The Settlers 2: Gold Edition

Game review

In 1997, Blue Byte Gold released a 1995 version of its Settlers 2 strategy. As with most Gold editions, the changes in this affected the collection of innumerable bugs and the addition of several features, an editor and another campaign. But let's get to the game itself.

Technical side: At first glance, the game is difficult to set up in the menu, but you can live perfectly with them after a few missions. The control is quite intuitive and quickly goes into the bloodstream. The graphics are great for their time, the S2 country is one of the most beautiful I've encountered in games. The music is unobtrusive, but it changes over time (I recommend making your own S2 mp3 playlist, because the game itself is outrageously addictive and will take you days, weeks, months ...)

Story / What it's all about: In the game you will encounter 4 nations - Romans, Vikings, Japanese and Africans. Everyone has the same system, units, buildings, but they are all completely graphically different. The Roman campaign will put you in the role of leader of an expedition that sank on an unknown island. After the first mission, conceived as an undemanding tutorial, you will find that the only way out of the island leads through a mysterious magic gate. You enter it and you are in the next level, in a new territory, where you start with more raw materials again from the main tent. The goal is, of course, to overcome all obstacles and get to Rome. The way the mini-kingdom is managed differs fundamentally from most strategies in a few respects. Money: you don't earn it, your subjects are completely under your control, you don't pay them for anything. Units: You do not give orders directly to units, you cannot command them anything, everything happens in the general level of planning and when something does not work somewhere, or is bound ... consult as you know. Ingredients: forget about gold, wood, stone and nothing more. In S2 you have a total of 16 types of raw materials and products, which are taken care of by 25 types of professions (including donkeys?) And protected by 5 types of soldiers. Do not worry. It's easier than it looks at first glance. In addition to organizing the military side of things and expanding your territory, your main role as commander is to create an efficient and strong economy that will overwhelm your opponent in the long-term struggle. In addition to building a network of roads (watch out for critical nodes where goods from the whole empire converge and congestion occur, you also use local warehouses when your empire is really growing) and buildings (5 military, 22 civilian) especially effective settings in the main menu - deployment of military crews, priority of materials during transport, allocation to buildings, or priority of production of various tools. You also need to strategically occupy the deposits of depletable raw materials (ores), or know when to strike and when to fortify. All tasks are performed by nice little dolls, who, when there is a lack of work, start reading newspapers or jumping rope.

The purpose of this review is not a guide, because I would not like to deprive you of the joys and sorrows of discovering the finesse and nooks of this nice game, but also because it would take up ten times more space. I can highly recommend Settler to anyone who wants to improve their strategic thinking, or just enjoy a lot of fun while conquering the world.

P.S .: Cheat: In the game, type WINTER (in the non-gold version of THUNDER), then ALT + 1-7 controls the speed of the game and ALT + F7 reveals the map. 

Reviewed by Anonym – 1. april 2014