UPDATED REVIEW FOR MAY 2023

Played the game when it came out in 2006 and liked it a lot! I was just blown away to see a new release. Thanks to JOTASOFT for the amazing surprise!
Bought it with friends and played it today. It is exactly as before, just better support, higher resolution, more FPS.
The game was really complex for its time and some mechanics are similar to Warcraft. Especially the hero system with different abilities that feel really unique. Each unit is customisable. A Spartan with a huge halberd? No problem! A Persian Immortal with a short sword and a wooden shield? Just create it yourself! There are endless possibilities to create your own units. That adds an amazing twist to the game. Unfortunately, the A.I is unable to take advantage of this feature and usually builds standard soldiers.
The game has a huge tactical depth, way bigger than initially thought and only after 40h I see the huge potential of different armies and different warfare you can create.

HOWEVER, the game has some serious problems and needs fixing.
- Sometimes the game crashes - Still needs fixing!
- when too many units are on the map the game will crash
- The graphics has not improved except for higher resolution and overall clarity.
- Some things in the game just have no name, or the String path is still attached, making a settlement called no_name or dfd_centurio_shld_swrd_hrd
- The Easy A.I. STILL WAY TOO STRONG. It still appears that the Hard A.I. is cheating. I played against hard A.I. and I just stopped after 15 minutes to see how the A.I. grew his economy. He accumulated 6x more gold than I did. Which is just insane and in my opinion impossible to have 60k gold after 15 minutes.
- VERY bad balance within the game. Here some examples:
- Persian are better than some other nations as they build up to 6 farms, Macedonians only 4 which helps tremendously with the gold production
- The stone throwers the Indians can build are way too good. They throw stones that have the impact of a katapult and kill EVERY enemy in the game with two strikes. Way too OP!
- Egyptians can early on deploy Bas Priests. They can call an infinite amount of Panther units which are the fastest unit in game. With approximately 30 Panthers you control the entire map and just shut down the entire economy of your enemy by killing all workers in no time. This mechanic is so broken. This tactic can't be defeated in any way as I figured out. This has been improved but you can still cast so many panthers to overrun the enemy.
- Romans went from one the best civilisation in the game to one of the worst over several updates. They almost useless to play now compared to other civs.
-> game needs a lot of balancing among the different civilisations and units. There is zero coherence. The Indians and Egyptians are nearly impossible to defeat due to several exploits.

The current price of C$26 is too much for a 15 years old game in Early Access that comes without the campaign. I hope JOTASOFT will fix the massive balancing issues the game has.
This surprise release gives me hope that one day, just one day, Rise & Fall Civilisations At War (a very similar RTS from the same era) will see the light of day again!

15 years after the original 2007 game 'Ancient Wars: Sparta' there is now the Definitive Edition where we can relive all the victorian memories with a lot of new content and better polished graphics that also keep the old charm of the game intact.

Persians vs Sparta Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0k5oXWET8k

From the Spartans to the Ancient Egyptians or the Persians, there are 3 campaigns available, each set in a different time period.
The campaigns are also separate from each other and have no specific order to obtain a complete story.

An image that you can place next to C&C Generals and experience similar gameplay like Age Of Empires games where you have to estimate and execute both strategic and economic actions.
Architecture is also a choice that we can make since the building element in the game is very extensive and it is therefore better to take plenty of time to build your bases carefully,
Skirmish matching or multiplayer matching also gives us a wider range of cultures and peoples to choose from to fight with than the three you can choose in the campaigns, I believe around 20.
for example, all units and buildings are styled after the culture and time period in which this people took place and you can build nice bases.
All the different peoples also each have some unique units & attack mechanisms that were used in the history of those peoples.

I tried my best to remain optimistic but I really can not recommend the game seeing the direction it is going.

The original 2006 AWS is one of my favorite games, with various really unique mechanics that made the game itself unique and stand out. Almost all of which have been stripped.

1 - There is no definite unit limit in the original. You were feeding your population - if you ran out of food, you had a range of trouble to deal with. This opened strategic depth where players wanting to bolster a large army had to feed it, and the food production itself being just about the most important part of one's infrastructure. In fact, there was no definite limit to speak of, aside from the map boundaries.
Instead, we have a fixed unit limit.

2 - You actively managed your population in the original - from training new soldiers to recruiting peasants or slaves to operate your buildings. This is entirely gone - instead, workers just spawn out of thin air.

3 - You had a very slow paced buildup period with careful choices to make. Actions could take a relatively long time to complete, raising an army of competent warriors would sure take a lot longer than training a militia force. Sieges were a common sight and, in my honest opinion, rivaled the stronghold games in their depth.
Well, pacing is ridiculously fast now as in literally, my average match took ten minutes to be pretty much set in stone. Versus literal hours in the original.

4 - Unit customization. It took a HUGE step backwards. There is just no other way I can say it.

All in all, it feels like it's taking one of the most unique RTS games I came into contact with and pressing it into an AWS themed starcraft/age of empires merge with some empire earth in-between as to the resource management. And saying that it's an insult to the original would be putting it lightly, unfortunately. And I really mean unfortunately - I had high spirits and hopes.

I wouldn't call it definitive edition, its the same game as it used to be with more factions added but the only thing that bothers me so much is that the game at its current condition is so fast paced even on quick matches the skirmishes are so fast that doesnt give you the opportunity to admire it. In the first 5 minutes i was attacked by enemy ai so fast!Also the gold deposits run out fast that the game itself pressures you to attack and win without even building that mighty greek fort you wanted. Please Devs! Make the gameplay more slow paced to admire its beauty!

I was super excited for the game but I'm pretty disappointed with how it has turned out. I hope it might be good eventually but that's how a lot of games go.

I like how the pace of the game has become much faster - which was the biggest issue with the 2006 version. However it has become too fast - you collect resources super fast, units are recruited super fast. You can spawn an army very quickly. The only bottleneck is technologies. I feel the game is a bit confused - in terms of what it's even about. Where does the strategy even lie?

I've played 2 , 1v1 games against a friend.
Map control doesn't really matter as with just a few mines you have all the resources you'd ever need. The unit cap is super low so it's not about out producing your enemy. Is it just about who can get the best equipment the fastest? The most actual strategy is getting some support units to buff your army and then adding shields if your enemy has ranged units so you can deflect arrows.

There's zero consideration to what you should equip your units with, you're always gonna give them the best gear because resources are so abundant. The original game was super slow but god was it methodical. Resources were tight and you had to make genuine choices and cuts -should my units have shields? Should I bother with a lot of cavalry. The slower pace made you consider things more.

The game is also bloated with features that don't improve the game - like the militia camp. I do not see a single use for them.

And finally, the price. The game currently is 20 euro, I've failed to convince 7 of 8 people I know that LOVE rts games, mostly because of the price. For a early access without a caimpaign that's a steep ask. Not to mention the new factions are really lack luster in terms of unique visuals or unique ways to play the game.

Multiplayer works well tho, which is the final positive I can think of.

I did not play the original game, so I can not compare with that one. There is a zoom-in function where you could zoom very close to the units. But I had the feeling it could be better if the game could zoom-out a little more, because sometimes the overview of the field was not large enough. But that is actually my only complain.

There is a lot of choice in units, weapons and upgrades. That is what I like about this strategy game.
There are 5 factions: Egypt, Macedonia, Persia, Republic Roman Empire and Sparta.
Each faction has multiple Hero units.

I also tried the multiplayer part and this works without problem.

This is one of my fights in this game: https://youtu.be/p73aHB5-Tw0

I've played a few games and all I can say is this: I remembered this game from my childhood and I loved it but there's so many problems... AI is pretty stupid, FPS drops when there's too many units in the screen are insane, unit movement is really bad, there's no "Keyboard and Mouse" option in the settings to check out commands so I had to just mash the buttons until I understood what was doing what. In the end, I loved the gameplay, the music, the changes they made to the factions and the addition of the new ones(original had only 3). I want this game to succeed but there's still much work to be done and I hope they'll do it sooner than later.

TLDR: A very old game, put on Steam, remastered but currently boring and riddled with problems.

Ancient Wars: Sparta is a slightly remastered version of an old classic. (Not sure if dev bought rights to the series but it's really nice to put oldies on Steam so modern players can enjoy it, thank you <3 )
Good news is: It plays exactly like original one. Bad news: It plays exactly like original one.
Strong point of AW:Sparta is emphasis on soldiers and workers. You need people to do everything, from building to using siege weapons. You don't recruit "pikeman" for example, you need to research weapon like a sword, then equip your unit with it.
It's a cool idea that currently is slightly boring. You simply hop from bad weapon to a better one and so does the Ai. Would be nice to see much more weapon variants for each faction.

Units can get levels thus becoming stronger. Problem is that currently its too snowbally. Let's say you accidentally feed enemy hero by loosing 5/10 units. Boom, this hero can quite easily solo most of your troops. AI overall is very spammy and busted even on easy difficulty and I'm saying that as a seasoned RTS-player, from Starcraft to new titles.

Faction are far too simillar currently. Build Gold Mine - Build Farms/stock piles - Barracks and then 4/5 buildings that are needed for upgrades. Every path is the same and thus, gameplay becomes stale quite quickly. Would be nice for each faction to become much more "gimmicky" with far different buildings and build orders.

There are some small bugs like fonts not showing correctly, unit portraits not always working etc but nothing exactly gamebreaking. Game didn't crash on me even once and I never encountered bug that didnt allow me to finish a map.

Maps seem far too small, in worst cases it's few steps from enemy base that if aggroed, will literally spam you with 50 units while you started recruiting first batch of troops.

Graphics, while still not the worst are old, most units/buildings look old and it shows. Would be nice to receive at least shader upgrade in a future.

I'm giving thump up as this still is a fun to play RTS that for being in early dev. could become much better. If you like RTS and don't mind few bugs/waiting for better updates, it should be worth current price.


Suggestions:
- UI options could be nice, like in Age of Empires 3 DE where you can choose if you want your gold/wood be shown at the top, bottom or under minimap.
- Path-finding, especially on bridges or walls is cancerous, units often wander aimlessly or have problems with finding enemy.
- Graphics need at least minimal lifting to be enjoyable fully.
- Faction are far too similar, some experimenting would be appreciated.
- AI seems super strong in a bad way and at the same time so stupid. I've killed at least 200 enemy workers by placing tower near their base and it still felt like their economy didnt feel it.

this is my favorite childhood game, it has a lot of good memories. I am glad that in 2022 continued its development, I even bought this game to support the developers. But it's a shame that a lot of functionality was cut, you bought the game to develop it, not to simplify it. What a stupid idea to translate all the food at once in gold, why in the first company I do not have the opportunity to make 5-6 weapons, but only sword and spear, why I can not improve the wall to stone, or palace. Previously, all this was available in the first mission of the campaign for sparta. I hope that still you will continue to develop this project and it will not keep on the old fans. Thanks for the childhood, although I realize that you just bought the project, but thank you that he is alive

The original ancient wars sparta was x20 times better than this , what a waste of money and time , 17£ for 1 campaign ! do not buy this or you will regret it !