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Her two worlds no longer balance on blind scales
While the real-time battles played out largely the same; the grand-level campaign portion of the game was kicked up a notch. To put it more simply: The dial now goes to 11 in the grand-level campaign map. Whether this is either a good thing or a bad thing depends on which part of Rome: Total War you found yourself favoring to begin with.
Where does 11 on the dial take Barbarian Invasion's campaign map? A level almost equal to that of games like Civilization. For example: the addition of religion removes one of my chief complaints against Rome: Total War: that conquering foreign lands was consequence free when it came time to administer over those lands. Now you'll find yourself making sure that governors are either compatible with the native religion, or finding 'ways' of converting people to your religion.
Now even your average general needs more attention. Yes, I mean plural, new to the expansion pack is the ability to create general units that act like members of the faction's family except they can only command units. These generals cannot be made heirs, but they do have their own likes and dislikes. Place them in an area they don't like and they may rebel taking troops under their command with them. Having a strong supply of generals to work with for the first time in the Rome: Total War series made the most noticeable impact in how I planned out my long strategies.
I don't want anyone to come away thinking the game is somehow now unbalanced. These new additions to the campaign map, in my opinion, make individual battles more meaningful. Gamers who loved Rome: Total War to begin with will love the multitude of small changes and updates to the already solid single-player campaign mode.
Beyond gameplay additions and unit tweaks I found Barbarian Invasion integrated itself very nicely with the original in the sense that all the menus were familiar. I would have loved to be able to switch back and forth between the original game and the expansion pack from within the menu rather than having to exit out and swap CDs around. But, this is more the ramblings of someone trying to find flaws in what is a very solid expansion pack.
Taken alone Barbarian Invasion certainly fulfills whatever expectations gamers might have of expansion packs, but if you can see past "100+ new units" bullet points on the back of the box to the emotions you will experience picking up the pieces of that grand empire you built from scratch in Rome: Total War... then this is one for you.
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