the settlers: rise of an empire

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-09
Strong city-building sim, but lacks anything resembling a challenge.
Alright. Let's see here.

This was hyped to me as "Like Stronghold 2, except with more focus on city life than combat."

That was a pretty fair comparison. In Settlers, your main object of any mission is to build up a city infrastructure and promote your knight to new ranks in order to gain access to better buildings.

It's a beautiful game to play. When you really get a city rolling, you'll be entertained merely by zooming in and watching your settlers go about their business. The cities themselves feel alive and are nicely detailed. You really will feel as if you're lording over a medieval settlement.

Resources are scattered around the maps, which are divided into regions. You can't build in a region unless you've claimed it by setting up an outpost. Through this system you can slowly expand the territory you control and gain new trade partners or plots of land. In some maps expansion is a necessity, just to gain the space you need for the farms to feed and clothe your settlers.

I should remark again on the prettiness of the game. The seasons cycle, the peasants talk in the streets and hold festivals when you promote your knight, and mutter when there's not enough food or they're cold.

It's definitely a fun simulation game to play, but there aren't many deep details to delve into. It's fairly superficial. This won't bother you much, though. You'll be having too much fun watching the settlers go about their lives.

Now a few negatives.

I mentioned before that the focus wasn't on combat. Well, I just mentioned it a second time--it really needs to be discussed. For starters, there is a grand total of two basic military units: swordsmen and archers. That's it. There are also spies, mercenaries, and siege equipment, but you'll almost never use them. It's pretty much those two lonesome unit types. You'll never build a large army, either. Four squads--two archers and two swordsmen--are enough to completely dominate most enemies in the campaign. There are a couple of occasions (mission-specific) where you will have to build a single battering ram and only use it once--then you can leave it to rot if you want.

The only other real negative is the difficulty.

Namely, there ISN'T any. Difficulty, that is.

You can beat this game blindfolded and with the speakers muted. It's really that easy. You'd almost have to try harder to lose the levels than to win. For most of them, it's just a matter of time before you achieve victory--in 75% of missions, there's nothing to challenge you. Nothing at all. No enemies will attack you. No natural disasters will damage your town. The very biggest threat in the entire game is wolves, who will occasionally attack a lone settler.

Despite the flaws, this is a very fun game. If you can find it with a cheap price tag, it's worth picking up. You will spend several hours building up cities and enjoy every moment of it.

Eventually, though, you'll eject the disk--because you will have built every building, promoted your knight to the top of the tree, and have not a single challenge to overcome.

Rating:
Date: 2008-04-06
Simpler than Stronghold 2
I thought this game was a bit too simple for my tastes.

To prove my point I did a comparison to one of my favorite castle building games, Stronghold 2, by listing items and canceling out the items that were the same in both games. As it came out, the Settlers had about 20 items that were not found in Stronghold, and Stronghold 2 had 70+ not found in Settlers, spread out between castle structures, military units (not as much of the total as you would think), and economic buildings. The Settlers seems like it should be for children when compared with this game.

The worst difference is in defense building. In Stronghold 2 you can build a wide variety of gates and towers and any thickness of two types of wall you like, but in Settlers 6 you can build only one type of tower and one type of gate for each type of wall, and the walls are uniform and thin.

In Stronghold, as well, you can actually look inside your buildings and see your people working. In the Settlers they work outside their buildings and often get their tasks done in fewer steps. One example of the latter is bread making in Stronghold 2, which involves going through a mill for flour instead of just sending grain straight to the bakery (however Stronghold Legends does not have mills either). I just found it more entertaining, perhaps, that in Stronghold 2 tax collecting is carried out in a separate building instead of the castle, and carts have to be dispatched from posts instead of the central storehouse. It's things like this - attention to detail - that really make a game more complex, lifelike, and entertaining. When you need less structures and people to carry out your economy and defense, the game is more boring and less like real castle life.

There are a few unique perks in the Settlers, like upgradeable buildings, the seasons, different environments and castle styles, and troops gathered into battalions, but not enough to even get close to the complexity of Stronghold 2. Even Stronghold Legends, which is stripped down to accommodate a greater military aspect, seems more entertaining than this game, even for those who prefer castle building to fighting.

Also, the Settlers seems to give everybody graphics problems; I almost had to return my copy but discovered just in time that the game started out on zero brightness, etc., so that I had to change those values to get started. The graphics I found to be detailed and complex but they didn't work well on my machine.

This game is also fairly easy, as I was unable to fully complete the Stronghold 2 campaign but the Settlers 6 campaign, though arduous, was a breeze.

Overall, Stronghold 2 beats this game in almost every aspect, but if you want a game that is simpler, easier, and less militaristic, it could be a very good buy (or if you just got sick of Stronghold after playing it too much).

Rating:
Date: 2008-04-06
Pass!
RTS fans and/or Parents looking for a game for their child:

My Background: I'm an Veteran about these RTS games. Blizzard's Warcraft/Starcraft Franchises, the CaveDog TA franchises, the Command and Conquer Franchises, are all familiar to me, as well as lesser known titles ranging from the mediocre depths of KK&D to the sophisticated heights of Homeworld. I've been playing them since I was a kid, though I'm rooted most firmly in Sid Mier's Civilization series. I care about both game play and Historicism, depending on what the game is trying to accomplish.

About this Settler's Game:

Its remarkable to me how the problems first clearly identified from the original settler's games, over a decade later, remain the biggest obstacles to the franchise today. The game LITERALLY has a half-life of about 2 hours: After two hours, the game is half as fun as it was in the beginning. After another two hours, its a quarter as fun as it was in the beginning. After six hours of play (since the game is quite dull 90% of the time, 6 hours of game play might happen over several days of play), you'll distinctly feel regret over not having chosen another title.

What ARE the problems?

1)Well, the fundamental game mechanics: there's an initial resource grab and then the 'Empires' stagnate into tedious... well impotence to DO anything. Theres little or NO incentive to actually 'win' the game.... You'd just rather start over again, trying to recapture those initial 'fun moments.'

2)The Concept of the game feels truly confused. Firstly, its a city builder, not an Empire Builder- just like the previous installments of the franchise. The complexity of early versions was dropped, which would have made sense if it was a trade-off for Scale of Game Play- but like I said, its a City Builder, not an Empire Builder. So simplifying the facets of the city's inter-dependencies accomplishes nothing but making the City you build lack variety and interest. Secondly, the economic aspect of the game is of dubious importance: EVENTUALLY you'll get whatever it is you're looking to get, regardless of how poorly you 'manage' the economy. The military aspect is equally dubious: the enemy never threatens you unless you provoke it, and even once provoked, its impossible, regardless of how poorly you manage your defenses, to actually loose the game, because the enemy seems as equally uninterested in winning as you will be. There are NO historic aspects to the game, and little-to-none of the historicism you'd want if you're buying the game for a 10-and-under player. (Over 10 need not apply in the first place)

3)The Game lacks ergo dynamics. Sophistication isn't necessarily important for entertainment, but the simplicity of the military and economics is hampered by a surprisingly and unnecessarily complicated feel to actually doing what you want to do. The War Mechanics is truly disgraceful and not worth detailing- the siege equipment, particularly, is unnecessary and unwieldy and stupid.

OK, so what to do with your Money?

1)If you want a City-Builder, get something like Sim City.
2)If you want an Empire-Builder, a City-Builder, which also has Strategy AND a dose of Historical value, get Civ4
3)If you want a basic straight-up base-oriented RTS game, get something like 'Starcraft2' (out soon) or 'Supreme Commander' (if you have a 3,000 dollar system) or 'C&C3' or 'Universe at War' or something.
4)If you want a non-Base oriented strategy RTS game, I actually recommend Sins of a Solar Empire, which is simple but sophisticated simultaneously.
5)If you want a Game leaning heavily of Strategy and Historicism, with only a dash of Empire-management, I recommend a TOTAL WAR franchise game, like Empire Total War (out at end of year), or Medieval 2 total war. Medieval 2 will require maybe a 2,000 dollar system.

Good luck, and don't fall prey to nostalgia for Settlers 2 Gold: Everyone has come a LONG way since 1997... everyone except the Settlers Franchise, which might have actually regressed.

Rating:
Date: 2008-02-07
good game if you have a good computer
I bought this game b/c i was getting bored w/ Sims 2 and all their expansions and i played Stronghold 2 and beat the game over and over again and the one thing i liked about Stronghold was the micromanagement, i'm not a big fan of building armies and going to attack people.

I gave this game a good score b/c it's fun to play, easy to learn, as you keep playing the different missions they get harder each time and for those of us who have lives and can't take hours on end to play a game this is a great substitute. Plus this game incorporates weather conditions so depending on which terrain you are on it's harder to play. (example: playing in the dessert is much harder than playing in a 4 season area).

This game isn't for someone who likes to build up armies and destroy civilizations, go play Stronghold 2 or Civilizations. This game is for people who like managing cities and dealing w/ economy and watching your settlers go about life.

The graphics in this game are amazing! BUT you must have a very fast CPU and graphic's card to really enjoy this game. I started playing this on my computer which i bought 2 years ago and it lagged a lot, i had to turn down all options and then it played but it still took a while. I played it on my husbands computer which we just bought during xmas and it flies!!!

I have only found 2 downsides to this game. 1)No matter what computer i played this on the Save time was at least 1 min.
2) sometimes the missions either get stuck and you have restart them or i'm just not understanding the mission and right now there are no websites with walkthroughs or cheats at this moment.

Rating:
Date: 2007-12-30
Spend your money on Civ IV
The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is easily one the worst games I've ever played. The graphics are nice, but that's all I can say good about it. The game play is horribly boring, and the "strategy" element is non-existent and the game is riddled with bugs and bad design choices (even with the latest patch). The military aspect should not even have been included or they should have done a much better job of designing it before releasing it.
There is absolutely NO challenge in this game. If you are a fan of 4X games or even RTS games, you will always beat the computer after about two games without even really trying. This game is terrible. Save your hard-earned money and buy something else. The only reason I gave it 2 stars was for the graphics.

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