Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion Expansion Pack
by Sega of America, Inc.
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List Price: Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion Expansion Pack
Customer Review: Rome Total War's Expansion Brings Great Improvements
Summary: 5 Stars
Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion is an excellent addition to an already excellent game. It expands the gameplay from Rome Total War from the Republic's Civil Wars to the invasions of the Barbaric tribes from the north. Play to destroy the empire as the Huns, Goths, Franks, or more civilized Sassanids or play to perserve the empire, as either the Western or Eastern Roman Empires. The game has also been improved by including religion. As Christianity sweeps across the Roman World, you will find that new power struggles and religious revolts spring up across the previously 100% pagan landscape. Generals also have a loyalty rating that ascribes their likelyhood to rise up in revolt. Couple these new features with the supreme Total War military engine (which has actually been used by the History Channel to recreate battles) and you have a wonderful military simulator. Of course, if your preference is for peaceful citybuilding, you'll have a harder time with this game. For more peaceful players interested in Roman times, I recommend looking at Caesar III or Civilization IV instead. But for those more interested in the military aspect of Classical History, this is as close to the real thing as you are going to get.Customer Review: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME - CRASHES CONSTANTLY
Summary: 1 Stars
Do not buy this game until they release a patch that solves the constant crashing. They are currently at patch 1.3 (which was designed to bring Rome up to the level of Barbarian Invasion, for multiplayer ... 1.3 is not a patch for BI)
Many, many people who have this game are sufferring from crashing, if you are lucky you will have no problems, but very likely you will have.
Note that I do not have any problems with any other games and also, Rome Total War works perfectly and has never had any problems whatsoever.
Barbarian Invasion expansion however, crashes ALL the time.
Having said all that, it is not a bad expansion (from what little I have played of it). The original Rome: Total War is very worthwhile and you should find it actually works. The other game they made earlier, Medieval:Total War and the Vikings expansion are also very, very good, and should be picked up cheaply, and run perfectly well (and fast) on any machine.
This expansion pack though is terribly buggy.
There is no support from the creators.
Volunteers (other people like you and me) are trying to help people get through the many problems, but are overwhelmed and have no idea how to fix it.
Keep your eyes on it though, the first patch might clear things up.
Customer Review: More than an expansion, its a whole new game
Summary: 5 Stars
While i waited a year for this game to come out, I was exptecting something similiar to VI, where it gives you a small, quick game but vastly improves the original. I couldn't have been more wrong. BI is, as the title states, pretty much a whole new game. The original dosen't change to much. All there is a patch. But BI itself is alsmost as in depth as RTW. There is only one major annoyance I have with both games. That is the lack of playable factions. It seems you can only play half the factions in RTW and only a third in BI. Fix this, and they have almost no flaws.Customer Review: An expansion with both pluses and minuses
Summary: 4 Stars
Fans of Rome Total War would do well to give serious attention to this expansion set. In the best tradition of expansions, Barbarian Invasion offers new challenges and twists to players grown jaded. By moving the game forward a few centuries to the early Christian era, players can enjoy playing new factions, such as the Huns, as well as playing Eastern or Western Rome. Also a major plus, the designers have improved mightily on AI, so the game no longer makes serious mistakes, like not launching counter attacks as you advance and not exploiting obvious player weaknesses. Indeed, if you tired of Rome Total War because you got bored playing circles around the AI and simply mopping up to achieve victory conditions, this represents a whole new game.
On the less positive side, the game now incorporates religion into play. On the whole this offers intriguing possibilities to the player, forcing you to deal with a major social force in the period, competing faiths. While designers did a good job, incorporating the impact of important characters and geography, in a few crucial ways they made mistakes. Cities, all of which have official faiths, never change those faiths. Thus, a pagan city where the entire population is Christian after 100 game years remains a pagan city. The people revolt because there are no churches, and the player can only sit and pound the table. Forums on the game hash out this issue ad nausea, but in the end it is simply ham handed, frustrating, and offers an excellent opportunity for a patch.
Despite such foibles, BI represents a major challenge. Any Rome Total War fan will certainly derive a great many hours of new challenging play from this excellent expansion.
Customer Review: blah...
Summary: 1 Stars
i've seen reviews calling rome: total war the finest game of 2005. more like the biggest disappointment of 2005. if you want to play the absolute best strategy total war game out there pick up medieval: total war. it comes in a double pack (the original game plus the expansion) for something cheap like $9.99, and it is 500x better and more entertaining in every way than the hugely disappointing rome: total war. if you have never played medieval: TW and don't know how much better it is than rome: TW, in that case rome: TW is ok.