Praetorians Critic Reviews

With outstanding visuals and audio to showcase its gameplay, Praetorians is a must-have for genre fans and a great introduction for newcomers to PC gaming.

It’s quicker, fiercer, and more exciting, and the military tactics utilized is something that has been missing from RTS games recently.

The gameplay and tactical strategy in this title is certainly its strong suit.

The sheer focus on tactics and all of the available options within this makes this an extremely challenging game, but persevering and learning these intricacies will reveal a true gem.

The challenging and lengthy single-player campaign and the tough AI will keep you busy for a long time, while custom skirmish modes and multiplayer capability add to the game's value.

A solid RTS experience that uses the hook of streamlined play without requiring resource management.

Cutscenes are decently animated, and the most impressive feature of the game has to be the environments, such as the dense forest and rippling streams that can be disturbed as columns of soldiers move through it. Even the destruction of these environmental features, such as an archer sending a flaming arrow into a stretch of trees, looks nice.

Praetorians never really achieves the gigantic scope of a "Total War" game, but it is more easily controlled and offers much more obvious tactical problems.

A little unmanageable when large opposing forces enter toe-to-toe melee combat. The front line becomes a clanging, tangled, dying mass of soldiers, and no player micromanagement is going to save them.

There's plenty of strategy and sheer fun to be found in Praetorians. In fact, I am inclined to call this game the most strategy-minded strategy game I've ever played.

Offers quite a different approach to any other RTS games we've seen recently, and neatly occupies a middle ground between the incredibly hardcore "Total War" franchise and the more lightweight gameplay of something like "Age of Mythology."

A lot of fun despite some serious missteps; the bad news is Praetorians falls far short of the greatness that it might have achieved.

It doesn't do anything much beyond what's expected in an RTS, and what it does do better either isn't quite improved enough (it's highly attractive... but not as attractive as C&C: Generals) or the really clever stuff is so subtle it bores.

As an historical RTS, Praetorians does an admirable job of integrating its subject matter with solid gameplay, as opposed to simply using the historical period as a backdrop for a slew of war scenarios.

The game looks good and plays well, ­ it just doesn’t really offer much that is new or innovative to the genre.

An interesting campaign and siege capability give it an edge, and the abilities of the troops and handsome locations pull it up over the average RTS, but it’s more Gibbon than Plutarch. If you’re a strat addict with a penchant for heavy armour, or a classical scholar, then you’ll love it. Others might as well wait for "Rome: Total War."

Ultimately, the developer of "Commandos" has created an amalgam of the two styles, the result of which I will dub a stroke of near-brilliance. But not near enough.

Worth a look... we would have liked to have seen Pyro stretch the boundary slightly more and gone for some revolutionary new steps, whilst RTS fanatics will bemoan the relatively limited range of different troops under your control.

Praetorians isn't the deepest RTS going, but for fans of the genre and/or the era, it's a no-nonsense, well-presented package.

An innovative game that veterans will find to be a refreshing and challenging change of pace.