Game Review - by Jeremiah Pratt
Following the highly successful title or Caesar II. We have a new challenger in the mist. Caesar III brings us an another look at how real time strategy should be done.

Storyline:
As governor of your appointed land, you have a task at hand: build cities, commence trade, and make money. The way you approach this is your job. You must strive to gain wealth and power. Including pleasing Caesar himself, but that's not all. You must face natural disasters, fires, collapsing buildings, and invading barbarians. You Fail and say hi to your new friend Leo the Lion. You succeed, and they may just crown you the new Caesar!

Features:
One Great Feature that stands out is the right click. You can right click on any thing and see what's going on. For example if you right click on building you can see if it needs workers. Or if you right click on a peasant they'll talk to you; expressing there needs and so on. Another stand out feature is computer ran microeconomics. Unlike Caesar II, where you have do all tasks. Here you may assign the computer to concentrate on selected tasks. And the computer will automatically, assign laborers and other things. This becomes helpful as your city grows, and things are happening all over the place.

Graphics:
The Graphics in Caesar III are breath taking. At first your small tents don't give justice to Roman Architecture. But when your city evolves and you're constructing senate house, aqueducts, and hippodromes. The Sights are to die for; I get special satisfaction on witnessing my city evolve. And look like an eighth wonder of the world. Plus the terrain is designed well, and rivals the likes of AOE (age of empires).

Sound FX:
The sounds are nice; mostly all I heard was collapsing buildings, and raging fires. But there are allot of really cool ambient sounds within the game. I didn't really notice a definite soundtrack, except at the install screen. But maybe that's because I was to busy waiting for the dreaded crisis alarm. I also enjoyed the little voice oversee that were done in the game. That's definitely a little gift that Impressions snuck in there.

Gameplay:
The Gameplay in Caesar III, is intense It demands deep thinking and efficient actions. You main goal is to get immigrants to move in. After you're populous grows, you must think about food production. Next you must place prefecture and engineering posts. These will prevent fires and collapsing buildings. It is a good idea to have these two items close to residential areas. But the plot thickens; there are five gods to please. You piss off any of these gods and feel their wrath. Be sure to hold festivals and build churches. Don't mess with the gods, go ahead and ignore them and see what happens J. In my opinion the efficiency of your town depends on the roads built. IF you built a maze of streets, your people will be walking all over the place. Use this to your advantage and keep your streets simple. What's really cool is the game is mission based. So you have different goals to meet each time. Making it really interesting to play, and see what's next. There are so many other elements; I couldn't cover them all. This is just a piece of the pie; the rest will fill you up.

Overall:
Overall, Caesar III requires you to think allot. It teaches you how to build, thrive, survive, and please the emperor. Every element combined gives Caesar III a Sim City of Rome Feel. Although the game is fairly hard, it is fun to play. The greatest enjoyment comes from witnessing a fully evolved Roman City. It almost brings a tear to my eye.