CivCity: Rome – PC – Review

There’s room for
improvement in the city building simulation genre. The leap in recent years for
technology has steadily become stagnant; not too many developers are focusing on
innovating anymore. They’d rather follow a trend and place their own label on
the box for a similar product. It could be due to that graphics are a higher
priority or maybe because almost everything has been done before. Space has been
conquered, Middle-earth has seen daylight, World War II has been covered for the
zillionth time and even the Civil War is starting to re-occur in multiple
simulation games. What exactly is left for the developers to do? Well I can tell
you what needs to happen, they need to innovate!

CivCity: Rome is
created by the developers of the Stronghold series. FireFly Studios,
originally based in London, has worked on simulation games even before their
infancy. With two new studios opened, one in Connecticut and the other in
Scotland, FireFly is on their way up the food chain. Their founders having
worked on the Caesar and Lord of the Realms titles in the early
‘90s certainly have a ton of experience with this genre. This is why it came to
be a big surprise that I didn’t find the sheer enjoyment in CivCity: Rome that I
did with their past games.

For all those
thinking that this is the next installment in the Civilization franchise, you’d
be incorrect. While they share the same name, CivCity: Rome follows the path of
a traditional city builder rather than being focused on diplomacy and politics.
If I had to compare this to any other franchise, it would, ironically, have to
be Caesar.

The gameplay quickly becomes repetitive for the single-player portion. The
campaign is lengthy as you take over as the governor of the city. You won’t be
focusing on conquering all other nations, but you will be managing the economy
to perfection. Watching citizens move up the social ladder will become a crazy
habit – think about all the tax money! If you love watching the economy of your
civilization, you will truly enjoy CivCity for what is presented. You can zoom
in on your citizens to watch them slaughter a goat to feed their family if that
floats your boat. There is one important element from Civilization that was
loaned to CivCity. The research tree gives players the absolute control over
their “new technology”.

If you are a
carpenter and love assembling new buildings, you should be in for a treat. There
are butcher shops, temples, taverns, gladiatorial schools, and theatres to
build. Outside of those, the usual farms and warehouses are included to make
sure you are experiencing the normal simulation game. The farms are a little
different than usual; they are olive gardens that you’ll have the privilege to
farm. The buildings have their limits of entertainment; the fun runs out after
the first playthrough since you are essentially building the same city over
again.

Appealing as the
game may sound, the graphics are downright ugly. First off, the camera angles
hamper your view throughout the game. Trying to see what is going down in your
city is never an easy task. There’s the plague that has almost gone extinct with
the next-generation of games – the jaggies have returned! High resolutions won’t
address the jaggy problem either, so you’re out of luck if you are looking to
find beautiful Roman architecture. The video segments for CivCity: Rome is
atrocious; they are not acceptable even for early PS2 standards.

The presentation is not up to standards. The menus did not draw me in with any
pleasantries. The mission briefings will have players passing through them as
quickly as possible. I was expecting luscious menus full of eye candy to attract
the gamer to play longer. What I received was more or less basic menus that were
dull and uninteresting. The design isn’t necessarily shoddy, but with a
lackluster graphics engine, CivCity doesn’t allow for visually outstanding art
design.

There is more
than what meets the eye in terms of what is missing. FireFly needed to add in
some type of market for the citizens to buy their goods. The citizens end up
having to travel to the granary or warehouse to purchase their items, straight
from manufacturer themselves. With no marketplaces, residents will want to move
closer to the shop, which in turn creates an ugly landscape. Upper class
inhabitants would never want to live next to a warehouse, but in CivCity: Rome,
they do. With the pipe system for the water, in certain situations it never
travels to all the homes it is intended to, ending up leaving citizens in the
cave age without water. There is a glitch with the 1280 x 1024 resolution that
doesn’t allow you to scroll appropriately over the right building.

The replay value
of CivCity isn’t among the highest in 2006. One play through and you’ll
accomplish everything – disappointing since the simulation genre offers endless
possibilities. The real problem is that there is no presence of danger, no
difficulty, and it doesn’t instill the urge in the gamer to play the game. The
danger of rival nations stampeding in to take over with domination is never
there. The difficulty is among the simplest simulation games you can pick up and
play. Overall, CivCity doesn’t encourage the players to sit down and continue to
play after they finish their first run through.

Minimum
System Requirements:
Processor
Speed: 1.6 GHz Pentium 3, RAM: 512 MB, Video Card: 64 MB, HD Space: 2.5 Gb,
Operating System: Windows 2000 / Windows XP

Gameplay: 7.0
CivCity
follows an old model for a city builder. If you are a fan of the Pharaoh
series, you may find a home here with CivCity: Rome. It focuses around the
economy rather than any type of military action.

Graphics: 5.3
How can any PC
game try to slide by with graphics like this? I mean c’mon, jaggies is so 1997.
Beyond the jaggies, the camera angle is unbearable to the point where it will
persuade players to stop playing.

Sound: 6.0
All the sound effects are adequate. Nothing is
extraordinary to the point where it had me believing I was in Rome. If they were
to center on the depth of the audio the next time, the department would be
rounded out better.

Difficulty:
Easy
Definitely aimed for the casual crowd – easy to pick
up and play. Don’t get me wrong, the economy aspects are geared towards hardcore
gamers, but it’s among the simplest strategy games you can currently buy.

Concept: 7.0
I couldn’t
dream of a better concept for a simulation game than to build up an ancient
civilization. To allow players to build up Rome in a day, that is a thoughtful
idea. There’s an exception though, it sounds better on paper than in practice.

Overall: 6.9
As much as I
wanted to like CivCity: Rome, I couldn’t bring myself to accepting it as a
worthy simulation game. I suggest buying only if you are a hardcore gamer
searching for your next city builder to play. This is Rome after all, one of the
greatest empires in history. If they intend on making another CivCity title,
maybe they could look into revolving it around the empire Alexander built.