Before playing the game I decided to be a good reviewer and check out how to play the game by reading the manual. After reading all five pages of the useless information in the manual, I started having a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach about the quality of this game. Not providing a manual wouldn't be a negative if the in game help was adequate; unfortunately it is not. For example, whenever I received a new bonus item I had to try it out a few times to find out it's purpose as the in game help provided such a vague explanation. I guess that, since this is a budget game, they had to cut corners someplace, so why not the manual (and the tutorial and the game mechanics and the sound track)?

Luckily, the basic game play is pretty simple to understand. There are three types of game pieces; food, gold and resources. There is a running total for each of these and to add more to the total you play a level and line up three or more of the same game pieces in a row, or column. Once lined up,all of the game pieces disappear, the sum of the pieces are added to the total number of each type of game piece, and the upper game pieces fall into the newly vacated spots. This is pretty standard for this type of game.

Scattered throughout the game board are special tiles. To complete a level the player must break all of the special tiles by matching and clearing the game pieces on those tiles. Sometimes the tiles that need to be broken are multiple layers thick or covered by chains. In these cases the game pieces on the tiles will need to be cleared multiple times. To make clearing the level more difficult the developers threw in a timer in the form of a water jug that slowly empties and the level ends when all the water is gone or all of the tiles are broken. The amount of time provided for clearing a level is usually adequate. For the times when it is not, the game ends up becoming tedious and boring.

Once the level is complete you have the option to purchase a part of Rome. Each part of Rome (windmill, quarry, Parthenon etc.) has a purchase price in resources, food and gold. With each purchase a bonus that helps enhance the game is unlocked. The bonus may be that you get a special power or that you receive more supplies than normal during game play.

The bonus powers are multiple use powers and have various effects. Once used, the bonus power will need to be restored for the next use. So, in addition to the food, gold and resource pieces, most boards will have bonus game pieces. These pieces will, when lined up, restore a small part of the bonus power but it will not be useable until fully restored.

Once the bonus power is restored a signal sounds. If you are like me you will not hear it because I play with the sound turned off as the songs quickly became irritating. Not that the songs are bad. It's just that, according to the game packaging, there are 100 boards so the few songs that are offered get old quick.

The bonus powers, while useful, have some drawbacks. Namely the game pieces to refill the powers are specific to the powers themselves, the available bonus game piece changes every level cycling each time through all bonus powers currently unlocked, if you fail a level you have to play the level over and over until you beat it and finally if you use one of your bonus powers in a level that you don't complete you start over with the same amount of bonus power as when you finished the last attempt.

I know this is confusing, so I will provide an example. Let's say that you have two bonus powers unlocked, the hammer and the lightning bolt. On the current level there are lightning bolt game pieces. You use the hammer on a tile and then fail to beat the level. You restart the level again but now you can not use the hammer as there are only lightning bolt game pieces. This means you will not have access to the hammer until you beat the level and start a new level that has hammer game pieces.

Building up supplies to purchase new parts of Rome can also be problematic. This is due to the fact that the supplies collected during a level are lost if the level is not completed. Even if a level is completed, the supplies required to purchase each part of Rome are high making it necessary to complete multiple levels to build up the supplies needed to make a purchase. With the levels getting harder all the time, it makes purchasing all of Rome seem a bit daunting.

While the game does have many flaws, I still enjoy playing it when I am away from my consoles, at least when I am not stuck on a level. Although, even if I am stuck, the game has a relax mode that allows me to play through levels I have already completed.

With over 100 levels and 20 parts of Rome to purchase, Cradle of Rome will keep you busy for more than a day (you know…Rome wasn't built in a day) and offers a fair amount of replay ability. So if you are into bejeweled-like puzzles and you are looking for a challenge, I recommend picking up Cradle of Rome.