Praetorians was originally released for PC back in 2003 when the RTS genre was owned by Command and Conquer and Age of Empires. It was because of these franchises that very few people actually played this hidden gem of an RTS back then. I, for one, enjoyed my time with the original Praetorian quite a lot and I was extremely happy when I heard that the game is getting a remaster. Although I missed playing the HD Remaster on a PC, I finally managed to secure a review key for the PS4 version of the title. This is our review of the PS4 version of Praetorians HD Remaster in which we jump in the shoes of Julius Caesar and live through his battles.
Praetorians is a real-time strategy game which means that there are no pauses or delays when it comes to battles. Everything is very quick and when it comes to enemies in the game, they are extremely savage. The game starts with a few training missions during which you are given a short lecture on all of the basic mechanics of the game and how you can play the game using a controller. During these missions, you are told how you can move around units, take over villages, and get new armies. Once you’ve cleared all of the tutorial missions, you are ready to play the main campaign of the game.
While Praetorians might be an RTS and a game where you have to manage your armies but there are no resources or base building involved here. The only thing close to building bases that you do in the game is to take over villages and build some defensive towers around it. That’s it. Even your builders are soldiers who can be depromoted from higher levels to make them builders. When you take over these villages, you can then use the village population to make recruit new units and the resources gather on their own. These villages serve as your army recruitment centers and apart from them, there is no other base building in the game.
This is because Praetorians is not a base-building RTS. Its main focus in battle and it does not disappoint in battles. Right from the very first mission of the game, you indulge in battles in various areas such as open fields, close paths, and even area covered in trees. As you explore the maps, the enemies will have various ways to ambush you such as high grounds, trees in the forests, and even different sharp turns where the fog of war still remains until you get close to them. Some of the heavier units cannot enter the fog so you have to rely on the smaller units to clear out the forests and trees while your heavy units clear out the main roads and open-areas quickly.
Just like your enemies, you can also take advantage of these sneaky tactics such as hide your armies in the bushes, gain upper hand with high areas or even overcome their numbers with sheer strength in numbers. Combat is at the core of Praetorians and every mechanic in Praetorians is designed for combat. The unit selection has been made pretty easy even with consoles however in some tight spots, I was having problems while selecting a single hero unit since they are often lost in your troops. Story missions follow a linear path to battles however if you jump in Skirmish battles, you are free to approach the battles in whatever way suits you best.
One weak link of an otherwise great HD Remaster is the camera. Camera control is a little clunk and while the right joystick sits idle, both unit movement and camera movement have been assigned to the left joystick. Assigning both of these functions to a single mouse surely makes sense but the same joystick is just weird. This means that while assigning commands to units such as changing their directions, the camera would move around as well making it a little difficult to issue proper commands as the camera moves off-angle. While the generic movement is fine and bearable, moving a large number of units around can be a little tedious sometimes if you only rely on choosing units again and again with the left joystick.
To make the unit selection a little easier, you can assign groups of units to quick-buttons which allows you to quickly press the button and the assigned units will be instantly selected. This is certainly limited to some extent because the controller only has a limited amount of buttons but it works miracles over the continuous moving the joystick around to select units mechanics. It also helps in battles where you want to quickly move a unit forward or back for tactical battle strategies. To give you an edge in the battles, you also have different heroes who come with various abilities and you can use them in battles for an edge.
Praetorians offers both singleplayer and multiplayer modes for you to jump into. Singleplayer has the game’s main campaign along with the tutorial missions and you will also find Skirmish mode here. Skirmish offers no strings attached battles where you simply pick a faction, choose your map, adjust the game settings, and quickly jump into a battle. There is no story to worry about and no mission objectives to rush after as well. This is simply your time with the battles and how you want to play them. While the HD Remaster brings multiplayer along with it, I could not play a single match online despite trying during the weekdays and the weekends. The servers are there but I could not find a match or a player to try out the online bit despite spending a good 30 minutes waiting after hosting a match.
This means that if you are jumping in Praetorians HD Remaster on your PS4 console, you will have to stick with the singleplayer modes however both of them can offer you hours and hours of gameplay alone. Even after you are done with the singleplayer campaign of the game, you can head over to the Skirmish mode and try to play against AI of different difficulty levels with different settings and try out the decent amount of maps it offers. Here, you can spend as much time as you want in battles and play them however you want. The condition of multiplayer might change in the future but so far, it seems very bleak and I think that the PC version will have much longer server support as compared to the console version of the game.
Since this is an HD Remaster of the original game, the review will be incomplete without commenting on the new visuals and upscaled resolution of the game. Compared to the original title, the Praetorians HD Remaster is a major improvement and settles really well on modern consoles however when you compare it with modern RTS titles, it certainly lacks both visually and content-wise. However, this is not a remaster built from the ground so we cannot really compare it with modern titles that have been developed with much newer technologies however for a player who has been playing the modern RTS titles, it is surely going to be lacking in many departments. For me, it holds a certain nostalgic factor and I loved playing the game again. For someone who did not play the original title back then and has only jumped in the game now, I think it will not hold up too well with them.
Final Verdict:
Every time I hear that an RTS has found its way to consoles, I am always thinking that this is going to be a nightmare playing on the console. I went into playing Praetorians with the same mindset however I was surprised to see how well the controls are made for Praetorians on consoles. Every command is right there in front of you with easy button assignments that hardly take any time getting used to. While the visuals surely look great for an HD remaster, the controls are brilliant and I absolutely had a blast playing the game on a PS4 after all these years. With its minimalistic base building, heavy emphasis on battles, and simple-enough controls to learn easily on a console, the Praetorians HD Remaster could be the console RTS that we have been waiting for a long time. If you love RTS titles but own a console, Praetorians should be on your must-play list.
Final Score: 8.0/10
