Praetorians - HD Remaster

Review

“The year is 59 B.C; Julius Caesar has formed an alliance with Marcus Crassus, the richest man in Rome, and Pompey the Great, Rome’s most renowned general. Together their goal is to control not just Rome, but the Roman empire”.

On the main menu screen, you will find Single Player, Multiplayer, Options, Credits and Quit. Selecting Single Player will then give you the choice of Campaign, Load Game, Load Sequence and Skirmish. After selecting Campaign, you can then select to go through the Tutorials or go into the campaign Crossing the River Arar.

The tutorial consists of four chapters, the first two tutorials have an easy difficulty setting and the other two tutorials have normal settings. Entering the tutorials will take you over the basics required to play the game. You’ll have scenarios to complete in each of the tutorials as you put together all that you have learned. If you’re experienced in these types of games, or just fancy learning as you play, then you can by-pass the tutorials and jump straight into the Campaign, Skirmish or Multiplayer.

In the campaign Crossing the River Arar, you can choose to set the difficulty settings to Easy, Normal or Hard. After a small introduction you find yourself and your troops in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. From here you’ll have to complete objectives in order to move forward to the next mission. The Crossing the River Arar mission has four objectives: Find Divitiacus, Caius Titus Must Survive, Capture the Villages of Pons and Dubis. You need to meet up with Divitiacus, who has mounted noblemen at your disposal. However, before then you’ll need to build a bridge across the river for your troops. There are two bridge points where you can build and cross the river; you can build both or just one if you choose.

Reaching the bridge crossings will require you to move along paths and through terrain where the enemy can be hiding, ready for a surprise attack. To help you against surprise attacks you have Wolf and Hawk Scout; sending the Hawk out to a location will allow you to see any enemy hidden by the Fog of War. Using the Hawk won’t reveal any enemy who may be hiding in dense patches of trees; you will need to send your Wolf into the trees to reveal any hidden enemy. Once you have found these hiding barbarians you can then decide how you want to deal with them.

To capture the villages of Pons and Dubis you will need to clear the area of the enemy and destroy their garrison (indicated by an orange flag), which will then force the Chieftain to leave the village. When this happens, you can kill the Chieftain and build a new garrison by demoting one of your troops and have them build it. Once built you can select your Centurion and right click on the village. Then you can recruit new troops from the village, helping to boost the strength of your army. Demoted troops can also build structures such as Defense Towers and Catapults and they can make Repairs to damaged structures.

There are various types of troops you can take control of, such as Auxiliary Infantry, Legionnaires, Spearmen, Archers etcetera. Each has their own benefits and weaknesses; they also have different Formations for different situations. Legionnaires have a normal formation as well as Turtle formation, where they encase themselves within their shields, protecting them as they move forward. Archers can improve their range by selecting their Stationary formation, which will leave them more vulnerable to melee attacks. Spearmen have Stationary and Protecting formations; Stationary formation can be used to block paths and hold off enemy charges, and the Protecting formation will give you more cover against enemy arrows. Using the correct formation of your troops at the right time will be the deciding factor as to whether or not you succeed.  Physicians can heal your troops if they are within the Physicians Green Aura radius; you can also Fast Heal injured units.

If you fancy some multiplayer action you can select Multiplayer, where you’ll find any games available to you. There is a list of games detailing the Game Name, Map Details and Players. You can create your own game for other folks or friends to join. You can set the game to Private if you don’t want random folks joining you. There are sixteen multiplayer maps to choose from and you can have up to five Players or CPU players. You will be able to choose the Colour, Team and Race (Romans, Barbarians, Egyptians or Random)

Skirmish is where you can play against up to five CPU players, choosing Easy, Normal or Hard game difficulty. You have the same options as in Multiplayer in setting up for your game: Colour, Team and Race.

In the Options you’ll find settings for Video (Full Screen, Resolution and V-Sync), Sound (Master, Music, Effects, Ambient, Voice and Interface Volume sliders, Unit ACKS and Mute), and Game (Scroll Speed, Continuous Mouse Scroll, Disable ToolTips, Show Civilsation Colours, Camera Distance and Troops in Multiple Groups).

I’ve never played the original game but have enjoyed playing the Remastered version thus far. It looks good and runs well, and I haven’t found any bugs while playing. I did have a few problems with trying to place my units facing a certain direction, but I think that’s more down to me (I r n00b n pr0ud!), not playing these types of games very much. I found the game easy to learn especially with the hands-on tutorial. Praetorians HD Remastered is certainly worth a bash. Thumbs UP!!

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!