Praetorians was the first game I ever played, so I was incredibly hyped for this remaster and bought it within minutes of it dropping on Steam. As such, it's very probable that I'm seeing the game through rose-tinted glasses.

Nevertheless, Praetorians is a solid little RTS game that certainly feels old. If you come in with the experience of having played something like Total War, it's gonna feel incredibly stripped down and feature-bare, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; the game is really boiled down to fundamentals like army composition, positioning, and knowing what ability to use when. But beyond that, there a few clever and unique little gameplay mechanics that I feel add a lot to the experience - for instance, dynamic construction and destruction of bridges, every unit being able to receive a field demotion to become a builder unit, and so on and so forth.

On top of this, there's even a good bit of asymmetry between the three ingame factions - Romans, Barbarians, and Egyptians. Small variations make for interesting changes to gameplay style - for instance, Roman builders can hold their own in a fight while Egyptian builders can massively accelerate their build speed at the cost of HP.

Overall, even if I put aside the nostalgic appeal of the game that introduced me to the wonder of video games, I can highly recommend Praetorians to anyone who wants a tight, dynamic RTS experience with few frills and many joys.

(On a sidenote, the soundtrack is great too. Like, really, really great.)

First of all, congratulations on creating a HD remaster, looks fantastic!

Now the bitter part
The game could use something new after 17 years. A new pack of maps? Additional campaign maps? Announcer for War Chariots?

In many ways old moded version does thing better, new races and that.
Game also lacks siege maps, it's a shame to see that not implemented yet.
Also you could've added a slider for the amount of units you can command.

The game wont last long if it doesn't get mod support, that is for sure, we all know community is sometimes the best source of content and I'm certain that making this game mod friendly will make it even more successful.

Also new unit icons look strange and cheap, old ones looked better
The icons for spearmen and archers are very similar, why do spears on icons have widening on the bottom end? it looks like an arrow from afar.

OK, i recommend this game for the following reason. I loved this game as a kid. They remade it so it looks good again on new pc with higher resolution then 1024x740. If you liked this game back then, you will like it now. The campain is pretty good.

Why i do not recommend..... They really only changed the ingame graphics. Nothing is added, nothing is changed. And the one thing that really annoys me is the following.. THEY WERE TOO LAZY TO REMAKE THE CUTSCENES. THESE USED TO LOOK BEAUTIFULL COMPARED TO THE GAME. NOW THEY LOOK LIKE ♥♥♥♥.

thats the only reason why im thinking of refunding this game and get it for 50-70% off

Well, i've just finished the original Praetorians (with widescreen mod) and i wanted to give this one a try.

I am stunned of how terrible this "remaster" is.

- The colors look totally idiotic, it's like the world is radioactive, everything is too colorful, even the snow
- There is a aura around the units, they look like they are ghosts. Probably a crazy ambient occlusion?
- No graphics options
- They have replaced the varied tree textures with only 1 texture per tree. All pine trees look the same, all normal trees look the same, etc
- Many textures look less detailed (the grain fields, for example)
- Some textures have a contour which, most probably, was not intended
- The shine of the armor has disappeared, now all the units look like Pokemons
- The game is locked at 60fps. Probably because this shi... remaster was made for consoles
- The UI looks terrible, is some kind of scifi UI
- Same bugs as in the original game
- The videos have a lame noise reduction effect, were better before
- Ironically, i have tested the non-widescreen resolutions. Thats hilarious, the game is not compatible with normal resolutions, the name of the units and the health is displayed only 50% of its width
- Some settings are gone from the options menu
- You cant no longer use toggle buttons as before (by right clicking on specific buttons), for example, now you cant toggle "hold position" which is a important feature. I bet the developer didnt even knew that the game has this feature
- Social media buttons in the menu
- This shi... version, cost 4X more than the original and it's 4X worst

The list can go on but i will stop here. No fricking way i can recommend this. Just buy the original and apply the widescreen mode, enjoy this masterpiece with a better graphics and at 144fps. Just search "Praetorians FOV Fix" for the patch

Back in 2003, Praetorians blew me away. My old rig with P3, 16Mb RAM and Riva TNT2 was not able to pull off fancy new titles like CnC Generals or Total War, but Praetorians ran smoothly enough and, what's more important, it followed Caesar's steps on his way to power, and I was a long time fan of that guy. De Bello Gallico and Mommsen's History of Rome were my handbooks. But enough of that, let's get back to the game.

As with all remasters, new generation gamers are not its target, it's purely for oldfags out there. And damn, it does hit the spot! It looks just as great as it did back in 2003, it runs smoothly without any glitches or bugs, and the main menu theme still sends a chill down my spine. What more do you need?

Well, we could get along without that ugly launcher, but hey, it's not that big a deal. I'm sure, there's a workaround to skip it, I'm just too damn lazy to google it.

UPD
Forgot to mention the music. Even if you're not an old-time fan, check out the soundtrack, it's a masterpiece.

Years ago, the real-time strategy games consumed my time a lot, as I at least tried the vast majority of them. Praetorians, from 2003, was no exception, but it did not rank up among my favourites, so I was curious to see how I will enjoy this remastered version. Well, I got bored with the game during the first hours, but I still tried to find a way to like Praetorians. And while the second half of the campaign got my hopes up, it still was not enough for me to recommend this game.
The game slightly follows Julius Caesar and his forces’ campaigns during the Gallic Wars, invasions of Britannia, skirmishes in Egypt and the Middle East, and The Great Roman Civil War. That is a lot of conflicts, so it must sound interesting for the fans of this historical period. The problem is that there are barely any cutscenes or proper dialogues, and the ones present are so generic and uninteresting that you could put them into any conflict. I expected that there would be at least quotes from Caesar’s memoirs or something. There is nothing, though. The game does not offer anything interesting for people who like this historical period or at least an intriguing story. The whole campaign feels like a mix of random missions without any proper connection rather than Caesar’s road to triumph. What a shame.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2255627498
Well, who cares about the story if the gameplay is good, right? I wish I could say it in this case. Well, first and foremost, Praetorians primarily focus on combat. That is not necessarily a negative, as you would think that the game with such focus would have a good, enjoyable combat. The problem is that this is not really the case, and it just feels pretty tiresome to play Praetorians at times for the reasons I will describe below.

Game modes

As mentioned, the game has a campaign that is about twenty hours long. There is also a skirmish mode that revolves around destroying and defending villages. The problem is that most of the campaign missions feel like skirmish, as the objective is the same. Sometimes there is a fortress defense or escort mission, but most of the time, you will just conquer a village after village. It is just repetitive, boring, and forgettable.

Buildings and recruitment

You start every mission with several units, which consists of multiple soldiers, and sometimes with a village too. Villages are preset locations in which your general recruits soldiers, and your only restriction is the current mission’s unit limit. The one and only building you can build are defensive towers. That is all for some sort of management outside of combat. However, even with that little, the game manages to make it absolutely tedious.

To capture a village, you have to, naturally, kill some enemies first. Once you do that, you have to destroy a garrison and kill an enemy commander. Then you have to rebuild it and put there your own commander. After that, you can begin with recruitment, and as the game presents itself as combat-focused, I would expect that it would be fast. You see, missions are usually long around half an hour. However, most of the unit’s recruitment time is about one minute or even more. So, you can spend around five minutes or more waiting. And enemies did not even try to attack my defenseless villages most of the time! As you repeat this process in the campaign numerous times, it becomes monotonous, it just prolongs the gameplay, and it is not entertaining at all.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2255624478
Combat

As for the actual combat, there are three factions: Romans, Egyptians, and Barbarians. They all have nine unit types, which are pretty similar to each other. There are light and heavy infantry, spearmen, archers, and melee and archer cavalry. Some units, like gladiators, can throw a net at enemy units, which stops them from moving. An interesting addition is that light infantry can build siege weapons, such as catapults, ladders, and battering rams. There are also special units, such as scouts or healers, which are pretty important for your army. As you would expect, the combat basically works on the “rock-paper-scissors” model. The problem is that it becomes boring after a while. There are no units’ upgrades, no additional abilities except the basic ones. The content this game has is just not enough for what it tries to do. Also, Barbarians is one set faction, so their units are all the same in every part of Europe. The same applies to Egyptians, not only that their armour belongs to a completely different century, but Asian nations have Egyptian units too.

Terrain plays a huge role in combat, as units can hide in forest and tall grass. Some units cannot go through woods and shallow water while others can. You can also destroy bridges or set the grass on fire. These additions are nice, as they occasionally make the combat more interesting.

Now, the game still could be enjoyable if the enemy AI actually tried to fight me properly. That is not the case, though. Yes, AI has some simple scripts like: “Send cavalry on defenseless archers.”. However, you can easily break AI’s behaviour even with that example. I witnessed numerous times where AI just send cavalry on my spearmen. The campaign is boring that way because the AI will not train swordsmen to counter your spearmen. They will rather die the same way again and again. Units’ pathfinding is also terrible, as you sometimes have to babysit their movement in mountains and such.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2255534607
Additional problems

• Camera controls are outdated and absolutely terrible, especially the camera zoom. I do not understand why they did not bother improving it.
  
  
• Multiplayer lacks the players, so there is no point in getting this game for it.

Despite being remastered, the game is not that pretty, and there are not many details if you zoom closely to something. The developers did not even bother with redoing the CGI cutscenes, so they look absolutely terrible now. Sounds are nothing extraordinary either, and the person who reads the script sounds uninterested in his work. The soundtrack has a few themes that repeat constantly. To be honest, this should be free for the owners of the original rather than asking for money for it.

The game was tested with an i5 8300H, GTX 1060 6GB, and 16GB RAM, running at the highest settings, at 60 frames per second, at 1920x1080 resolution. The game crashed randomly six times throughout my playthrough.

Praetorians might be a reasonable choice for someone new to the real-time strategy genre, as its mechanics are simple. However, I would still not recommend it to those people, as I would be rather afraid that they would lose interest in real-time strategy games pretty quickly.

As Caesar once said: “Experience is the teacher of all things, and Blue Lips and their Quips is my favourite curator in the senate!“.

This game is the best about military strategy and tactic, it will be more good if it can do the following things:
- More nations.
- The Infantry troop can rebuild the broken gate. More defensive and assault construction such as stone tower, heavy onager.
- The player can create as many troops as they want.
- The dead forest can be burned.
- Some troops can swim though lake.

Praetorians was my first PC game ever, so you know what to expect from this review!

The Remastered HD version of this game was a complete surprise to me. I never imagined that the game was so popular back in the day, to the point of developers deciding to make a remaster. When this was announced, I couldn't control my happiness!

Speaking about the game, it's just like the old Praetorians! Here you will have everything that the original game had, and you will not struggle with performance, graphics, resolution and possible compatibility problems, which, by it self, is already worth it to play the remastered version.

About the graphics, the first impression you come across with the images on the store, where they show us the “before” and “after”, is that you can’t really tell that much difference, but when you actually play the game, you will notice there are a lot of differences, especially if you still have the old game to compare. I restarted the old game, just for comparison, and the graphics were horrible to me, then I realised the importance of the remastered version xD

In terms of gameplay, I finished all the missions on the normal difficulty and I really enjoyed the time spent with this game for two reasons:
1st- Some missions that were “impossible or very hard to complete” when I played this as a kid, I can complete them now with no difficulty and even asked myself, how and why was I struggling with those missions xD
2nd – I could use completely new and different tactics to beat the AI. What I loved the most was to use my tactics, that I used as a kid (the ones I still remembered), and see that they still work.

The remastered game was the game I enjoyed the most playing, lately, specially to chill after a hard workday. It provided me a smooth gameplay experience, where I played 1 mission in each gameplay session and it was enough to keep me happy for the rest of the day. Since I already beat all the campaign missions, I will continue have fun with this game, playing all the skirmish missions and maybe even multiplayer.

Finally, the Steam achievements are always welcome to motive to finish the game and I enjoyed receiving an achievement for each mission. Let us hope that some “moders” will bring to use nice mods like “Mod Imperial”, that was developed for the original game. That mod added so much content back then, that people are still using it to play online on Gameranger servers.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1100420/Praetorians__HD_Remaster

Doesn't deserve a negative (get on sale), but:
- There are missing voice lines in some of the missions, which automatically skips the cutscene. I know the voice acting is terrible in these, but nice "Remaster" you got there kalypso
- Needless, ugly kalypso launcher which only serves as their studio news information dump. I'm sorry kalypso I just came here for Praetorians, I shouldn't have to click 'Launch Game' twice

Nice game but Bad Remastered must be purcheased %50