2006 has seen a noticeable influx in Ancient Rome themed city-builder PC strategy titles, with the releases of games like CivCity: Rome and Caesar IV, for example. Having played them all, Haemimont Games' Glory of the Roman Empire, however, has proven to be the most enjoyable of the bunch, with its lengthy campaign, super-intuitive interface, appealing production values and an all round fun, pick-up-and-play game design approach to a genre that can often be slow and overly complex. I should preface all of my compliments though, as Glory has been specifically developed for the casual gaming audience, which means that the hardcore of the hardcore strategy/simulation fans probably won't find enough depth or challenge to meet their needs. However, for its target demographic and for anyone willing to give it a shot, there is a fine game here to discover.

Glory of the Roman Empire's lead gameplay offering is its massive single player campaign, which puts you in the role of a Roman Governor tasked with expanding the Empire's growth and status. This city-building campaign takes you across ten or so historical cities, such as Florence, Pompeii, Rome and Syracuse, undertaking over thirty important missions in a non-linear order, all to fulfil your duties to the Roman Senate. There isn't much of a plot to focus on throughout the campaign, other than short pre-mission briefings, which is a tad disappointing, but the overall design is an enjoyable ride, despite the lack of a more prevalent storyline, and a fairly long one at that, clocking within the ten to fifteen hour range. And on top of that, there is a Free Building mode for building the Roman city of your dreams, without any mission goals or structure, and a Challenge mode that allows you to complete a short series of random missions and upload your score online to compare with other players on a special Internet leaderboard.

But back to the campaign and its 30+ missions have you completing a fairly basic assortment of economic and populace management objectives, such as constructing a certain number of a specific building type, growing the population to a target number, earn a set number of resources, protecting the city from fires, rebuilding morale and restoring order after riots, keeping citizens from getting sick and so on. While progressing to achieve these goals, you also have to manage the food and supply needs of your citizens, establish trade routes with other cities for needed supplies, maintain slave workloads, gather resources to keep the city prosperous and amass a military defense for protection (though there really isn't too much combative action - this is a city simulation game, not an RTS). All of these missions are individual from one another, however, so there is no direct carryover from one mission to the next. That may irk those who like to watch a personally developed city grow over the course of an entire game, but with this setup, Glory of the Roman Empire creates a gaming environment that enables quick in-and-out playability that's tailored for the casual audience.

Above everything else, the gameplay interface is clearly Glory's crowning achievement, in conjunction with a helpful opening tutorial. The main building commands are controlled by a radial pop-up menu, which puts everything you need to start construction right at the convenience of a quick right-click. Within this radial menu are submenus for each of the building categories - Food Production (farms, bakeries, vineyards), Support (barracks, prefectures, herbalists), Basic (houses and shelters), Aesthetics (trees, roads, gardens and other decorations), Public (altars, taverns, markets), Monuments (arches, temples, statues and coliseums) and finally the Production & Workshops (woodcutter lodges, tailor shops, mines) - all of which are laid out for easy viewing and intuitive navigation.

Camera controls are also easy to work with, using the mouse wheel to adjust the pitch and zoom level, with a landscape map in the upper-right corner that makes for quick movement from point to point around each area. Finally, all of the economic and settlement overview charts are instantly accessible via circular buttons lining the upper-left corner of the screen, as is the game speed adjustment tab, the mission objective list and various notification bubbles that pop up during play to warn of urgent problems in the city, or to notify you of the special achievements you've earned. These features are all incredibly well streamlined and simple to manage.

In line with the rest of its elements, the graphics and audio of Glory probably aren't going to wow the seriously hardcore PC crowd and their beastly gaming rigs running stunners like Company of Heroes, but it's still a beautiful looking (and sounding) title. The visual style is exceptionally pleasant, presenting great lighting and shadowing (captured in full glory by a real-time night/day cycle), authentic architecture, lushly detailed landscapes and a ton of subtle graphical touches, such as smoke billowing from chimney tops, trees swaying in the breeze and flocks of birds fluttering to and fro - there's even a cool effect before each mission during the briefing process, where a painted still image transitions into in-game engine. Examined up close and personal, the buildings and character models do look a little angular, but from afar (where you'll be playing the game for the vast majority of the time), watching the citizens carry on their daily lives is a lovely sight to behold.

Much like the graphics, the audio is filled with subtle sounds and effects that'll draw you. Listening to the effects of everyday Roman life, from woodcutters chopping down trees and water rushing to farm noises and miners hard at work, truly encapsulates you into a rich atmosphere. Except for the pre-mission narration (which defaults in English but can actually be changed to Latin speech for full authenticity) there isn't much spoken dialogue going on between the citizens and slaves, and the music, though appealing enough, doesn't do anything more than lend a background compliment to everything else.

Taken for what it is, a casual gamer's city building sim, Glory of the Roman Empire is a supremely well fashioned videogame with all the trimmings to hook you in and keep you happily playing along for hours on end. Although it doesn't have the astounding depth or complexity as some of the more popular simulation titles, both facets are still represented well enough to make for a satisfying game, and as far as the control and menu interfaces are concerned, every other game in the genre could learn a thing or two from what Glory of the Roman Empire brings to the table.

Reviewed by Matt Litten for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).