Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion - Official Expansion Pack (PC CD)

Barbarian Invasion is the first expansion pack to the highly acclaimed Rome: Total War (the second being Alexander). The expansion picks up a few centuries after the original 'republic' campaign in Rome: Total War. Now the Roman Empire has split into two parts, and it's up to you to help defend the empire as waves after waves of barbarian tribes invade Europe.

The game now features ten new playable factions: The Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Huns, Goths, Franks, Saxons, Alemmani, Sassanids, Sarmatians and Vandals. A number of non-playable factions are included as well, among which are the Romano-Britons, Lombards, Burgundians, Slavs and Berbers etc.
These help add some variety into the game play, for instance, if you play as the Saxons and you conquer a certain amount of Roman towns in Britain, then the Romano-British will appear to wrestle them back from you.

The single biggest feature of the expansion is the ability for the Barbarian tribes (but not including the Saxons) to become hordes. This means they can abandon their settlements in search of a new homeland. By selecting the horde function you can recruit every male villager into a soldier, turning your faction into a formidable military force.

Every faction has its own strengths and weaknesses, and they have varying degrees of difficulty. For instance it is rather easy to complete the game as the Huns, but very difficult to win as the Western Roman Empire, as you'd expect.
One of the other new features is religion, as the Roman Empires now have Pagan and Christian cities. This means having to perform a difficult balancing act - send a Christian to govern a Pagan city (or vice versa) and you'll end up with rioting or even a rebellion on your hands. The two Roman Empires can also fragment into smaller rebelling factions each with their own usurper emperors. This usually happens on the distant borders of your empire, especially if your territories are infested with barbarians.
Ultimately what this means is that the expansion is more micro-management heavy than the original Rome. You'll need good managing skills if you want to succeed in this game.

The game is a lot of fun to play and it can be very challenging, but it is a pale shadow of its predecessor. This game seems rushed and unpolished in comparison with Rome. For instance, some of the unit skins on the soldiers are unoriginal, grainy or badly modelled. There are also no new music or voice-overs - bad examples of this include Gothic soldiers with Greek accents on the campaign map and barbarian voices in battle.

I also didn't like the addition of so many 'fantasy' units into the game, including the Tolkienesqe 'Hounds of Culaan' or the Arthurian 'Grail Knights', or the Amazonian style 'Roxolani Warrior Virgins'. The Roman ballista chariots are also a very odd addition.
The 'historical battles' section hasn't been given much of a look either, with only two new battles being added, these being the battle of Chalons and the mythical battle of Badon Hill.

The real-time battles have been given some new additions, such the option to fight a battle at night, and the ability of some soldiers to swim across rivers or go into a 'schiltron' formation. These add some nice tactical touches to the game.

Overall this is a good fun game that simply lacks polish. The Late Roman period is a fascinating era in history, and it's a shame that the Creative Assembly didn't bother to give the period as much attention as the Republican period in the original Rome. This is made worse considering there are a number of games set in the republican period but only a few are set in this era.

It's still worth getting at this price though.

This is my favourite total war game, and a great addition to the rome series. I actually prefer this to the orginal because the romans aren't as powerful, it's more balanced. I also think the period of rome's decline and fall is very intresting and this is a great way to experiance it. I would recommned this to all total war players!

works better than the first Rome total war that was produced (gold is better than white). both though suffer from major freezing and control issues, the game often bombs out long before the finish. tip: save after ANYTHING you do!

the supplier is prompt, and the CDs well packaged, no problems there.