We're the year 270 Before Christ, although nobody knew back then a certain Jesus Christ would be born, so we can say we're at the cradle of the Roman civilization. Somewhere in a tiny little village at the Tiber some people suddenly got it in their mind: "Hey, we're pretty good here, let's make a world power !" (stated in Greek of course). As said, so was done. Rome became bigger en more and more people started to live in that little village which quickly became a big city. A Senate was formed and of course they couldn't do without an army.
Soon they were ready to proceed with their daring plan: a total war where Rome would be victorious. And that's where we get to the subject of this review: Rome:Total War.

Time to see whether Rome: Total War is as beautiful and exciting as has been promised. One brief answer: YES! Rome is everything that has been said about it, is exciting, looks graphically fantastic, has great music, isn't too easy nor too hard, very diverse, etc etc etc.

First let's take a look at the gameplay. When you first start up Rome you're forced to play the tutorial missions.
I must admit that without these, I wouldn't have known what to do so it's a good thing you can't skip them.
Once you've finished with the training, you get access to all the singleplayer game modes like campaign, play a historical battle or even a quick battle. Historical and quick battle modes are pretty self-explanatory so I won't get into that much deeper.

Campaign mode isn't anything like the two others. You don't instantly start fighting but are headed to a world map. Here the world is pictured as it was known to the Romans. You can check out all the villages (as long as they're in an already discovered area of a part of which you've bought a map), armies of friends and enemies, roads, spies, diplomats, actually everything a decent warlord needs to strategically plan his next move.
You start off with 1 city which you need to govern. While playing you'll get assignments from the Senate which need to be fullfilled after which you'll make some more friends that maybe get you a seat in the Senate. After all, once in the Senate, you can rise to the position of Pontifex, Maximus or even Emperor.
Next to that there are diplomats with whom you can set up connection to cities from other factions and spies that manage to get certain things from the others.

Then we come to the art of war. When you encounter a city or army of the enemy you can do one of two things: automatically have the computer fight for you, or enter the battlefield yourself. It speaks for itself that option two is far more fun.

This is where we get to the graphics. Especially during the large battles does the visual pleasure come to its rights. More than once I zoomed in during a fight to see how my armies moved, walked, chopped others up, etc... Marvellous ! Only for that you should already get the game. Rome has an engine that was told to be capable of displaying everything with extreme detail and it weren't lies.
Also the sound is great. You can hear the wind blowing over the battlefield while your men are rushing from behind you to start the chopping in front of you. All beautiful.

Rome also contains a multiplayer mode but unfortunately I can't tell you much about that as my pc apparantly didn't find any servers.

Rome: Total War is a magnificent game. Great graphics and music and even better gameplay. Anyone that likes to play a strategy game should certainly get this one. And everyone else should aswell.
Even if you have never looked at strategy games before, Rome: Total War is what will make you start.