» The Settlers: Rise of an Empire
» (Platform) PC
» (Release) 25 September 2007
» (Requirements) Windows XP/Vista, DirectX 9.0c , Pentium 4 1.8 GHz/Athlon XP 1800+ CPU, 512 MB RAM , DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card with 64 MB RAM, Vertex Shader 1.1 and Pixel Shader 1.3 support, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti or better/ATI RADEON 9500 or better , DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
» (Dificulty) Average
» (Learning Curve) About an hour
» (Rating) ESRB Everyone 10+
If you are tired of building and managing modern day metropolises like those in Sim City, why not take a break and try governing little medieval people instead? The Settlers: Rise of an Empire has plenty to offer both longtime fans and those new to the series. For those unfamiliar with the previous installments of the game, The Settlers allows players to build and manage their own little medieval cities, with a focus on resource gathering, territory expansion and war.
Blue Byte's latest offering successfully manages to retain most of the what's good in the previous installments and improve on the areas that were lacking. Those who have played it before will realize that most of the troublesome bits in the game are gone - most notably the majority of the micromanagement of your cities and the gathering of resources. Your settlers are much more intelligent now, and collecting or harvesting the various resources from the environment around you are less of a pain as compared to before.
Perhaps the most welcome addition to Rise of an Empire is that of six knights, and each one has a different ability that will make fulfilling the needs of your virtual citizens a little easier. Playing in campaign mode brings you through a series of maps and scenarios that are quite detailed, with a rather interesting story. There are plenty of animations and a personal approach to the quests that players will find interactive and feel much more involved in the game as it develops. One gripe here is that certain missions in campaign mode can really drag for a long time, so be prepared to spend a long time on some stages.
The Hot Zone
Different climatic conditions call for new
strategies and this keeps gameplay fresh.
The introduction of different climatic zones is also something that will keep even experienced players on their toes as they call for different strategies in approaching the map and here is also where your knights' abilities come into play. Cold, Northern territories have a limited farming and fishing season, meaning that you need to turn to other means to acquire food and other goods, while hot Southern zones will mean that you will have often have to decide between copping down trees for farmland or to maintain forests for wood as building materials.
I didn't run into any problems with Rise of an Empire on our computer, though there have been complaints in the user community about glitches from system lockups to timed missions that do not work. What kept this game from being a really polished city builder is really it's sticky controls and a few minor technical bumps that would otherwise make the game an excellent experience. The larger of the two problems is the annoying micro-control functions that players will have to look into every time there is a battle that involves siege engines. Players need to assign one military unit to each siege weapon to man it, and this has to be done individually for every unit, wasting time and not to mention being very inflexible since this further reduces your already pathetic soldier limit of a mere 90 persons.
One other thing that I found lacking in the game's economy was the inability to build more than one storehouse. Knights can claim various parts of the map as new territories by building an outpost, but the lack of multiple storehouses means that settlers from far-flung territories will have to walk all the way back to the main city to pick up or deliver the various goods and resources, rendering massive expansion projects useless.
Don't expect to play online either - even though the game has an online multiplayer function the chances of finding someone else to match up with is very remote. You might also want to run Rise of an Empire on a machine with slightly better specs, since it is rather taxing on your video card.
Despite a few inconveniences here and there, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is still a good game, and probably the best one so far in the series. For city building enthusiasts, this will probably be a good addition to your game library, and both newbies and seasoned pros alike will likely find this very satisfying despite its little faults.
Score:
Gameplay: 7.0/10 Graphics: 7.5/10 Sound: 7.5/10 Overall: 7.0/10
*overall score is not an average of the total attribute scores
