Players have the opportunity to civilize adjacent barbarian provinces, eventually reaching the entire Roman Empire at its height.

Most missions require the player to pacify a province and raise the citizens standard of living to a certain level, while neither suffering a military loss, nor losing the emperor's favour, often within a certain time frame.

He said the game's strongest point is how it expands from a city-building simulation into nation-building and wargames, but also highly praised the graphics and simple, easy-to-grasp interface.

The editors wrote that Caesar II "surpassed the original with SVGA graphics and an actual combat module", and noted that it "could have won had the competition not been so strong.

"[7] PC Gamer also nominated Caesar II as the best strategy game of 1995, although it lost to Command & Conquer.