Product Reviews

This once-adored strategy series has been in freefall for years. The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is an attempt to restore the name and re-establish the appeal of the first couple of Settlers games. Mostly, it gets it right.

The charm of the concept is in diligently constructing a medieval city of labour and commerce. Find the right resources on the map, such as deer for meat, wood for buildings and iron for swords, and you can grow your settlement gradually. As you do so, the activity in it increases. Seeing more settlers happily going about their labour and leisure is a fine visual reward for your hard work.

Combat

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inevitably comes into play in the later stages of a mission. Though it can sometimes seem a rude interruption to your careful construction, it's light of touch. Soldiers are created in the same way as any other goods in the game, and it's simply a matter of having enough and pointing them in the right direction.

The trouble is that it's all much more about pleasantness than being challenging. This is fine if you fancy a break from the usual hectic style of gaming, but it starts to wear thin after a while. There's a limited number of problems to overcome, most of which stem from dealing with the lack of a resource or two. After a few sessions of Settlers, you'll be very conscious of doing the same thing again and again. This reduces the game's long-term appeal, and it's unlikely that you'll return to it often.

Rise of an Empire is a return to the core values of the series: simply enjoying what you've made. As such, it will work better as an occasional treat than a fortnight of intense play. Awful voice acting is a further problem, but if you focus on the huge visual charm of the dozens of incidental animations you'll find a game with a lot of charm, if not longevity.