As I am writing this, I am copying Caesar 4 demo from my pen drive to my hard drive. It’s a pretty hefty 446MB download. I told my friend to download this for me last week, and I got it from him tonight.
I have just about had enough with Caesar 3…after playing until Pro Consul mission; I couldn’t go on any longer. It was too difficult and frustrating. I am hoping that Caesar 4 would retain all the good aspects of the game, and get rid of all that annoyed me immensely in the previous title.
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIRED
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 1.6 GHz or equivalent AMD(R) Athlon(TM) processor or higher
Windows(R) 2000/Windows XP Home or Professional (including Service Pack 2 or higher)
512 MB of RAM
64 MB video card (with Hardware T&L including Pixel Shader 1.1 or higher support)
2.0 GB of free hard disk space
CD-ROM Drive
DirectX(R) 9.0c
Mouse
Keyboard
As it turns out, this game requires a newer version of DirectX, and the DirectX that I have on my machine isn’t the latest, and since I cancelled the DirectX update after the game installation, I have to uninstall the game and reinstall it all over again. Great!
Well, now that I installed and played the game, or at least tried playing the game on my 6200, I can see why they call this the entry level card. I had to play this game on low-medium settings, and that totally beats the whole point of even playing games let alone this one.
This card simply isn’t powerful enough to play this game the way it’s meant to be played, it needs at least a 6600 to give reasonable frame rates.
The game on the other hand is brilliant, the graphics requirements are a little high, I mean Doom 3 worked just fine on this same computer, but apart from that, the game has improved quite a lot, and I can say those who have liked Caesar 3, will absolutely love Caesar 4, only problem being, the graphics requirements are high. FX card owners can forget about playing this game…sure, the minimum requirements say that a 64MB card will be enough, but I can assure you, it wouldn’t be worth playing a beauty like Caesar 4 without all the settings on high.
The game is completely changed, and is fully 3D, with great textures and fantastic shadow and bloom effects. Only after enabling them, the game plays like a slide show on my computer, but it look absolutely beautiful.
The principle of the game is pretty much the same, build a city, reach the ratings, and move on to the next one, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds.
There are lots of new structures, beautiful terrain, and other game play improvements. There are too many to tell actually. And what’s more, advancing through housing too is different now, for example, you can directly build a villa instead of building a hut and making it evolve. Like I said lots of changes and improvements in the game, fans of the previous games and the genre will love this one. Just make sure you have a good graphics card though.
First published on GameSpot