James Randomly Talks About... Centurion: Defender of Rome (1990)
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- Bits of Magic's only game, Centurion: Defender of Rome is both a successor to Kellyn Beck's Cinemaware titles like Defender of the Crown, but also an obvious spiritual ancestor to the Total War series as a whole. It's Rome, Jim, but not as we know it!
This, Nobunagas ambition, ROTK and Ghengis Kahn clan of the grey wolf were my childhood.
Great vid! Not many people talk about this old gem.
NICE INTRODUCTION OF THE GAME; IVE USED TO PLAY THAT ON 486, A FEW YEARS AFTER ITS RELEASE, BUT ALSO A FEW YEARS AGO, AFTER I'VE ALREADY PLAYED TW. I DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE MISTAKEN THIS FOR ANOTHER DOS GAME, BUT IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY I HAD AN AWESOME MAP WITH ANCIENT CITY NAMES ON PAIR WITH PARADOX'S IMPERATOR ROME. IT WAS SO PRECISE THAT EVEN MY TINY HOMETOWN, ROMAN CELEIA, TODAY CELJE IN SLOVENIA, WAS THERE; BUT IT MIGHT BE ANOTHER GAME, CUZ I DIDN'T SEE THE CITY NAMES IN YOUR VIDEO...
Thanks for this. These lesser known but still influential games are my jam. No one does "hidden gems" for DOS, so I'm always glad to find something I haven't heard of. Looks like it should run great on my 386.
As you already know because you've been here a while, it's one of the main premises of this channel. There are at least a hundred DOS games that don't get talked about these days that are nearly as, or as good as, the ones that get all the chatter. Centurion is another such game, and really surprised me when I first played it!
I've never played Rome: Total War but I do have it on disc because it was a £1 purchase of mine from a charity shop that is now just sat on a shelf.
With that said, I was big into the Amiga back in the day, and a huge fan of the Cinemaware games, especially Wings, It Came From The Desert and Rocket Ranger. Before your video, I didn't even know about Kellyn Beck or this game but I will definitely check this out - and before I go onto Rome: Total War.
You're in for an almost unique experience then, Terry! Almost everyone played Rome first and then discovered Centurion retrospectively when talking about games that were like Rome from the past. I envy you being able to play Rome after this one, you'll see just how many ideas Creative Assembly took from Bits of Magic/Cinemaware.
I was really impressed by It Came From The Desert and I've heard good things about Wings, so I look forward to eventually playing that one too. Apparently most of the Cinemaware titles look and run better on Amiga than DOS, so we'll see how the ports fare...
I loved this game when it was new and it does as you mention still stand the test of time, even with some features feeling a bit...rough.
One thing that as any fellow geek does, I have to mention it does not predate 4X. There were other 4X games before it.
Reach for the Stars being one of the most famous one which came about 8 years earlier, or of course Empire (one of my all time favorites too) which first came out in the 70s.
The ship mini-game is not that difficult, if you know two things. First, the Galleon is the largest ship and the strongest and the one which can carry more troops. Second, every ship (in the naval battle) has to have armies in/on it else the one in the mini game will fight with just a skeleton crew and if it reaches a boarding phase, will be destroyed by even a smaller ship which has troops on it.
The way to deal with the rebellious territories later on is not by having standing armies everywhere, but by having them in strategic places near other territories AND accepting that from time to time you are going to lose territories. You can't stop that till much later on in the game when you have almost conquered everything and have high enough rank to have armies everywhere.
Anyway, good video, thanks for sharing.
I noticed that you were playing Centurion on Twitter not that long ago! I was fully expecting a detailed comment about how to better improve my chances, as I know you made Caesar! Excellent points about the 4X, you are of course correct, and I'm glad that SOMEBODY figured out the ship combat. Glad that my thoughts are largely in line with your own about the game.
How I love this game..
It would be very nice if you talked about Mount & Blade: Warband, as this game is basically a 90's PC game using 2010~ technology and features a lot of things from games like Centurion, it's a PC exclusive and I believe you'd really like it if you never heard about it before.
Amazing how this game was ported to the Mega Drive, and the console features two other similar games called Warrior of Rome 1 and 2. It also has a great Pirates! Gold version. We never think about consoles for these types of games, but even complex strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms exist even for the NES.
I have actually played a little of Warband in the past, so I know exactly what you're talking about. It's a little too modern for this channel despite it clearly being old school in its design philosophy. I struggled to get to grips with the combat I seem to recall, especially the mounted stuff. Maybe I just needed to play it more.
You're right though, it's a logistical wonder to take the complexity of a strategy game and distil it into a console environment with the controller. I think the recent XCOM games from Firaxis did a good job at that, even if they were buried under way too much AAA nonsense.
@@getoffmylawn6692 Yes, Mount & Blade needs time so you'll understand how the combat command works, army loyalty, your own char attributes, which starts weak, running slow, less health, low archer skills, etc. In large battles, you can easily control units like archers, infantry, cavalry, elite, it's really a game that require at least 10 hours of gameplay to understand its ins and outs. Being developed by Turkish, it doesn't seem to have any roots from the beaten path and just feels right how a middle ages game should. I just checked I forgot it was somehow ported to Xbox One and PS4, I wonder how it controls there, as the menu was made with mouse and keyboard in mind, and it's from 2008 (original M&B), it's old! Cover it!
Never really seen Rome: Total War, or this. Interesting. Have you played Sword of the Samurai? It reminded me a lot of that. It came out a year earlier too. Raising armies, picking fights and conquering fiefs with them, managing your honour, swordsmanship, generalship, wealth/fief, and army size... Kinda turn based in that time passes between your actoins... minigames for sword duels and top-down melee fights where you're killing bands of criminals in their lairs and stuff, or you can commit naughty deeds like kidnapping your rivals' family members for ransom but your honour is in the toilet if you get caught. Random events that you can respond to to gain honour. It's one of those games that have influenced me as a dev and I've been trying ever since to refine the paradigm without resorting to overly complex mechanics or well-established tropes. I'd be surprised if Centurion wasn't influenced by Sword of the Samurai... or at least they have a common influence that I don't know about. Enjoyed the vid, chief.
I have played a bit of Sword of the Samurai because of the people behind it. I enjoyed the multiple choice elements, but some of those minigames are absolutely brutal... especially the assassinations. The duelling can be quite tense too! There's definitely a comparison to be made between the two, and in all honesty the game had completely slipped my mind while talking about this one!
@@getoffmylawn6692 Yeh its best to save often because those melees can overwhelm you. You get the hang of it, though. Another MSDOS game that I might be the only surviving appreciater of.
Ah my first (roman) rts game. If it weren't for those stupid mini games (beeing dragged behind a horse while dieing an antagonizing death ), id played it again.
If you notice my chariot-racing footage it's the few seconds I managed to get BEFORE the disaster. Let's just say there was a lot of stretchers and dragging across the arena floor in my playthrough.
If you want to win the chariot races, first make sure to get some unfair advantage (at least bribing). Then during the race take notice of the location of your chariot on the mini map and the bar at the bottom of the screen. When you are approaching the turn make sure to be at least 1-2cm left of the black bar and of course keep the direction towards the turn. If you don't you risk crashing.
@@TrusteftTHANKS FOR THAT
@@LavrencicUrban You are welcome. Happy gaming.