Imperator: Rome signals Paradox’s return to grand strategy, and critics have many thoughts. Today fans will find out if the developer has managed to imbue its game with significant changes, or if it’s slightly too close to its previous efforts.
In our review, Phil praised Imperator: Rome as rewarding and filled with depth, marred primarily by a clunky UI that’s somewhat unavoidable. “Without prior knowledge of Paradox grand strategy games you’ll struggle to navigate protocols like this,” he acknowledged.
This, alongside a slightly lacking tutorial, led to his score of 8/10 for the title. It seems critics broadly agree, praising the title’s extreme attention to detail but noting it’s missing some of the character and flavor of previous titles.
Imperator is sitting at an aggregate of 85 on OpenCritic, with Metacritic yet to display enough reviews. In general, it appears to be a high scoring release, though with as with most of Paradox’s grand strategies, there’s room for improvements post-launch. Eurogamer, for example, believes more could be done to give the in-game event a feeling of impact.
That said, let’s jump into some the Imperator: Rome review scores:
- PCGamesN: 8/10
- IGN: 8.0/10
- GamingNexus: 9.5/10
- Destructoid: 9/10
- PCGamer: 92/100
- Strategy Gamer: 3/5
- Eurogamer: No label
If you’re not quite up to date with Imperator: Rome, here’s an overview of its attitude towards historical authenticity. We also spoke to studio manager Johan Andersson back in December, who told us what’s different, plans for expansions, and much more.
Related: Love complexity? Here are the best strategy games on PC.
Our news editor Rich also took the game for a spin in its earlier stages and concluded that it plays like Paradox’s greatest hits. Still, if you’d rather take the word of a country, it has that too. Armenia’s official Twitter account is also a big fan of the game and its prevalence in the time period.