So, I decided to buy SoR, and assuaged my guilt over buying it by getting my mother another birthday present. Anyway, my guilt soon evaporated in a fountain of bloody delight as I enjoyed this game thoroughly.

Shadow of Rome, shockingly, centres around Rome during 44 BC, when Caeser was assassinated. Who killed him is the mainstay of the plot, which is surprisingly well developed, and the ending, though a little stretched, is very good indeed.

The player controls either Agrippa or Octavianus. Agrippa is a soldier who becomes a gladiator, and his voice actor is a dope. It's not really bad (like Tidus or Raiden) but it's not Solid Snake by a long shot. You'll spend 2/3 or 3/4 of the game as Agrippa, basically kicking the shit out of a wide variety of opponents with a good array of weaponry. You can use anything from a gladius to a rose, to a man's severed head. There are also very large and very cool weapons the crowd throw to you if you entertain them enough. The gameplay as Agrippa is excellent, and great fun. You can sever arms and heads, throw opponents off of towers, set them on fire and so on. For every cool action you get a Salvo. You get lots of Salvo points for certain Salvoes (1000 for the first time you throw an opponent in a battle) and less for easier ones. There are hundreds of them, and finding new ones is a nice little addition. Get enough points and appeal to the crowd and they'll throw you an ultrastrong weapon that you can slice and dice the enemy with. Sometimes you need a certain number of SP to pass a level, but mostly the points only count towards whether you get a Pass, Bronze, Silver or Gold rating for a battle. If you get a large number of SP in a game, you'll get some new armour to wear, but this will happen only once or twice, don't expect a new wardrobe every 3 fights.

Just a word of caution; if you're a bit of a wimp or just don't like gore, don't buy this game, unless you're also a masochist. It involves lots of fun things like severing heads and arms, breaking bones and setting people on fire for fun.

[To be inserted after "Shadow of Rome, shockingly, centres around Rome during 44 BC, when Caeser was assassinated. Who killed him is the mainstay of the plot, which is surprisingly well developed, and the ending, though a little stretched, is very good indeed."]

So, what do you actually do as Octavianus? Well, you can acquire (usually by just finding them on the ground) fortune coins, which you can use to buy things from the market. These will then be put in your room, which can end up looking quite snazzy. Buy enough items and you'll be given special, secret goodies too. Personally didn't float my boat, but extras like this would probably appeal to some. When you're being stealthy, you can knock guards out, steal their clothes etc, but it feels a little cumbersome and not very polished, in contrast to the fights. Distracting guards by throwing stones is just frustrating or repetitive quite often, and the difficulty seems to vary from piss easy to annoyingly hard. It's also very linear, and this lack of freedom is another negative contrast to the fights

If this were the only aspect of the game, it'd be truly great. As it is, Octavianus lets the side down a little. Basically, he's a stealthy guy. The problem is, he's a wimp. After taking on dozens of axe-wielding gladiators and kicking twelve shades of shit out of them, it's galling to control a Raiden lookalike who dies after a single hit. Solid Snake he is not. In places the stealth is not too well done and it certainly isn't very fun. However, it does allow the plot to be developed a lot more than if it were just Captain Dopey, which is a very good point. In addition, the stealth sections are quite well-spaced apart, and you never feel like they're too close together or too far apart.

The plot is a little slow, I think, until the latter stages of the game, but the ending is excellent. Agrippa and Octavianus are friends, but Agrippa's father is framed for Caeser's murder. The winner of a gladiatoral tournament will execute the father, which is why Dopey becomes a gladiator.

Replay value is high (3 difficulty levels, extras unlocked by getting various ratings for battles which you can refight from the main menu and trying to complete the large Salvo List) and the fights are great fun to play. For language people, there are 5 options (including German, huzah!) which is cool.

If the stealth sections were better done this would be a fantastic game. As it is, it's merely very good indeed.