Published By: Sierra Studios and Impressions
Reviewed by KaCee
4/4/2000

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First Impressions:

Graphics:

C3's graphics are quite nice, and certainly a step up from C2's insistence that you play in 256. The city display in C3 is bright and active and amusing to just sit back and watch (except there's usually something else needing your attention). It's a bit of a pity that you can't zoom in and out, particularly for battles, although there is a minimap on the tool frame that gives a bit of a wider perspective. You can rotate the main view fairly easily by the tool frame, so at least you can't lose something behind a larger building.

The pictures shown on the game box are a bit misleading; while there are a few nice animated sequences, pretty much the entire game play is from a single point of view overlooking the city.

Where C3 really comes alive is its walkers: the people that work in the various buildings who wander around to provide services. The walkers will randomly choose a direction at every intersection, making it important to give them as few intersections as possible to better control their movements. You could build a hospital right near a housing block, but if the doctor walker always heads the other way around your farms instead, the houses are considered to not have hospital access. Part of learning how to build a successful city comes from experience with how the walkers move, how far they'll go, and what kind of city layouts best suit which services.

The game also has several overlays to allow you to clearly see various parts of the city separated from others, and how walkers are affecting what areas. The water overlay shows where pipes exist and what houses have water access, the education overlay shows which houses are getting school, library, and/or academy access, etc. This feature is fairly easy and clear, and definitely useful. One of the screen shots here demonstrates the entertainment overlay, showing houses that have good entertainment access compared to others lower on the screen, as depicted by the size of the pillar.

Sound/Music:

Sound is not crucial to the game since all alerts come in the form of messages as well, but I find the sound indispensable nonetheless. As you scroll over your city view, you will hear the common goings-on of the various buildings, but should a fire break out or enemies attack, you can often figure out where it's happening quickly by the sound if you have proper stereo. Also, clicking on the people brings up a screen saying who they are and what they're doing as well as a comment from them on what they think of your city at the moment. While their words are presented textually as well, it's a very nice feature of the game to be able to hear precisely what they're whining about so you can fix it. Odd that all of these ancient Romans have various British accents, but since they're speaking English for our benefit anyway, it's forgivable.

Gameplay:

The tool frame is well laid out, with fairly self-evident buttons for the functions and buildings. It doesn't take long to figure out how to build and move things around.

While learning the ins and outs of how to build a Roman city is easy enough courtesy of the teaching assignments, each scenario brings its own challenges that make the game interesting throughout. Despite saving the game regularly, I found frequently that I had to start the scenario over completely and rethink how I was going to tackle it. Usually the challenge is to get enough food to your people, either because the farm-suitable land is in an awkward place on the map or there isn't any at all, in which case you have to trade for food or hope there's enough places on the water to fish.

There are also other challenges to overcome, such as wolves that like to munch on your cityfolk, earthquakes that destroy land, fires, enemies, and let's not forget the wrath of the Gods, should you fail to please them with sufficient temples and festivals.

The net result is a game that forces the player to think, plan, conceptualize and compromise. For players that get stuck, the Impressions site has a discussion group where game experts provide tips and tricks. There are also cheats listed on the site, and frankly, I've had to use them a couple of times just to get past a scenario that was driving me nuts.

You pass a scenario by fulfilling five requirements: culture, prosperity, peace, favor with Caesar, and population. In the toughest scenarios, I found that I just couldn't get those last few prosperity or culture points without running out of food or money or both. There are probably ways to win, but after awhile you just want to get on to the next bit. There's also the option of playing on several difficulty levels that make life a bit easier or tougher, depending on what you're looking for.

The only bit of the game play I found frustrating is it can be a bit annoying when your armies are fighting an enemy and remain steadfastly in formation instead of all joining the fight. You've got ten more guys standing around while the first couple are being munched. But I don't know if that's the game or some kind of Roman tradition.

Enjoyment:

Despite my few complaints, I really love this game. C2 ended up being pathetically easy once I realized that if I got a city going successfully and pocketed my salary, I could carry that treasure to the next city, donate it, and beat the scenario every time. C3 doesn't allow that. While you can still bring your own funds along and thus maybe have a better start to a new scenario, there are so many other challenges that money alone won't help you. For instance, building a bunch of nice coliseums around won't do anyone any good if you don't have the workers available to run them. And you won't get those workers unless you've got plenty of available housing, food, and other services. It's this interconnectedness of the city system that I love in C3. You're really juggling everything at once, and you can't always maintain complete control. It's challenging, but not impossible.

Multiplayer:

C3 has no multiplayer capability. Even though there are battles and such, there's really no room in the game for multiplay, since each player would be spending more time worrying about Gods and food and buildings and such than fighting each other.

Overall Impression:

As a lover of strategy and sim games, I'm pretty fussy about things like ease of building and challenging scenarios. I don't want it to be tough to figure out what button does what or where certain things can go; I want to be able to plop the stuff down easily enough, but have the challenge and strategy in where and when to plop it down. C3 gives me that. I don't want to find out that I can trick the computer and win every time, such as in Warcraft or Age of Empires where you can count on the computer opponent to sit and wait for you to come to them, and thus pick them off slowly. No, in C3 when someone wants to attack you, they'll do it on their terms and you'd better be ready, or else.

C3 is one of those games that you start poking around with, and suddenly five hours have passed by, your stomach is rumbling and you've accomplished nothing else with your day. Ah, now that's the life!

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

None, that I know of. This is a fairly genderless game, beyond the historical fact of patriarchal rule. The most prominent women in the game are the market ladies, who are essential to the houses since they bring food and goods, but their gender really is inconsequential. I don't recall the game ever referring to the player by gender, simply as "you." I'm fairly confident that enjoying this game really depends on liking this general game type, and not on gender.