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 …

Ah, what tales there are to tell of the dynasty of Fufius Burrius. The martial wins. The lost appendages. The glorious heights of politics and the shameful falls due to gambling. The wives of each heir carefully vetted for their wits, economic sense, and beauty. The broad family tree, the vast properties, the hoard of pigs. And wait, where did those 8 hours go?

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

One generation ago I bought 2 snakes for my daughter, one laid eggs, giving me 4 more snakes, then some time passed, things happened... Long story short, I now own 37 snakes. A very cute simulation game where you're a head of a Roman family in the times of the Roman Republic. Your goal is to make your family rich and influential. You get to educate your children, choose the right marriage partners for them, buy properties, run in elections, participate in festivals... The early stages of the game are quite challenging but, of course, once you get rich, things get a lot smoother. My number of hours played is not fully accurate for this game, as I usually play offline, but I can tell you that I'm on year 2641 AUC... using our calendar that's 1888. If you like games where you get to roleplay and use your imagination and you find some degree of repetitiveness relaxing, I really recommend this one.

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.

I want to like this game, genuinely. But I can’t recommend it, because this game really doesn’t respect your time whatsoever. It’s incredibly repetitive and grindy. You spam the time and once you have seen all events and know what is optimal you press those. And yet despite that you’ll play like 10 generations and still be struggling to get into equite or senatores class because when you class up suddenly your entire family doubles their living expenses and the game balance is just not conducive to progress at any reasonable rate. For what it is, I shouldn’t have to spend literally 5+ hours on one game spamming the time forward button to see any progress.