Rome: Total War Alexander (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 8.5 (4.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Brett Todd
• Reviewed on: 06/20/2006
• Updated on: 06/23/2006
• Released on: 06/19/2006
• Originally published on GameSpot: Rome: Total War Alexander (PC) Review

Alexander the Great supposedly once said, "There is nothing impossible to him who would try." Well, he never played his namesake expansion pack for Rome: Total War. This latest, download-only addition to The Creative Assembly's long-running series of historic epics is so spectacularly difficult that even the legendary Macedonian conqueror would have a rough go of subduing those pesky Persians. The game provides an illuminating lesson on just how tough of a task the monarch set for himself when he journeyed out to conquer the known world in 335 BC, and it's a splash of cold Grecian wine in the face of Total War-series veterans who think they've done it all.

The great man himself, about to ride Bucephalus into battle.

The add-on's scope is a bit more limited than the previous Rome: Total War expansion pack, Barbarian Invasion, as befitting its download-only distribution at a cut-rate price of $14.95. For that fee, you get one campaign encompassing Alexander's blitz of the Near East, six historical battles from Alexander's early career, and new multiplayer options, where you can set up two-on-one and three-on-one matches and tournaments online.

This content is more than enough, though, largely because the campaign is so challenging that most players will spend many, many hours experimenting with different ways to beat it. It changes the focus of the original Rome: Total War by dropping any pretense of building and diplomacy in favor of a 100-turn slugfest that favors battles over Rome's turn-based deliberation, so if you're expecting lots of political intrigue and empire-building, you might not find what you're looking for. This is a Macedonian rush to get Big Al roughly to the border of India while holding 30 provinces before the clock runs out and the gods spirit him away to Olympus (or he gets drunk and dies, depending on which version you want to believe). While you still can play around with fortifying conquered towns and setting up garrisons (there is no diplomacy available at all here), to do so means that you'll never occupy enough areas before the sands run through the hourglass and Alexander's life comes to a youthful end.

Needless to say, getting to the promised land is not easy. The odds are stacked against you from the very start of the game. Play opens with the Macedonian treasury deep in the red and the capital, Pella, sandwiched between Persian armies on the eastern side of the Bosphorus and a pesky Illyrian barbarian force to the northwest. Go gung ho into Asia to take on the Persians right away (which you feel pressed to do, given you're on a clock and supposed to be heading east, not west) and the Illyrians can cruise in and take Pella. Devote too much strength to the Illyrians, and the Persian army and fleet to the east go on the offensive.

It's tough getting established in Asia with a reasonably strong army, let alone blitzing all the way into India. Armies get whittled down constantly. Even though you start with a massive force, it gets hacked apart in short order since you're forced to fight one big battle after another. You have no way to properly rest and rebuild, either, as a scorched-earth policy is necessary to raise cash for troops and to ensure that you don't wind up with revolts in your rear that you have no time to go back and deal with. This is more than a bit ahistorical. History buffs might find it strange and off-putting to lead Alexander's armies to crush his neighbors, since this doesn't mesh with the mercy that the real Alexander showed to conquered cities or the conqueror's cultural-fusion policy (it's hard to merge Greece with Persia when you're slaughtering every Persian you lay your eyes upon). But there is no other way to wage war here. Play the benevolent conqueror, and you inevitably wind up fighting a war on two fronts later in the game.

Gather enough phalangists, and you'll soon find out that the top Persian units aren't immortal after all, despite their name.

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  "Unecessary but fun expansion pack for Rome Total War."

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