If you liked or loved Total War: Rome; this remaster does do the game justice in every regard.

Some people have had issues with unit path-finding, it hasn't bothered me much at all.

This game does have workshop compatability. The mods are pretty good.

They added merchants, for some reason, these are whatever. You can go through every campaign ignoring them if you like.

Overall I think this game, and this remaster, are very good, and I hope to 100% it some time.

Overall, recommended, but only because I got it for 80% off in the current Total War sale, as of April 2026. At the start of this review, I want to stress, it is good overall, but do not get it at full price. Wait for a sale. Not a professional reviewer or player by any means, I'm a very casual player, but here are my two cents:

Pros:
- The controls feel way more responsive, smooth and intituitive. I recently dipped back into the original RTW and was surprised at how clanky it feels.
- The quality of life improvements incorporated over the years - better unit statistics, the ability to group units of the same type together.
- The graphics are nice, but not something that you pay a whole lot of attention to, and not something that affects the overall gameplay.
- Much easier to download a mod from the Steam Workshop and run it now, and the mod manager is very helpful.
- All the good stuff from the original is still there - the amazing music, the speeches, unit collision, small details like shields blocking projectiles, etc.

Cons:
- They were probably a bit too faithful to the original. I feel like they could have given us the Mundus Magnus maps as part of the base game rather than having modders recreate it (though that is nice).
- Also, this was a missed chance to incorporate more historical research and make the factions and rosters more accurate - e.g. get rid of Pharaonic Egypt.
- The sheer size of the game in terms of storage space, and the strain it puts on performance.
- My biggest gripe is that it does not have other quality of life features that other games had - no ability to convert buildings of a different culture into your own culture at the same tier. You have to demolish them, and then rebuild from scratch. Rome 2 allows this, and you can convert all buildings, whereas you cannot do that for the main settlement building and roads. No separate recruitment for agents and ships, which should really be a thing by now. And no ability to command large armies of up to 40 units. Shogun 2 had this and it's been out since 2011. Retraining is fine, but I think they should have added passive replenishment, and still kept retraining as an instant option with the ability to upgrade armour, weapons etc.
- Weird crashing, not sure if it was the mod or the base game.

These are just the things I can think of, off the top of my head, from my short playthrough. On balance, it is good, but I would only recommend getting it on sale. I don't feel too bad having gotten it for 80% off, but I would definitely not be happy if I had paid full price for this.

It's very pretty and the graphics have been improved a lot but the UI is a marmite kinda thing, the wiki doesn't work for some reason, "automanage" keeps working even when turned off, and the old flaw from the original is alive and well i.e. diplomacy is pointless: you'll be attacked by friend and foe alike for no reason and with no warning, so assume everyone's hostile and attack without regard. Buy it if it's on offer and/or loved the original but otherwise, I wouldn't bother.