Imperator: Rome Critic Reviews

A good game with a lot of depth & just what one would expect from Paradox. Play it through once or twice just for fun, then grab one of the strategy guides that will be popping up to more fully appreciate the mechanics.

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

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!

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another big game from Paradox Studios.

Quotation forthcoming.

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.

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.