ROME: Total War is going to launch on Android devices this winter, according to a recent announcement issued by Feral Interactive who has previously released the game on iOS. The game will release in North America, Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia, and will be published as a fixed-price premium application via the Google Play Store and the Samsung Galaxy Apps store, meaning it will lack any form of in-app purchases. An exact launch date for Android was not revealed and pricing information is also missing as of this writing, though the mobile game was originally released on iOS late last year and is presently available on Apple’s devices for $9.99.
ROME: Total War was developed by The Creative Assembly and published by SEGA on PC in 2004 as a turned-based strategy game with large real-time battles. It was the third game in the series following Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War, and as expected, the game improved upon the original mechanics while introducing new ones. ROME: Total War was a great success when it was originally released for PC, and the game is still considered by many fans of the series to be one of the best entries to date, in part because of the game’s ability to immerse players into the world of ancient Rome with epic soundtracks and memorable, yet fairly lengthy Gladiator-like speeches from troop commanders at the start of every battle. The Android re-release is expected to retain all of the original game’s qualities while being updated only where necessary, i.e., the game will have a user interface redesigned specifically for touchscreens and mobile devices with smaller displays. The original PC game also had two expansions, namely Barbarian Invasion and Alexander, and both of these campaigns were re-released on iOS as standalone-expansions or bundled with the base game in the ROME: Total War Collection, which is presently available on Apple’s mobile storefront for $16.99. As yet, there’s no official word on whether these expansion packs will also be launched on the Android platform, but more details should emerge this winter.
SEGA did previously release the Total War Battles: KINGDOM for mobile more than two years ago as a free application supported by in-game purchases, but ROME: Total War will be a fully-fledged release similar to the PC game, and as a result, it will offer a completely different experience to that of the free-to-play counterpart. As for Feral Interactive’s plans for the future, assuming that ROME will be a success on Android then the publisher could eventually re-release other classic Total War titles later down the line, including Medieval II, which is also one of the most beloved Total War iterations to this day.