Gaming Trend Review
The Settlers: Rise of an Empire
- Official Site
- Platform: PC
- Publisher: Ubi Soft
- Developer: Blue Byte
- Release Date: 09/25/07
- Genre: Strategy
Pros
- Great production values.
Cons
- Interface issues.
- Same-y feeling cities.
by Alan Au
The Settlers series is one of the classic city-builder franchises, and The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is the most recent installment in the long-running series. As far as city-builders go, it’s a cute little game with some neat features and great production values. Certainly, if you’re looking to pick up a recent city-builder, this isn’t a bad choice. Unfortunately, the game also has some interface and gameplay quirks that prevent it from getting top marks. With better controls and more diverse gameplay, this could have been a really great game. Instead, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire ends up being a beautiful but disappointingly repetitive gameplay experience.
No doubt about it; The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is a good looking game. The classic cartoon-y Settlers look has been updated to take advantage of modern graphics capabilities. Buildings and units are nicely modeled and textured, and there are plenty of little details to add ambience to the in-game environment. For example, you’ll see trees fall over as your workers chop them down, and then you can watch the trees slowly re-grow over time. Then, when winter comes, you can watch as the water freezes and snow begins to fall.
As for the cities themselves, you can zoom out to get a slightly wider view, or you can zoom in to watch the little people ferry goods back and forth. One of the nice things is that cities actually look like busy metropolises instead of just abstract collections of buildings. Visually, this is a great experience. Perhaps the only drawback is that the game can be a bit graphically intensive, and you’ll need some fairly high-end hardware to take full advantage of the visual options in the game.
The music and sound effects are used quite effectively, and the voice work is well done. Blue Byte has done an excellent job with the production values here, and they add to the overall experience. The background music is perfectly suited whether you’re in the frozen lands of the north or the arid deserts of the south. Just be careful that you don’t get that “town festival” tune stuck in your head.
Screenshots
Unfortunately, controls are where the game starts to get into some trouble. The basic game mechanics are pretty simple, but the game can be a bit fidgety. You won’t have to select individual workers and can focus on building placement. However, placing buildings can be somewhat of a chore. While the game tries to help you line things up with any nearby road, other buildings will require you to rotate them by awkwardly holding down the Shift key while rolling the mouse-wheel. Map navigation can also be infuriating, since the mini-map is inexact. Couple that with scrolling difficulties and the game is more about map navigation and building placement gymnastics than strategy.
From a gameplay standpoint, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is pretty much your standard city-builder. Resource points, like stone and fish, are distributed around the map. By setting up a building nearby, your settlers will begin to harvest resources, which can be converted into usable goods at various shops.
Once you get the fundamental wood and food production needs taken care of, you can start working towards advancing your settlement to the next level. This is marked by a neat little promotion system, where your “hero” unit earns ranks based on your settlement’s level of development. Advancement might require a certain number of castle upgrades and sufficient clothing. Later promotions can require a larger cathedral and citywide entertainment. This system provides some mini-goals, with promotions granting access to new buildings and military units.
Speaking of military units, you can build swordsmen, archers, and siege engines (depending on your hero level). Unfortunately, the military aspect of the game is a bit simplistic and usually devolves into swarming an enemy with a disorganized mob of troops. The other problem with the military aspect is the territory control system. While the territory control system itself is fine, capturing a territory causes all of the buildings and roads to disappear. This is extremely annoying, especially the part about the roads going away. Of course, this won’t matter too much, since the AI isn’t particularly aggressive in the campaign game. Instead, the challenge is provided by quest missions.
Early on, the quest goals are very simple. Later goals might be timed missions to deliver money or goods to a neighboring village. These help to provide some challenge, since the city-builder aspect of the game is otherwise pretty easy.
Interestingly, this game includes a multiplayer component. This helps a lot, especially in light of the rather passive AI opponents. The quest-driven campaign is fun, but it isn’t really compelling enough to warrant multiple runs. Sure, you can change which hero you use, but the resource gathering and distribution is pretty much the same, especially since the promotion requirements never change. There are also some sandbox mode scenarios, but there’s only so long you can keep doing the same city setup before the novelty wears off.
If you’re looking for a game to satisfy your city-builder craving, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire isn’t a terrible choice. It has some really great production values laid on top of a very traditional collect/distribute/expand city-builder model. There are also some neat gameplay elements, like the promotion system and the territory-based resources. However, the game has some interface issues, unsatisfying military options, and an overall lack of variety in the cities you build. As impressive as the cities look, they all start to feel the same after a while.
