CivCity: Rome is game number two in this year's run at Roman city life. First out of the chute was the vanilla-plain Glory of the Roman Empire from CDV and later on this year the highly anticipated Caesar IV should arrive on the scene. Jammed in the middle is Firefly's CivCity: Rome, which while more interesting than Glory of the Roman Empire, still falls shy of the bar which was set by Caesar III way back in 1998.

Right off the bat it's clear that while this is a 3D game with 360-degree camera control – CivCity is one ugly take at Roman city life. It’s drab, plain, and all together uninspiring to look at. In fact, Caesar III, which was a "simple" 2D game, had more vibrant color patterns and loads more charm. The game was designed by the folks at Firefly Studios, the same outfit that made the under-appreciated Stronghold series, so it is a bit surprising that such a veteran team didn't up the visual ante (even though Stronghold was anything but a real looker.) CivCity proves the point that a new 3D engine does not automatically equate to better visuals. A good city builder, be it set in Rome or on Mars, needs charm – it needs to be fun to look at as well as play and CivCity: Rome fails in this regard. Part of the game's marketing is that for the first time you can look inside a house to see what's going on or to view a worker doing his or her thing. This is more novelty than anything else, though, and doesn't add a whole lot to the game itself. Perhaps it would be different if the game were drop dead gorgeous rather than Plain Jane?

If you have any experience with this genre at all, you're going to be doing the same stuff you did a decade ago: throw down some shack level houses, a road, build a well so your new citizens don't die of thirst, toss in a goat farm and a butcher shop, and maybe an olive farm along with some grapes, and so on – pretty basic Roman city building stuff.

There are some important differences between CivCity and other games of its ilk. First off, roads speed up your plebs as they walk on them but you don't technically need roads at all – your citizens will in fact walk in the grass, albeit at a much slower pace. This does make sense as in earlier games the people seemed allergic to anything other than a nice paved road. However, your workers don't care where they live, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You can plop down a shack right next to a butcher shop or a (shudder) goat farm and they'll live just as happily as the couple that lives down the road next to the Temple of Mars and the pretty aesthetic gardens.

There also is no marketplace other than a basic trading post. The marketplace, the hub of any thriving city, is nowhere to be found and it helps to create a very simplistic financial system. You can trade with other cities and tax your people, and even put them under your thumb by taking away time off from work…but there's no basic marketplace? It just doesn't make any sense.

The game plays out via the long campaign where you are a fledgling governor who is assigned tasks at different cities throughout the empire. The campaign is branching in that you may opt to stay at a certain city or change venues when given the chance. This is a very good way of handling this as providing players with alternatives during a campaign is always a good thing. Some tasks or more militarily focused while others are just about building the best city possible. Combat in the game is still pretty basic, which is par for the course for city builders. You are not going to mistake this for Rome: Total War, but that really isn't the point. The idea is to build troops and put them in the best possible position to defend your city, and that's about all there is to it.

The whole "CivCity" part tries to steer people into thinking that the game is part Civilization and part typical city builder. This is a tad misleading as the only "Civ" aspect of the game is the fact that you can research basic technologies in order to gain certain advantages. There are tech tracks which can be followed that add bonuses to tax revenue, worker output, etc. There are also some Wonders of the World which can be built later on in the game which add a huge amount of good fortune to any city that they are found. That's about it, though. This isn't by itself a bad thing, but people need to understand that it's not 50/50 Civ and City Builder.

What makes CivCity stand out from the recently released Glory of the Roman Empire is that at least the people at Firefly realize that they are crafting a Roman city builder rather than a generic cast off. CivCity is loaded with Roman flavor from specific temples to Roman Gods (Mars, Venus, etc.) to funny one-liners from the plebs that reference Roman history in one way or another. You also get all of the trappings you'd expect like varying kinds of gladiator schools, coliseums, chariot races, bath houses – even the Circus Maximus. The game oozes Roman flavor. The missions also make it very clear that you are a small cog in the Roman system. You are constantly required to send Rome your goods, which makes for a more compelling game rather than just trying to reach a certain goal for your own city.

CivCity: Rome, by itself, is not a terribly bad game. It's just an average one. What makes it frustrating is that it's still not as good as the game that inspired it which was released nearly a decade ago. Despite a few new twists to the core gameplay, its middling graphics and its lacking features drag it down from what could have been a must buy for fans of ancient era city builders to yet another game that fails to advance the genre in any real and meaningful way. -- William Abner