Recent reviews by Shuzzilay

Currently I am in the middle of an Armenian Hard long campaign and am nowhere near close to be doing done so some of what I say here may be incorrect.

There's also a decent selection of folks that were hoping for new content (factions) for the game. I share their desire but I'm also not surprised nor particularly upset about this. After all, they were just taking the very old original game and just modernizing it.

-Modern hardware support. My CPU/GPU are Ryzen 9 5900X & MSI RTX 3080 Suprim X. In the original Rome I'm lucky to match my monitor's refresh rate (120Hz) in medium-sized battles on 1080p. I play on an ultrawide monitor (3440x1440). The remaster not only has support for these resolutions but very high unit count battles play well and I easily match my monitor's refresh rate. It also has proper borderless window support. There's honestly a lot to say about this point but the main takeaway is that it is extremely beneficial.
-Campaign AI improvements. This is multi-faceted. Anyone who is a long time player of Rome knows there are just certain areas that the AI struggle to move through, such as where Armenia borders with Scythia. This meant that AI in the region would be relegated to Africa, Egypt, modern-day Turkey, and the middle east. Theoretically, if an AI captured all of those regions, it would almost never cross into present-day Russia in order to get to Europe (this was coupled with the AI almost never using fleets to load an invading army). The AI aren't perfect strategic masterminds, but they are definitely more aggressive now, and I have found myself surprised on a few occasions on their attacks (something that normally didn't happen in the original Rome). There's also diplomacy improvements. I actually had a faction demand payment or else they'd attack me. When I refused, they attacked. Who would have guessed. This almost never happened to me in the original (happened once I recall). AI diplomacy is a bit predictable and sometimes overly optimistic, but generally it's better over the original in my opinion.
-Battle AI pathing improvements. Anyone who is a long time player of the original knows that sometimes the AI (even on the hardest difficulties) can be a bit stupid and just casually march straight into your units (rather than charge at the final moment), or sometimes have awkward pathing up to your units (seems to be relevated to elevation, I think the AI logic wants to fight on even elevation, which in execution leads to clunky pathing). Pathing improvements are also noticeable in in sieges. Town squares are NOTORIOUSLY terrible to navigate units in for the original game. It feels like the town square (in the original Rome) has exactly 1 AI pathing node in the center. Any long time players of the first game know this pain: often when you try to move to or attack a unit in the center of a town square, your own units will take a road alongside the center and then bank a hard 90 degree turn to reach the center. The remaster flows a lot better, I can definitely tell there are more AI pathing nodes for them to take. On this point, though, there is something the remaster didn't touch which I'll mention in the cons section.
-New faction bios. Minor. Specifically in reference to the original game's "unplayable" factions. The bios weren't there originally, and now they are. Cool. Also they added a launcher option to unlock all factions, a minor touch to streamline the process.
-Modernized UI. I struggled with putting this one here in the pros. Myself and a lot of players do not like some things about the new UI, but I think a lot of the distaste comes from just being so used to the original. If you've never played Rome, or have barely touched another Total War, then I think the remastered's UI will be more intuitive for you. For everyone else, though, it feels a bit clunky. I consider it a modernized UI because it tries to consolidate information into discernible categories. Not that I agree with the execution, but I can see that was the intent.
-Unit balance. Not a lot of balance changes happened here, but the ones that did happen I consider for the best. Overall a plus.
-Rebels use agents. Minor, but overall a plus.
-Steam workshop mod support. Always a plus.
-You get the original game when you buy the remaster and if you own the original game the remaster is 50% off.
-Togglable game settings for remastered versus original.


-The new merchant agent. It is new, so that's nice, but execution feels a bit lukewarm. Sure, there are new mechanics involved and you can manipulate resource nodes or trade, but it just doesn't quite feel that fleshed out. You can use the agent to monopolize trades nodes (either your own or another faction's) but seemingly it is almost never worth the effort. You stand to gain a lot more by just using the agent to trade with a city.
- Public order and squalor. Feral said they reworked the squalor mechanic. Any long time player knows that squalor was the original game's main population control mechanic and unrest source. In the remastered version it just feels like they just moved the scaling unrest source to "distance from capital". In the original game distance to capital wasn't a major factor of unrest, it was always squalor. In my Armenia campaign there is a city in Turkey that has a whopping 50% unrest from distance to capital. In the original that would be significantly less.
-Loading screen splash art. Overall I much prefer the original's red-and-black silhouette art, but this doesn't feel like enough of an issue to list it as a con. Again, mods maybe? :)

-The UI. I already touched on it above but would I be remiss if I didn't vent my frustration here. Just wish there was a way to revert to the original UI. Mods maybe? :) (I've found that 110% or 120% UI scaling helps a lot).
-Siege AI pathing. AI navigation is still really clunky around walls and gates. It is like this in the original game but I had hoped it would be improved in the remaster.
-Some general portraits. A bit of a minor point but I don't know why they did this. You know those meme images where someone takes a face and uses the Photoshop drag tool to warp the face into a frown, or a grimace? And it looks a bit stretched or funky? It feels like that is what they did to Tiberius Brutus for the House of Brutii. I don't know why they bothered. The original was better. The faction bios also were changed; they feel a bit sandblasted of character.
-The AI logic for the skirmishing mechanic is noticeably worse. In the original game I found the skirmishing mode to be extremely reliable. AI would always prioritize avoiding melee and would reliably maneuver. They would only be caught if run down by cavalry or flanked or outran. In the remastered version I've found my missile cavalry stupidly letting infantry units charge them (and then retreating but losing men in the process).
-Unit portraits are worse and less unique. The original game had a certain charm where it felt like every unit in the game had its own stance on the portrait card. The remastered unit portraits feel like each unit is standing up for a mugshot.