Roma Invicta is a strategy game that combines turn-based conquest management with real-time battles. It has a lot in common with the Total War franchise, but obviously without the massive AAA budget. The core gameplay involves back-and-forth battles between the Roman invaders and the Gallic tribes defending their territory.

Gameplay

You start out on a small campaign map of Western Europe. Your mission is to start in Italy and eventually conquer every region on the map. There’s a basic supply system that requires you to feed your soldiers, as well as an economic system that gives you money to spend on food and soldiers, but it’s extremely straightforward to the point where it feels dumbed-down. Not everything needs to be a grand strategy game full of political intrigue and complex economic simulation, although a little more depth would have been appreciated.

Once you get into the real-time battles, it becomes more challenging. The AI isn’t spectacular, yet it still manages to provide some much-needed difficulty. The limited amount of possible army compositions means that you will usually fight with the same units, give or take a few. Strategically, you’ll always be trying to execute the same general plan, just with some minor twist. It gets stale after a while, but the game is pretty short and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

After playing the campaign, you can try out the custom battle mode, which removes the strategic map and focuses only on the real-time battles. It’s a nice bonus but ultimately didn’t do much for me. This may change with the recent addition of Steam Workshop support, but this review was written a few days before that feature existed, so I can’t say how meaningful it is.

Presentation

I loved the graphics, despite them being a little odd-looking. Every part of a soldier is modeled individually and it’s cool to see all the different moving parts during combat. The tradeoff is that performance is significantly worse than it would be with traditional animations. It didn’t impact my enjoyment, although it might be a deal-breaker for someone with an older PC.

Verdict

Roma Invicta is far from a perfect game, but considering the price and its low-budget indie status, it comes out looking fine. It manages to do more things right than wrong, I just wouldn’t give it a strong recommendation. Fans of the Total War franchise might enjoy it as a smaller, less complex version of those games, although it probably won’t scratch the same itch.

6/10

• Puntigames
• Steam
• $6