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The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom

Score: 90%
ESRB: Everyone 10+
Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment
Developer: Blue Byte
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1; 2 - 4 (Online)
Genre: God Games/ Real-Time Strategy/ Online

Graphics & Sound:

By far, the most riveting aspect of the production quality of The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom has got to be the music. Think orchestral movie scores here - with beautifully haunting vocals. I could listen to this for hours. I find myself whistling the tune to myself at work. Very well done music. The voiceovers are well done too, but are used in an interesting way: there is nicely done narration and dialogue in the animated story sequences, but the voicework during the actual gameplay is mostly limited to the narrator informing you of the completion of some strategically significant occurance (such as taking over an adjoining land or a player achieving a Victory Point). One additional place that you can occasionally hear dialogue is, believe it or not, when your settlers are in need of something, such as tools, for example. They will have little word bubbles indicating what is needed, and, if you let it go long enough, they will occasionally voice their concerns, as well.

The graphics are improved greatly since the last time I played a Settlers game, but then, that's been since The Settlers 3, so that goes without saying. The settler characters still have a cartoon-like appearance, but along with the environments, they have more detail than I remember. There are even some variation in the settlers, themselves; at one point, I zoomed in all the way and watched as two different looking runners came and went from one of my storerooms.

For those who like to tweak things a bit, there are editors for creating your own maps as well as your own castle designs. The castles can get fairly large and elaborate, with several different pieces to select from. Additional decorations and castle pieces can be obtained as you progress as unlockable content or additional purchases.

The Menu Screen is also unusual and worth mentioning. When the game loads, the screen starts completely dark, then fades in to a view of your castle approaching in the distance, in a very cinematic feeling "flyover" intro (which you can get past quicker by clicking the mouse several times, by the way). Once the intro is done, the flyover continues to pan around your castle, but this animation serves as a backdrop (or "wallpaper", if you will) for a user interface that feels very much like a Windows-esque operating system. There is a menu off to the left that you can select from different things, such as playing a game or editing something, but along the left side of the screen are, essentially, icons which when clicked, take you to a specific website or launch some related program that's not the game itself. It's an interesting approach and it seems to borrow a certain amount of familiarity from the user's existing experience with using Windows, but seems a bit strange for a "period piece," if you will.


Gameplay:

Here is your kingdom, to rule as you will; to reap what you sow, to keep what you plunder. Your subjects will have only the technologies you encourage them to discover, the food you instruct them to cultivate or hunt... and no man will join your army, except that you hire him. Make your choices, be it science or religion, agriculture or conquest... but know this: to prosper, you can't rely on but one - you'll need a delicate balance of all of these. And, perhaps, a bit of luck.
-unaddressed letter found in the royal desk after the siege

It's good to be the king, but it gets a bit complicated, at times. Your loyal subjects are there to serve you, but your commands will need to be fairly specific. They don't tend to think for themselves much. You'll have to choose whether they should fish, grow grain or hunt wild animals for food. You don't have to choose just one, but the same resources that could be used to build that farmhouse would be needed for the hunting camp - and resources tend to be a limiting factor.

You'll have to look to the spiritual and technological welfare of your subjects, as well. There won't be a church unless you instruct that one be built, and even then, you'll have to have a certain level of prestige in your domain before a church can be built. With a church, you can train monks, whose study leads to technological discoveries, but you'll need beer... and that means that you need grain that's not being made into flour... and a brewery, of course.

These complexities are known as "product chains," and you'll need to juggle the need for resources and processing to arrive at fine goods that can be sold for money or weapons that can give your military an edge in battle.


Difficulty:

More often than not, I find that my success or failure revolves around gold coin... or the lack thereof. Typically, you start with a certain amount of gold coin and you can receive some rewards in multiplayer games in which gold coin is sometimes an option. Also, gold coin is rewarded for completing certain quests. Beyond that, it's relatively hard to get coin. You can mine gold ore and coal and then set up a noble house with a coin mint to mint your own gold coins... or you could trade goods on some trade route in exchange for gold. But, it's surprisingly difficult to get your hands on a large sum of the stuff. When you consider the fact that you have to use gold to hire soldiers into your military, this can greatly limit your ability to conduct warfare. Without plump coffers to draw from, a single lost battle - or even a hard-fought win - can leave your military incapable of conquest - and, if you're not careful - defense.

If you find yourself in over your head, it's a good idea to work through the Campaign mode. The campaign for Princess Zoe is, essentially, the tutorial mode. You get pretty much spoon-fed and hand-guided through a series of missions that are designed to illustrate a new element to be learned (and mastered). Be forewarned, though - since these missions are designed to teach specific things, you won't want to try other ways of solving issues, as certain building options might not be available to you or you may find yourself unable to gain enough resources to proceed. For this campaign, you want to focus very closely on doing exactly what they ask you to do and learning the point of these new things for future games.


Game Mechanics:

Real-Time Strategies are all about resource management. The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom is no different. While I've seen other games that require more micromanagement, Settlers 7 is pretty high up there. Only the very lowest level of actions are automated. For example, to grow grain, you have to decide where you want the farm to be, which work yards are to be used to grow grain and which, if any, will be used to mill the grain into flour. You don't just choose a general area, however; you'll need to specify the exact location and orientation so that your work yards don't get unintentionally obstructed. You'll have to connect this farm to a road, so that your settlers can access it. Furthermore, you'll have to make sure that there are available workers to run the farm. And population means that you'll have to create residences. And, that's just a simple sampling. You'll need to stay aware of over-arching goals so that you can work toward them, but you'll be required to jump in and solve every little issue that comes up, as well.

The "Operating System-esque" presentation was a bit unexpected, but it worked well enough, making fairly things easy to find. One thing that I found strange was that The Settlers 7 didn't handle my having two monitors very well; the game stayed on my main monitor and when I would try to use a browser on the other screen, as soon as I would blur from the Settlers 7, the game would crash. This was never at a critical time, but it did happen to me on several different occasions.

All-in-all, I greatly enjoyed playing The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom and can see myself playing it in my spare time after this review is long submitted, which I should add is a rare thing, indeed.


-Geck0, GameVortex Communications
AKA Robert Perkins

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows XP/Vista/7, 3 GHz Intel Pentium4/AMD XP 3000+ or better, 2GB RAM, 256 MB Direct 9.0c-compliant Shader 3.0-enabled video card, DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card, 8x DVD-ROM drive, 8 GB Free Hard Drive Space, Windows-compliant keyboard and mouse, Broadband Internet connection with 128 kbps upstream or faster

Recommended:
Windows XP/Vista/7, Intel Core2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2 recommended, 4 GB RAM, 512 MB Direct 9.0c-compliant Shader 3.0-enabled video card*, DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card, 8x DVD-ROM drive, 8 GB Free Hard Drive Space, Windows-compliant keyboard and mouse, Broadband Internet connection with 128 kbps upstream or faster

*Supported Graphics Cards:
NVIDIA GEForce:
7900 / 8 / 9 / GT / GTS / GTX series
ATI Radeon:
X1900 / HD 2000 / HD 3000 / HD 4000 / HD 5000 series

 

Test System:



MS Windows XP Home Edition, AMD Dual-Core, 3.11 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG, Gateway HD2201 21" HDMI Monitor, Sony SDM-HS73 Monitor, ATI Radeon HD 2400 (256 MB), Realtek HD Audio, Creative SB X-Fi, 1.5 TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA Hard Drive, Sony DVD RW, Cable Modem, VAIO Mouse

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