Praetorians Review

Praetorians lets you relive battles from Julius Caesar’s campaigns through ancient Europe and Africa, somewhere around 50BC. Most of you won’t have been around to actually see those battles, and the rest of you have probably forgotten much of what you were taught in history class, but nonetheless, Pyro Studios chose to follow history rather than making up a new, fake storyline. Therefore, the missions you get to play are at least somewhat based on how it might have happened back then. Do you really care? I know I didn’t when my armies were being flanked, and I had to hastily send horsemen onto pikemen. Any RTS fan will agree that this may not be the best tactical decision ever made, although it does indicate that Praetorians is not for those who turn off their brains when holding a mouse and a keyboard.

As a school boy, I always did love reading about the Roman army. Age of Empires is among my favorite games ever, and Gladiator is just one kick-ass movie. So I should probably hit myself in the head for having waited this long to buy Praetorians. It’s just impressive when you’re commanding your legionnaires to move in turtle formation in an assault on the enemy archers, while calling on your own archers for additional support. And it’s even nicer when you win.

GAMEPLAY
Praetorians works with the usual rock-paper-scissor gameplay most RTS games use, in which certain units work best against other certain units. For instance, pikemen are deadly against cavalry, archers are best kept at a distance, and regular heavy infantrymen are at their best when attacking over short distances. There are siege weapons that can be built using auxiliary infantry (you could consider them useful villagers, with fighting abilities), and there are also medics, scouts and heroes. Scouts deserve special mention as they are vital for your war effort, especially in single-player. Marching through the terrain without having checked for enemy units with your wolf or eagle scouts can be quite surprising, and Caesar doesn’t like surprises.

“Marching through the terrain without having checked for enemy units with your wolf or eagle scouts can be quite surprising, and Caesar doesn’t like surprises."

Praetorians does not have do the usual base building or resource gathering. Instead, there are several villages placed across the map. Taking those villages allows you to recruit troops, though you are limited by your Honour Points and Population. The latter ‘grows back’ slowly, the former works slightly differently. For the stronger troops, such as Gladiators and Praetorians, you’ll need Honour Points, which are acquired only by doing battle. Of course, it goes without saying that you’ll get more Honour Points by actually being victorious: making the right tactical decisions means you will soon be able to build a much stronger army. Recruiting additional troops takes time, though, from a few seconds for scouts and medics up to a minute or two for heavy infantry. In single player, this means you’ll have to wait before rushing into battle; in multiplayer, this means you will have to choose wisely; otherwise you’ll be faced with an enemy attacking your villages while you wait for your units to finish their training. Embarrassing, to say the least.

Another important note is that troops come in groups – order legionnaires, for instance, and thirty little soldiers will soon join your forces. You can also have units of the same type join each other, split up, or occasionally even promote or demote. This is particularly handy when you have several smaller groups, as you can join them into one larger, stronger group again. Or, if you are low on troops but have many terrain points to defend, you can choose to split up your troops so as to cover more space with the same number of forces.

With a heavy focus on battle, and much less on building cities and defences, it comes as no surprise that terrain also plays a rather important role in Praetorians. High ground is very valuable, especially when you have it and the enemy does not. Not only does higher ground give a longer line of sight, your archers are far deadlier from above and your troops are better defended than they are in open terrain. While the game also features plenty of weather effects, they’re just there for show – rain and snow do not actually influence your troops, if the tutorial is to be believed.

Among the slew of real-time strategy games released last year, there was one great game in particular, namely Rome: Total War. It, too, put you in command of ancient armies. However, Rome: Total War isn’t exactly one of the easiest games around, so for some it should be pleasant to find out that Praetorians is much more a mixture between Ground Control (no base building, focus on battle) and Age of Empires (easy to learn, ancient settings). The maps are somewhat linear, but with the variation in terrain and multiple paths to take there is enough strategy to go around. I personally wasn’t very fond of the Total War series’ difficulty, so Praetorians was a welcome addition to my collection of strategy games. However, it also must be said that you won’t be seeing thousands of units on-screen, which results in a less overwhelming gameplay experience. The missions assigned to you are often rather straightforward, but, nonetheless, a lot of fun. For instance, the defensive missions, in which you are ordered to hold a fortress or pair of bridges against countless waves of enemies, are very neat. Instead of just building more and more units, you can actually use the terrain in front of you to surprise the enemy (hide in forests, attack from behind), and you can put your units onto the walls to barrage the enemy with death from above. On the flipside, when attacking fortresses nothing is more rewarding than blowing away an entire enemy unit with ballista weapons. Insert an evil, sinister laugh right here.

The artificial intelligence in the game is very nice, too. For instance, there was one mission in particular where I had gathered my forces on high ground, preparing to attack the Gaul barbarians in the area. These enemy troops were very close to me, but they did not attack, knowing full well it would be pointless to attack my superior position. They did however ‘tease’ my troops by occasionally sending infantry to do a skirmish with my army – apparently, the enemy AI was trying to stall my advancements to their own village. They even tried flanking my army from both sides, as well as attacking my undefended village from the rear. Impressive, especially since I played on Easy (shoot me, I couldn’t even handle Rome: Total War… RTS isn’t my strongpoint).

Another thing players may both like and dislike about the combat is that engaged units cannot disengage. Once a group has started fighting an enemy unit in melee combat, the fight will continue until one of the two has been eliminated. This is somewhat realistic (no running from a fray), but at the same time annoying when you wish your weak units would just run away from those berserk enemies. Of course, units attacking from a distance, such as archers, can always stop their attacks and move elsewhere – it’s just melee fighting that cannot be interrupted. Not being able to disengage does sometimes make battle somewhat confusing and hectic, but that didn’t particularly bother me.

TECHNOLOGY
Praetorians’ 3D graphics are very nice. You’ll have plenty of units on-screen (though, as said before, not as many as in the Total War games) and some nice special effects (siege weapons, fire arrows descending onto the enemy), all while experiencing perfectly fine performance as well. My secondary computer, an AMD Athlon 1200 with a GeForce3 Ti200, had no trouble running the game on its highest settings. It is unfortunate, however, that the highest settings are limited to a resolution of 1024x768. The details in the game aren’t very abundant, but then again, it’s some two years old by now, so that shouldn’t really bother anyone.

The sound is not exactly the most impressive ever heard, but it just does the job nicely. The voice acting in the in-game cut scenes is rather poor, but luckily you won’t have to put up with it all that much. The music sets the tone nicely, and changes to heavier tunes when combat beckons – it’s nice to be able to rely on the music to tell you if you’re under attack or not. All in all, the game’s technical side is decent, with no major flaws or strong points.

MULTIPLAYER
The multiplayer part of the game is very nice, especially since you won’t have to bother building up cities, gathering resources and advancing through technology levels. It’s just you, the map, and the enemy; with villages being the key points to battle for and bridges, rivers, canyons and whatnot acting as choke points to be used toward your tactical advantage.

“The skirmishes usually don’t last very long, making this an excellent game to play for a quick fix.”

The skirmishes usually don’t last very long, making this an excellent game to play for a quick fix. The AI handles multiplayer nicely, although you’ll want to battle against human players for some real competition. Unfortunately, the speed of the game also takes away some of the strategy, as there is less time to scout and prepare your forces than there is in the single player campaigns.

What I particularly liked about the multiplayer is that enemies close to extinction are automatically revealed to the player. This prevents battles from being drawn out because the opponent is hiding: you simply can’t hide from defeat. One downside can be noted though, the multiplayer does get repetitive fast. It was obviously not Pyro Studios’ main point of attention. Praetorians doesn’t have many things to make it stand out. Nor does it have any real show-stopping flaws. The strength of the game lies in its settings, and the fact that it’s easy to learn and quick fun: you can be tactical without having to read through five manuals. It might be somewhat disappointing to learn that it doesn’t feature armies with thousands of troops, or that it won’t blow you away with spectacular battles, but, all in all, it’s one enjoyable strategy game.

The good:

- Easy to learn

- Focus on quick action

- 3D graphics with top performance

The bad:

- Doesn’t really stand out

- Multiplayer sometimes a bit too fast

- No interesting storyline

[Reviewed using an AthlonXP 2500+, 1GB RAM, 256MB GeForce6800 GT, Windows XPSP2, DirectX 9.0c]