Friends, Romans, countryfolk… lend me your eyes. Cradle of Rome swallowed up a lot of my time for weeks as I matched my way to level 100. When I reached the 100th level, I had one citizen that I left to earn and could never get that guy. I let it go and accepted the Roman journey more than satisfied and delighted me.

Last year, I reported Cradle of Rome 2 was on its way. And many others kept asking when it was hitting the streets. As eager as I wanted to go on another journey in Rome, I figured Awem wanted to perfect the game before sharing it with the world. Sometimes deadlines need missing for quality’s sake.

And you might expect, Cradle of Rome 2 was worth the wait. After all, it was enough time to memorize Marc Antony’s speech from Julius Caesar. No excuses for not knowing it by memory. Hey, I memorized it in 10th grade. Funny thing about memorized poems and speeches, I end up like the author, play or whatever they’re from. Anyhoo… the game!

Adventure Mode — my favorite mode by far — of the match three game opens with the miracle story of two brothers and asks you to restore Rome’s glory by buying blueprints and then constructing the building. This makes way for the tie in with the mini-games to give them a little purpose. First, you start playing level 1 and make matches until you break all of the blue tiles. You’ll be done within 30 seconds with just four blue tiles.

As you make matches, you earn units of food, gold and supplies. Every blueprint costs so much food, gold and supplies. Once you have enough for a blueprint, you can buy it after successfully completing the mini game behind it. Mini games include jigsaw puzzles and finding matching pairs. While these are common mini games, it’s a little break from the matching grind. Completed jigsaw puzzles reveal a building blueprint — so that’s a great tie in with the story.

After completing a building, you can earn a citizen. Every citizen comes with a task you need to complete during the matching to win the citizen. It may be making as simple as matching five tiles to as challenging as making 10 moves in 10 seconds. Adding citizens also gives you an advantage in the game. One citizen gives you 500 extra units of gold in every new level. Another fills up a bonus faster. These bonuses can make or break a level for you depending on your strategy. Bonuses gives you more time, destroy all of the same type of tile, break one tile and so on.

Not only do you win trophies for every citizen, but also for special events such as completing five levels without a time warning and playing the whole game without losing a life.

New in Cradle of Rome 2 are the nasty skulls. When you match three skulls, it puts three blue tiles back on the board. Yeah, like I said, nasty things. As annoying as they are, they increased the game’s challenge. At least, they don’t show up in back to back levels. So you do get a break. Sort of. When not facing skulls, you may face narrow rows or columns that make it hard to break the tiles in them.

Two other modes include Tourney and Blitz. You unlock Tourney after scoring 500,000 points. Blitz stays locked until you’ve finished all 100 levels. These modes rely heavily on the clock, which turns me into a panicky gal. I prefer the clock in Adventure Mode. In Tourney, you have to break all the tiles in the level as fast as you can. The faster you finish the level, the higher your award.

Let’s say on Level 1, you need to complete the level within 10 seconds to get the gold medal, 15 seconds to get silver, 20 seconds to get bronze or end up with nothing. Seeing the little medal flash from gold to silver to bronze to zilch drove me batty. Even putting my hand over that area of the screen — it was HARD to even get a bronze medal in spite of all the tips and tricks I deployed.

I can tolerate Blitz more than Tourney. This one resembles what you may know as Endless Mode in other games. As long as you keep making matches, the clock slows down. Keep playing levels until the clock runs out. Like I said, I’m jumpy when it comes to heavier timed games, but those who love it will enjoy getting more out of the game.

Cradle of Rome 2. Worth. It.

Download and try Cradle of Rome 2. (Here’s the Mac version.)

FCC warning: The reviewer had a small role in the development of the game and received a copy of the game from the company, which in now way influences whether the game review is good, bad, reviewed or mentioned.

Cradle of Rome is one of my all-time favorite match three games. I played it for days and hours trying to get the last trophy and finish the 100th level. I never reached either goal. Alas, I had to move on as games needed to be played and reviewed.

Of course, I am excited about the upcoming release of Cradle of Rome 2, which is due out in the spring of 2010. Here’s a preview from Awem Studio:

Awem also posts its developer’s diary for those wanting details.

I enjoyed, Cradle of Rome, the predecessor to Cradle of Persia, so I was excited when I heard this one was coming. It took longer to get into Cradle of Persia. Eventually, it hooked me, but not as much as its ancestor hooked me.

The major difference between the two comes in how you make the match three. In Cradle of Rome, you select three or more items to make the match. Cradle of Persia not only requires selecting three or more items in a row, but also deciding which direction to go in making the match. If you make the match starting with the first object and moving to the right, the objects behind the first match will move right to replace the matched items’ spots. The same goes for all directions.

It took time to get a handle on this new thinking because the direction you move in can create a new and needed match or break an existing match. Despite the need to use the brain in making the right move, I still prefer Cradle of Rome.

What made Rome appealing was the process of building the city and adding citizens. It’s a great feeling when the screen pops up saying, “You’ve earned a new citizen!” Persia does the same and changing the theme, of course, and the music fits well with the Persian backdrop.

Unlike Rome, Persia lets you know what you need to do to add a citizen with an associated building. In Rome, you had to hope you made the right move. Right-click any building and Cradle of Persia provides the details including the building type, what you earned, and — if applicable, as not all buildings have one — what task to complete to add the citizen. Having this knowledge does not make the game too easy as some tasks are HARD.

Power ups are included, but they work differently. The power ups are not the same as the original and they each have four levels of power. Level 1 provides the least amount of power. For example, dynamite at level 1 only explodes one box while it explodes more at level 4 power.

The good thing about the four levels of power is that you can gain level 1 quickly and have something to use. In Cradle of Rome, you had to wait until the power up filled up to use it. Waiting for each level to power up can make a person antsy. A power up has a thin green line that glows as you destroy its associated power up. The green line proceeds around in a circle. When the circle completes, you gain another level of power.

Some gamers complain about developers releasing a similar version of a hit game, but Awem Studio did a lovely job Cradle of Persia with giving fans of Cradle of Rome the opportunity to get more of the same game play without being too similar. Awem took care to change the power up types, themes, objects, and tasks for earning citizens.

I’m all for Awem doing another. Maybe the company could explore a different one than the often-used Greek (though I do love Greek myths) or other frequently used themes. American history? African theme? Shakespeare theme?

Cradle of Rome fans will enjoy Cradle of Persia and those not having played Cradle of Rome will discover playing Cradle series as fan as a magic carpet ride (well, unless you’re afraid of heights then it’ll be like discovering a Genie in a bottle.).

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• 1.0 GHz processor
• 256 MB RAM
• DirectX 8.1 or later
• 81 MB hard drive space

Could this be a Cradle of Rome follow up? Awem Studios announced that Cradle of Persia is coming soon:

Persepol – a mysterious heart of the Ancient Persia. Luxurious palaces decorated with gold and gems, exotic gardens alluring with their peace and freshness. Inscrutability and tempting beauty of the East. Soon you will be able to guess all of its riddles by making a miraculous trip to the land of The Thousand and One Nights! You will need all of your skills and keenness of wit to build a city in the heart of oasis, but what you get in the end will surpass all of your expectations! Cradle of Persia – is coming soon for those who would like to create a miracle with their own hands!

As a fan of Cradle of Rome, I’m eager to see what this one is about. Aquitania also looks intriguing. Similar match three style as Cradle of Rome, but without the building of a city.

Ancient Rome wasn’t built in a day (couldn’t expect me to avoid the cliché, could you?), but it doesn’t stop me from trying in Cradle of Rome, a matching game where players build a Roman empire complete with over 20 masterpieces from village and taverns to Coliseum and Pantheon. Players also work their way up from Peasant to Emperor of Rome.

The purpose is to match three or more of the same object to clear the game board, but it isn’t simple as I advance to higher levels. After conquering earlier epochs, the battles get harder as it takes two matches to destroy a box. Instead of building up frustration, bonuses appear along the way to help me destroy troublemaker spots. Such bonuses include a hammer that can break a box, a lightning bolt that randomly knocks out multiple boxes, not necessarily the ones I want, and a bomb that destroys a specific area. The game contains eight bonuses.

More challenging is getting rid of the chained boxes because the objects can’t move. That means creating a match around the box to clear it. But that isn’t where the challenge stops. I run into objects that have two chains on them and have little room to get other objects lined up to make a match.

The Cradle of Rome game board also changes as you advance higher up in the chain of command to make it difficult to clear objects in corners or to access the boxes that have only one way in. Beautiful scenes representing a part of my growing Roman city appear behind the game for environment variety.

When I eventually lose all my men, the game ends. Fortunately, I don’t have to start at the beginning and work my way up to the fourth of five epochs. The game lets you pick up from the last epoch. As I advance in game play, I pick up strategies for getting better at defeating the board. Unfortunately, no strategy comes to mind for defeating the piles of objects that are double-chained with little room to make matches. I need more bonuses. Too bad, I can’t bribe anyone for them.

In one weekend, I made it past 50 levels. The game comes with over 100 levels to keep feeding my addiction that kept me up past my bedtime and interfered with my nighttime reading. The font styles, the music, the objects, the background and stunning graphics contribute to the game’s ancient Rome feel.

Whether you have time or not, the game fits various schedules. While it doesn’t require regular play, its addicting nature can suck in a busy person’s time as it did mine. I forced myself to read one chapter in a book before rewarding myself with one level of Cradle of Rome.

This is an almost perfect game that’s only missing one thing: Timeless mode. This Zen mode lets kids play it without the stress of beating the clock and adults like me who panic watching the time run out. The music isn’t my favorite, but it fits the game and it’s easy to turn off.

Cradle rocks!

Download the game from your favorite site:

• Amazon
• Big Fish Games