Romance of Rome's gameplay is pretty straightforward to anyone who has even thought about a hidden object game. You will be presented with locations that are filled with all kinds of items, and there is a list of items that you need to find. Thankfully, the designers opted with showing you a picture of what you are looking for rather than the name of the item. This later choice usually results in problems finding the requested items because what the player calls something doesn't always match what the developer called it.
Romance of Rome actually only shows you a few of the items that you must find at a time. As you find each item on the presented list, it goes away and another one takes its place. While this feels a little cheap since you will see items in your scouring of the screen that you can't pick up but will have to later, it does allow the game to save some very precious screen real estate and display more of the picture.
Occasionally, you will come across an item you need to find that will actually go into your inventory. Actually, each screen has a couple of these. Each screen also has a couple of interactive items on the screen that will respond to inventory items. This is usually something like a locked drawer or barrel that needs breaking. While early on, the inventory items are typically found on the same screen as the object to use them on, most of the game will have you hopping between several hidden object screens within an area in order to use various inventory items against various other interactive items.
The story of Romance of Rome has you trying to make a name for yourself in order to become a more renowned Roman citizen. You quickly meet a fair lady who, it turns out, is way out of your league. You then spend the game finding objects and earning money so that you can buy various items that increase your status in the community. While this seems like an interesting RPG-like element to the game, it really isn't. Each area has a set of items that you need to buy in order to move on to the next area, so there really isn't any kind of choice there, you just need to make sure you earn enough money in the area to actually buy what you need, and quite frankly, as long as you complete each of the screens, you will have enough.
Each area also has you interacting with three different people who each have a task for you to do. Again, this sounds like it borders on an RPG, but once again, you have no choice but to do what they ask. In fact, while most of the quests are accomplished through the act of finding all of the items in your list, even when you've found everything but somehow managed not to compete the quest, you will have to in order to progress to the next area.
