All three games are basically the same game in different stages of execution.

They all have 'bugs', they all have balance issues and design 'issues'. Your own enjoyment with any of them will rely on you and how much you can tolerate the flaws compared to the 'good parts', you find.

The 'mixed' review score is just a total score of all people bothering to put their thumb up or down. It's a heuristic method, not representative of anything. Especially, when it is less than a 1000 Steam reviews total. Even less than 500 per game. A few votes can tip those game scores either way, quickly.

My guess is, people after 1, buying 2, had way higher expectations than 2 could deliver upon. Those buyers where still around and disappointed. Then left.

Hegemony 3, in the end, is a subset of a subset of players, who still stuck around and bought the 3rd installment and ... according to them ... it turned out better than even they expected. But, at that point, everyone else was gone ("Burn me once ...").

As a general rule, I would always advice to read the long-form negative reviews for any game, to see the issues players really have and then decide for yourself. No one can take away your decision.

It's been a year or two since playing but IIRC the first one is pretty good, so buy that for sure. The second one drops some things such as "field camping" and introduces things such as food storage and hostages, which isn't better or worse, it's different, but I miss the stuff they dropped, I wish they had just added instead of also subtracting. Still worth buying.
The third one I think was more simplistic and a different feel. I think I didn't like that one as much. Of the three I think the first remains my favorite. But all three are worth the money, solid game with many hours of play. Don't think of them as expansions, think of them as different ways to make a similar game.

Originally posted by Adam Beckett:

Hegemony 3, in the end, is a subset of a subset of players, who still stuck around and bought the 3rd installment and ... according to them ... it turned out better than even they expected. But, at that point, everyone else was gone ("Burn me once ...").

Well, and then there's also a subset of players who came to Hegemony 3 fresh without knowledge of 1 or 2 and just appreciate the game for what it is without prejudice either way :-)

OP, from what I've gathered there's probably some pacing issue in the campaign of Hegemony Rome, it starts slow and the gameplay is relatively linear / monotonous. That is in comparison to Hegemony 1 which had a more free-style campaign with some innovative missions. Partly of course that's just due to historical facts: the gallic war unfolded the way it did and Caesar did the things he did and didn't do other stuff. It's also slow in comparison to the usual RTS like AoE and similar games, so every player who came here from traditional RTS probably expected a faster game. But Hegemony is as much planning as it is janking one's units into each other.

I read that during early access there have been issue with bugs and stability of the updated engine. It didn't help that Longbow seems to have overthrown with their publisher in some way, probably they had different expectation and incentives... as I said I wasn't around at the time, so this is hear-say and extrapolation from my side. I think it speaks for itself that Longbow (desperately?) lauched a kickstarter campaign for H3:CotA more or less directly after release of Rome. Obviously, then they put all their effort into H3:CotA and left Rome where it was (which also didn't help Rome get better reviews - players would say "they've abandoned it").

Dont trust reviews too much bro, or discussions, some people review bomb for whatever reason......


Game is great if you are a CAESAR fanboi.........