Imperator: Rome
Skip · Strategy · 2019
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $39.99.
- Length
- 16.4h
- Value
- $2.44/hr
- Reviews
- 66% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 6970. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Dominate the classical Mediterranean in Imperator: Rome, a grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive. Navigate the dangerous waters of politics and diplomacy as you build up your provinces and conquer foreign lands. Now available with special content and the digital artbook.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $7.59. That was April 2025. 52 discounts in the 8 years on record. They run about 75 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 5 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
It is pricier than 99 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 85 percent. Victoria 3 ($49.99, scores 28) outscores it, and so does Victoria II ($19.99, scores 87). Both sit among its closest neighbours.
Critics scored it 76, but players land 10 points lower at 66 percent. The reviews were kinder than the room.
Steam's global achievement data says under 1 percent of players ever finish it. On a 16.4-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. This site sampled 393 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 12 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written February 2023 to September 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 9 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 2,864 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 140 have a larger share. The typical game sits near 5 in 1,000, so the score docks it. 3 of the 12 refunded reviewers were past Valve's two-hour window when they wrote the review. Inside the two-hour refund window, 35 percent of the 1,911 reviews written there were positive, against 66 percent overall, and those are 10 percent of everything written about it.
16.4 hours to finish it, 665 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 41 times the campaign.
7 years after release it still had 547 people in it at once.
The drop-off
19% start to <1% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 16.4-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
547 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Imperator: Rome scores 18/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/859580/imperator-romeThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 14, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.