes a copy of the original game and its expansion packs or purchase a Total War: Rome Collection key via a third-party unofficial storefront such as CDkeys, Gamivo or Eneba, due to the original game and its expansion packs being delisted on Steam and most other storefronts in preparation for the launch of Total War: Rome Remastered.
Rome: Total War is a 4x strategy video game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Activision, it was released on 22 September 2004 and retails for $29.99.
Rome: Total War is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Rome: Total War is rated PEGI 12+ and contains:
When I first played Rome: Total War, shortly after its original release, I fell in love with it. Even twenty years later, I still find it one of the best titles in the Total War franchise.
While I will be the first to admit it is rather basic, and incorporating quality-of-life mechanics from later games would make it a near-perfect game, I would still rather play Rome: Total War than Total War: Rome Remastered, which to this day is the only Total War game that I do not enjoy playing due to its horrendously broken campaign AI and overcomplication of core game mechanics that did not need changing.
