The Settlers III Mission Pack
Score: 100% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Blue Byte Developer: Blue Byte Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 20 Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Graphics & Sound: Check the original The Settlers 3 review.
Gameplay: The eight new missions for each race are lots of fun, but the best part of the expansion pack has to be the level editor. If you've used a level editor before, you'll find that The Settlers III Level Editor is relatively easy to understand. First, you can design your own land mass by simply using drawing type tools, with types of land instead of paint. Paint on a little desert here, some grassy plains over there and a little snow up there... then use the terrain tools to raise, lower, and texture the land a bit. Then colonize your land with Settlers and plant the natural resources they'll need. If you find The Settlers III somewhat intimidating, this is your chance to give YOUR guys more resources. Then again, if you want a REAL challenge, give the other guys a big advantage. Either way, you'll get that childish pleasure that can only be obtained by carefully building up colonies and then haphazardly laying them to waste. It must be the sand castle phenomenon.
Difficulty: Okay. The Settlers III is hard, as I said in my The Settlers 3 review. If you have played lots of strategy games before, you're almost guaranteed to have a blast. If you haven't, however, the intricacies of The Settlers 3 may be daunting. At least now, with The Settlers III Level Editor, you can tweak the scenarios a bit, and thereby make success easier to achieve or more fleeting.
Game Mechanics: I’ve used level editors before, and I must say, The Settlers III Level Editor is a very good editor. It's easy to use, and allows for complete customization of missions, from goal objectives, to location and availability of resources, to assignment of teams, to creation of landmass; from the smallest detail to the largest. You can even test out your levels by viewing them as they would be seen in gameplay prior to creating the finalized game scenario file. Then, when the mission is finalized, you can share it with others on the net or via e-mail. Create an impossibly hard mission and challenge that friend of yours to solve it... you know - the one who thinks he's so much better at strategy games than you are. Installation: The Settlers III Mission Pack installs easily and meshes seamlessly with The Settlers 3. Just put in the disc, and follow the instructions. Piece -o- cake.
-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins
Minimum System Requirements: Requires an installed full version of The Settlers 3   Test System: K6-II 400, 64MB RAM, Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, Aureal Vortex II A3D Sound Card
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