RTW is IMO an awkward hybrid game that retains the core concept of TW as it was first seen in STW and adds builds on many gameplay elements/features from role playing games, conventional RTSs' and more strategy oriented titles such as the Civilisation series some of which were introduced in MTW, increasing their importance and relevance in the game.

It had the advantage also of presenting the TW battles in a 3D environment for the first time, essentially opening like this the TW games to a much wider audience than the smaller, somewhat more hardcore wargaming following that they held up to that point.

All interfaces were laboriously reworked from previous TW titles to be as accessible as possible - sometimes this goes so far (as in the direction arrows that denounce the front of a unit while deploying by dragging and the green arrows underneath units in order to "see them" in melee blobs) that the whole game feels like a series of neon lit traffic management exercise.

The main advantage of the game is IMO its wow factor (the scale, the graphics, the explosions, the towns and villages, the siege machines, the closeness the action can be observed, the hollywood/Gladiator feel), that especially at the time (i guess in terms of PC game releases this is a few light years away now) was very strong. RTW was hailed in the heat of the moment - without any serious supporting clue IMO as "the king of PC strategy games" by reviewers that seemed very happy that this series they liked (or they've heard it was good) even when the graphics were "outdated" and "obsolete" etc etc finally managed to "break" from the shadows of hardcore wargaming - the fog of war and the tiled map and 3D graphics had done the trick. However after the wow factor died out - (and it died fast) the vanilla game revealed itself as unchallenging and tedious even to those same raving reviewers - even the graphical virtues of the games were not spared as quickly as a year from the original release ("Rome's engine has aged less gracefully than we origially thought it would - Although we praised it in the October review the AI turned out to be a major problem of the game").

The community half enraged - half taken by the game that included plenty of bugs and a generally accepted drop in gameplay standard, jumped with the influx of "new blood" on the game with mixed fellings that ranged from dedication and love to reaction and rejection and made more modifications out of it than anyone would have hoped - investing probably thousands of work hours in altering the game and coming up with interesting graphics, skins, concepts, periods, infotexts, gameplay etc etc. This made the day of many and essentially turned the game into a "platform", that is undeniably a plus.

Personally i've been through the full course of stages i think - the initial wow! - the subsequent uh-oh... - the predictable gah! - the inevitable awwwlright... - the hopeful... right! - the predictable gah! - and finally the blissful and liberating bye-bye.

Many Thanks

Noir