If you love high-fantasy, this is a great game. There are multiple races: elves, goblins, humans, undead, hobbits, dark elves, orcs, goblins, frostlings (icy half-lings), tigrans (cat-people) and draconoids etc. Each has a variety of units: meele, missle, mounted, flying etc. You get a variety of spells depending on your sphere: life, death, fire, water, air, earth etc. You get summoning spells, combat spells, area spells, spells that change the terrain of the whole map, spells that buff units and so on. You get items to give your wizard and heroes special abilities. Its a mix of strategy and RPG. Graphics are 2D, but look acceptable even at modern high resolutions, though the game may lag a bit at some instances. If you've played Shadow Magic or AoW1 beforehand, I would still recommend this, it has less variety than Shadow-Magic but its engaging content nonetheless, if you have to choose between the two then you should probably go with Shadow Magic, since other than the maps and story, the remaining content is a subset of Shadow Magic. Being an old game this lacks some of the finesse of modern titles, for example there is no quicksave, no Esc key shortcut to get to the game's menu, no handholding or visual cues or even a menu stating objectives or goals of the mission (most of the times the implicit goal is to defeat everyone else who isn't an ally). I also found it insanely difficult, I tend to play modern titles on hard and this takes a lot of effort even on easy, because you almost always start with no proper cities or income while your enemies are well established ... unless you can pick up fast, your enemies may get disproportionately strong and you will won't be able to withstand their onslaught.
First thing: I read the review about small map size and found that somewhat true for the initial tutorial maps. When you start the actual campaigns, the maps are adequately large, and indeed get bigger as you progress. All the maps have enough space to easily accommodate the population requirement for the specific map. The game is somewhat unpolished. The interface seems inappropriately proportioned, controls are problematic and not streamlines, the view angles are limited and difficult to manipulate, there is no continue savegame button, the tutorials are inadequate and you need to figure-out most things on your own. That said many of the coverage problems of Caesar 3 are fixed (for example houses no longer need to be near their employment buildings). The graphics. This is an old game so the graphics are pretty much minimal, but its still playable since there aren't any excessively blurry textures or ugly blocky models. All actor models are sprites. In terms of content this is a decent city building game set in Ancient Rome. If you like games set in Rome then this is a decent game but there isn't nearly enough material and Rome specific content in it. A lot of stuff is generic, even much of the vocabulary used is generic: weapons, armor, wine, furniture, schools, libraries, Trade Depot etc. You do however get a small number of classic Roman buildings such as Aqueducts, Colosseum, Theaters, Circuses, Forums, Bascilla, Prefectures and Baths. City-building aspect is ok. You have to manage the economy of your city through exports and taxes, you have to provide infrastructure and goods to keep your people fed, equipped with basic goods like pottery and clothes. Higher classes require more stuff like luxury goods, exotic goods and services like education and entertainment. There is a choice between peaceful maps(require higher ratings) and military maps(lower ratings but you get nagged by numerous invasions which you have to deal with).
