The Settlers II 10th Anniversary (DS) Review
The Settlers is an economically based simulation game which sees you managing an entire community of people from the word go up until they have reached total domination. The aim of the game is to successfully manage your people and your resources in order to basically survive and then thrive in your environment. The game has proven a popular hit on the PC, but does the transition from PC to DS work? Read on to find out.
As alluded to, The Settlers is a simulation game with heavy emphasis on the economic side of life. The Settlers offers you 3 modes of play, though each mode doesnt differ a great deal from the others. Also offsetting is the fact that the game modes described in the manual dont even mirror those in the actual game. Due to the nature of this simulation game, I believed it a wise move to read the manual before delving into the actual game. It was most confusing to read up on the different game modes offered only to find that they do not exist, at least not in the way the manual described. In any case, what you are offered is a Roman Campaign, World Campaign, and a Free Play mode. The Roman Campaign is made up of 10 missions, starting with your fleet of people escaping a damaged ship onto an island. It is from here you need to start playing God and helping your little minions make the best of a bad situation. The World Campaign is really much of the same, except you take control of varying societies spanning across the globe. Finally, the free play mode allows you to tweak many of the games settings so you can play how you like. Each mode still boils down to the same thing, and thats the experience of simulating the life of a community of people.
Upon beginning the game, youll begin to appreciate the hard work that goes into building a functional society of people. When you start the game, it will automatically build a central town hub, where you can store the various resources, tools, and food you accumulate later in the game. Your job starts with placing flags around the landscape, which serve as a way to build roads around the place. Once you have built a suitable number of roads, you can send out geologists and scouts who will search for resources such as iron, water, and coal and navigate the landscape respectively. As you start collecting resources, you will open up more possibilities. For instance, once your people start cutting down trees, the wood can be turned into planks that can be used to create various buildings, much the same is stone, which can also be used for building purposes. As the came progresses, more and more buildings will become available to you, ranging from iron smelting works and fishermans buildings, to bakeries, breweries, and quarries. You will also need to build mines in which to mine for resources such as iron and coal, which are necessary for a number of other activities such as tool making and weapons making.
Aside from building your town up and managing resources, youll eventually have to build an army to defend from attacking armies. Youll also need to make sure there is a plentiful supply of money and food. There are plenty of things to do, although many of these activities are done automatically. At times you will find yourself browsing around your town just watching as your people do their thing, and if a building is no longer functioning such a mine running out of its resource, you can destroy is and rebuild in another location.
You can activate a menu that will allow you to keep close inspection of exactly what is going on, such as viewing what capacity a particular building is functioning at or how much resources you have in store. Youll also receive a note from time to time informing you of anything new, such as the discovery of a new resource (send those geologist out!), or another location of an existing resource. You will also receive information such as advice on where to explore next.
The Settlers mainly makes use of the stylus, and for the most part it works quite well. It did often take a few touches of the screen to get the game to do what I wanted however (E.g., exit a screen), which was a little frustrating. The L button is used to swap screens, which is used whenever you need to bring the top screen to the bottom (touch) screen so you can change options and what not. The R button is used to speed up time whilst the other buttons are used to bring up various menus. It works pretty well on the DS, though the menus are a little confusing sometimes and I was unsure as to what the hell the menu was allowing me to do. Thankfully, there is an i icon on most menus which will give you information on what that particular menu is all about. The game is certainly better suited to a PC, as there are many menus and the menus are pretty important as they mainly used for management of your people and resources. That being said, the developers have done a pretty good job of porting the game to the PC.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. The environments look good enough, though they are simple in design and pretty minimal in detail and variety. The buildings also look acceptable, though the actual people are very pixilated. Its not at all a bad effort, but it certainly doesnt shine on any particular level. The Settlers sports a simplistic graphical style, which is also apparent in the sound department. For the majority of the Settlers, only one track is played on loop, and whilst it certainly suits the game with its medieval feel, it is a very bare bones approach. A bit more variety in the sound would have been welcomed, though what is included suits the relaxed approach to which you would play the game.
The Settlers is not a game that involves deep gameplay, and as I mentioned, you will spend much of the time just looking around ensuring things are running smoothly. The game rewards thought and management skill more then anything, and is it not for gamers who want action and fast-paced gameplay. For fans of the genre, theres plenty to like about The Settlers. With potentially over a hundred hours of gameplay, anybody who likes simulation titles will get their moneys worth. I feel a different approach that allowed more control over what each individual person is doing would have been better, but as it is, it is a pretty good effort. Personally, I am not a fan of the simulation genre, though I found enough in The Settlers to put in quite a few hours of gameplay. Whilst the PC version would be the superior choice, simulation fans looking for a worthy title should at least give the Settlers a go.
