Citizen of Rome - Dynasty Ascendant

Now, I give this game a thumbs up, even though I think its only for a certain 10% of players, so maybe don't run out and buy this unless it appeals. It offers a unique game loop, where you develop your family wealth, and try to reach the pinnacle of Roman society during the Republic. Pivotal decisions are the marriage matches, military service, education and gambling. These make or break your family. Less significant are the relentless festivals, giving of annual gifts, and maintenance of pets. There is a range of things to invest in, but this is not actually a major part of the game. Calamity will strike and set back your large extended family to one small nuclear unit from that group, but this is part of the game. You aren't as far back as it feels, and sometimes other distant members of your family die off, leaving you sizeable estates of 40,000 denarii. It is primarily an economic sim, where you manage the family as your income generating assets. It is exciting to build up a family out of nothing, and rise up to become an Equites. If you have an appreciation for Roman history, then you may love this game for that living-in-Rome experience. I'm a historian, and I give …

good

An amazing and very comprehensive game ! The mechanics work very well no matter what kind of gameplay you want. Unlike many games, the goal isn’t to climb the cursus honorum or become emperor, but to play freely according to your own choices. You can set your own familial or personal objectives, and that’s what makes the game so interesting. From a historical perspective, the choices and professions are very accurate. I particularly like the fact that becoming a magistrate is extremely expensive, because that was indeed the case. Two areas for improvement to make this game historically perfect: make family-related choices just as accurate (adoption, not recognizing a new born child, drafting an unbalanced will, marriages based on social class, etc.) and include more historical families (unfortunately, the families you can marry into are automatically generated so the patrician families aren’t the real ones, which is a real shame given the level of detail ; I would be glad to meet the Cornelii, Aemilii, Julii...). I hope you’ll continue to expand it!

It's a very fun game, especially to just pass the time or occasionally open up. I personally recommend you use it on a phone (i.e via app*). It can be a surprising time sink. By that metric too, I think it's quite good too in how you get drawn in. It is (and has been) functionally complete for a long time, but it's good to see the updates occasionally and they do sometimes add some new interesting bits to the game. For price (10)? I'd say worth it. On Sale, if there's any hesitation? Absolutely worth. *I'm not familiar with Steam options for this so I can't say if this advice applies to Steam

This game has been around for years and has hardly been improved. Unfortunately the developer just keeps taking money without any improvements. The game price might be small but that doesn't mean that they should not listen to all the problems that are with the game.

You can try it for a couple of runs (to build a few family trees), but I don't think you'll be playing it for long.