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Strategy & War


The Settlers III Ultimate Collection
Rating: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 best

By Andrew S. Bub
(7/24/2000)

The good: The full Settlers III game plus the add-ons at a nice low price. 
The bad: There is nothing new for fans that already own both. 
The bottom line: A lot of Strategy Lite gameplay for a low price.  
Multiplayer: Up to six players  
ESRB rating: E (Everyone) 


The Settlers is oftentimes reminiscent of a cute, real-time version of Civilization or Impressions Games' Caesar series. All three installments have sold reasonably well in the United States, but they've been huge hits over in Europe. With The Settlers IV due in the fourth quarter of 2000, Blue Byte Software is bundling The Settlers III and all of its add-ons as a nice budget-priced collection. Although The Settlers has never been the deepest or most worthwhile of strategy series, it's hard to argue with this much value for this price. Unless, of course, you already own these products.

Settle Down, People
The Ultimate Collection contains the full version of The Settlers III; the map editor and scenario add-on; the Quest of the Amazon's mission pack; a bonus collection of 70 user-created maps; a bunch of multimedia goodies such as music files; preview movies for upcoming Blue Byte releases; and odds and ends such as wallpaper and animated icons. Basically, there is nothing here you can't get elsewhere, so folks who already own all this stuff had better stay away. Strategy fans who haven't played with this stuff before, pay attention.


 
Screen Shots
Click the captions for more game shots!

-Invasion by sea
-The Romans invade!
-Battle on the border
-Farming the lands
-Amazon guard towers

The Settlers formula is fairly simple. Choose a race: here we have the Romans, Egyptians, Asians, and Amazons. Then build your piece of territory into a powerful nation. Build guard towers to expand your borders into the wilderness and ruthlessly capture enemy towers to expand into enemy territory. Build mines to gain ore, smithies to smelt it, traders to manage funds, and barracks to train troops and farmers to farm. Each race has unique units and advantages and disadvantages to deal with. Essentially, each side consists of cute little people doing cute little stuff. The game is very repetitive but quite relaxing.

Whole Lot of Settling Going On
The graphics are simplistic but the animations are nice. The audio is adequate as well, although not groundbreaking. Nothing about the game screams cutting edge, but that puts it in line with its competition. The game mechanics are deep and fairly engrossing, and the add-on discs provide a great deal of stuff to play with. The 70 user-created maps yield some truly interesting situations. The Settlers III Ultimate Collection makes up for its slightly above-average gameplay with a whole lot of value. Looking for your next strategy addiction? The Settlers Collection is well worth your time--it combines all the best aspects of a puzzle game with some of the finer aspects of an RTS. It's a quirky title that is a whole lot of fun.

For hints on this game, visit Tips and Cheats.

Andrew S. Bub wants it to be known that he was not settling when he accepted this review. He really wanted to do it. Agree or disagree with this review? Let us know.

 Facts
The Settlers III Ultimate Collection
Blue Byte Software, 512/343-1099
Price: $25 
dos Pentium-100, 32MB RAM, 2MB video card


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The Settlers III Ultimate Collection


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