Review: Settlers 6: Rise of en empire. ( criticism appreciated )

Haradeas

Started playing games when I was 6. ( 26 now ) Starting from the amiga => pc

Anyhow I know and played so many games that I wish to write my knowledge down so that I can help people find their game ^^ Also giving a objective and honest opinion is something that I miss more and more in ganereviews.  I want to start writing reviews for a gamesite but that are future plans and I have to start somewhere. So I hope I can get some objective critism , negative or postive ^^

Cheers ^^

 

Review: Settlers 6: Rise of en empire

 

To burst your bubble: No, the typical settlers addiction that all love and know in settlers 1 & 2 is no where near settlers 6. The little guys and girls that work there asses off don’t look very cute or have a way to big head. You will not be cursing anymore when the roads were once again screwed up because you wanted that perfect transportation network.

For the people that don’t know settlers: you have a part of the world divided in several parts. You start on 1 part while making the basic buildings: food, wood, etc and you expand your economy with new stuff like medicine, wool, cotton, beer, etc. Build up an army and squashes the enemy like a bug. All of this happens in real time. (not turn-based)

 

Let’s take for example trees, in previous settlers they had to be cut into planks before they could have been used in buildings. Well now you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s ok to just cut the trees… and that is it. Also you only need 1 kind of materials for 1 building or item. No more needing stone and wood for buildings for example, just wood.

 

The graphics look pretty good; you see a lot of details how the little people are working in their houses. You see a bakery making his bread or a blacksmith mashing on iron to make swords from it. Also outside in the nature parts where you haven’t build a city yet it is full with life. Birds, rabbits, lobsters, it’s those tiny things that give the game a living world.

Also de cut scenes are simple but enjoyable although sometimes it feels like you are on a quest and suddenly you completed it without any further explanation and you are like...  what?

Also the addition of heroes doesn’t really fit into the settlers theme but it is also not really annoying it even adds some gameplay decisions. Like which hero you should take (every hero has its own passive and active skills you can utilize)

 

An important aspect is the addiction. You keep playing, making your settlers happy, see the enemy perish and see your city evolving. Every time it give a feeling of “Yeah look at mah joint, trippin like a well oiled machine! “ The game is not very deep in gameplay but it gives a nice and light snack while you wait for the next haxor awesome ultra game.

 

Sadly there are also a lot of bugs in the game. I have been playing version 1.6 but still there were so many bugs. For example: you get the notice a miner doesn’t find any iron, weird you think, I just placed a iron miner building… problem was that the build blocked the entrance to get in, even when there was enough space to go around. Or when animals that you hunt for food spawn behind rocks in a corner so you just can’t get to them. So all by all they should have done a little bit more bug testing.

 

My conclusion: if you see it somewhere for a bargain, take it. It gives you a week or so game time which is good value for the money you spend on it. Or if you are a freak like me that just has to complete all parts in the settlers serie you will not regret it and have a lot of fun.

 

 

Haradeas

ignore spelling mistakes atm, eng is not my native language but will make sure to pay more attention to them in the future.